Elephants hate bees – here's why that's good news for Kenyan farmers

Meha Kumar/ Save the Elephants

Farmers are turning bees into unexpected helpers to keep elephants off their crops.

Around the world, spreading farmland is increasingly overlapping with elephant habitats, often resulting in dangerous interactions as elephants roam over people's crops. But in Kenya, after decades of investigation, researchers have come up with a simple but ingenious solution to deter elephants: strings of beehive fences.

Inspired by longtime local knowledge of elephants' dislike of beehives, these buzzing barriers are offering a gentle but effective way of de-escalating the sometimes-violent interactions between farmers and elephants. And they are now spreading across the world, from Mozambique to Thailand.

So what is it about bees that elephants hate so much? And can they really be expected to keep the peace in this ever more crowded world?