How the humble bee can stop a herd of elephants in its tracks. A fairly recent finding that's also a great analogy.

What a relief. Change agents everywhere can finally retire that useful but itch-inducing analogy of the flea and the dog.  We resort to it when we need people to believe that the actions of just one individual can make a difference in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.

The Facts

It’s a great example of low-tech and frugal innovation, of solutions that allow man and nature to live in harmony, and it’s out of Africa.

The ecological and economic cost of elephant populations can be significant. Where crops are trampled and where trees of cultural and practical significance are destroyed, conflict between rural communities and these irrestrainable creatures inevitably ensues.

Given that the cost of effective physical barriers would be prohibitive for subsistence farmers, let alone undesirable to conservationists, researchers have long sought an affordable and sustainable solution to what has seemed an insurmountable problem.

So much for being thick-skinned, it turns out that elephants are highly sensitive to the pain of a bee sting. So averse this makes the majestic beasts, that the very sound of bees has been found to stop a herd of elephants in their otherwise unrelenting tracks. One has to wonder whether the elephant’s acuity for low tones amplifies the bass notes of a hive’s drone.

In a great example of a project that simultaneously delivers in so many ways, beehives are being strategically placed along the perimeter of cultivated rural land that is otherwise susceptible to the destructive passage of elephant herds. Not only are crops being preserved, but the farmers are able to sell the bees’ honey as an additional income stream. With the alarming decline in the world’s bee population, one we depend upon for the pollination of a large percentage of the world’s plant food, it’s an initiative that surely contributes well beyond the crops it directly protects.

The Fable

Be your cause climate change or corruption, whether you are encouraging people to recycle their plastic or refrain from paying a bribe, you will know how hard it is to convince that small actions can make a big difference. And that is why we have resorted to the negatively evocative reminder that it takes but one small flea to make a big dog scratch. Move over flea, you are hereby replaced - by the humble bee.

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References and acknowledgements

I first learned about the use of bees to deter elephants from damaging trees and crops in an article by Dale Hes, “Sting in the Tale”, published in the August 2016 issue of Khuluma, the in-flight magazine of South Africa’s Kulula Airlines and which you can find here. It's well worth a read!

According to Hes, Dr Lucy King of the Human-Elephant Co-existence Programme at Save the Elephants in Kenya must be credited for initiating the concept in 2006. It has since been applied in countries including Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Sri Lanka. The solution is being applied in South Africa by Dr Michelle Henley of Elephants Alive to the protection of tree species including the much-loved marula tree.