Beehive Fences Benefit People and Elephants

Knowledge of elephant and human psychology helps this conservation tool succeed.

Reviewed by Davia Sills

Key points

• Beehive fences leverage elephants’ innate fear of bees to deter them from damaging farms.
• Farmers also receive extra income from honey production and a pollination boost to their crops.
• A long-term study in Kenya shows beehive fences are 76 to 86 percent effective at preventing crop raids.
• Factors such as droughts and pesticide use could reduce the success of beehive fences as a deterrent.

Good fences make good neighbors—and good conservation tools, according to a new study. Analyzing nine years of data, researchers confirmed that beehive fences are highly successful at deterring African elephants from crop-raiding small farms, protecting both wildlife and livelihoods. The elephants’ natural fear of bees keeps them away, and the farmers also generate an income through honey and wax production.

Pachyderm Problems

As human settlements and infrastructure encroach more on formerly wild spaces, there is an increasing need for new, sustainable ways for people and wildlife to coexist. In Africa, conflict between elephants and subsistence farmers is increasing. Beehive fences offer an innovative approach to keeping elephants safely away from crops.

The concept was introduced nearly 20 years ago by the research charity Save the Elephants and the Kenya Wildlife Service in partnership with the University of Oxford. Researchers were interested in leveraging the psychology of elephants to deter them from agricultural areas. They decided to investigate folklore from pastoralists in the Kenyan bush regarding elephants’ fear of bees. With support from Disney’s Animal Kingdom, researchers showed that elephants react to bee sounds by running away and rumbling to warn others of the danger.

The next step was harnessing this innate fear of bees as a practical tool to keep elephants safely away from agricultural areas. This meant fencing off crops with a series of live beehives strung together between posts.

Dr. Lucy King of Save the Elephants and the University of Oxford has been involved with this research since its beginnings and has seen the idea rapidly take off. “We know of beehive fences now in 97 sites across Africa and Asia, with around 14,000 beehives being used as deterrents. And that’s probably a minimum estimate,” she says.

Fence for Success

For the new study, King and colleagues monitored 26 small farms protected by beehive fences in the community of Sagalla, near Tsavo East National Park in Kenya. These farms were chosen through participatory community meetings, where residents selected the most impacted and most vulnerable farmers to receive beehive fences.

“I’m not sure I anticipated being there for over a decade, but it has created this long-term study that has given us an eye-opening window into not just how the beehive fences evolve over the years but also how climate change impacts their use,” says King.

Keeping elephants out during the peak crop-growing season (from November through January) was critical. Over the course of the study, more than 3,000 elephants approached the farms during these months. The beehive fences deterred an average of 86.3 percent of them from raiding crops.

But factors outside of the farmers’ and researchers’ control impacted the success of the fences. A drought beginning in late 2016 negatively impacted bee populations and greatly decreased hive occupancy for several years. With fewer bees, beehive fences become less effective deterrents. Despite this setback, the beehive fences prevented an annual average of 76 percent of elephants from raiding crops across the entire nine years of the study.

In addition to decreasing the effectiveness of the fences, the drought affected honey production and profits. Even so, the 365 beehives used in the study produced over 800 kg of honey, sold by the farmers for $2,250.

Learning to Coexist

King says this study has taught her and her colleagues many things about beehive fences. A foremost lesson is the importance of involving the farmers using the fences in the research.

“When you introduce something like this, you have to bring the farmers with you and make them feel a part of the process,” she says. “They chose the sites, they collected the data and let us know what was going on, and so they felt like they were an important part of the research project.”

The study also suggests that beehive fences, while successful at reducing elephant crop raids during peak crop seasons after good rainfall, may be less effective in other contexts. Beehive fences depend on healthy colonies of honeybees to deter elephants. Factors that negatively impact bees, including habitat disturbance, droughts, and pesticide use, are likely to reduce the effectiveness of beehive fences.

“We’re not saying beehive fences are the silver bullet for every case of human-elephant conflict, but they are appropriate for small-scale, rural farmers,” says King. “If you are in an area where droughts are going to be a problem, or you’ve got a lot of pesticide use, beehive fences are probably not the right tool.”

Beehive fences are just one potential conservation approach. King and her Save the Elephants colleagues have compiled, translated, and shared a book of about 80 human-elephant conflict tools that can be used in combination or rotation, including light- or olfactory-based deterrents, trenches, and the adoption of non-palatable crops, such as sunflowers. The team also actively solicits new ideas and innovations from the people actually using these tools. For instance, in Mozambique, farmers created spicy beehive fences, where the ropes connecting the hives were laced with chili. This approach proved to be 98 percent effective at preventing crop raids.

King says some of the benefits of beehive fences are obvious. They prevent elephants from destroying crops. They provide farmers with extra income from honey. They offer a pollination boost to crops. But she also cites the “feel-good” factor that rural farmers receive from being part of a group with a purpose.

“They have an event where they come together every week or so, and they can talk to each other, discuss issues, listen to lectures and watch slides, and go out for training or field trips,” she says. “We’ve discovered from our farmers that the excitement of having a hobby and learning about something is an important factor. It’s an intangible thing, but that joy of feeling that you are part of a mission is another benefit.”