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Guard Bees: People, Elephants, and a Living Fence Between Them

Harambee – Let Us Work Together

Kenya’s national motto is “Harambee” — a Swahili word conveying the meaning “All together,” “Let us join our efforts,” or “Let us work together.”

It would be difficult to find a more fitting motto for a honey bee colony. Tens of thousands of bees act as a single organism: they raise the brood, gather food, maintain the temperature of the nest, and defend their common home. An individual bee is vulnerable, but the colony survives through the coordinated efforts of all.

In one extraordinary Kenyan project, the meaning of the word “Harambee” becomes even deeper. The bees work together among themselves, farmers join their efforts, and people seek a way to protect their livelihoods without killing elephants.

Thus Kenya’s national motto also becomes an unwritten law of coexistence:

Harambee – Let us work together!

When Elephants Enter the Fields

From a distance, elephants appear calm, wise, and gentle. But an encounter between an elephant and a human looks very different when it takes place not in a tourist reserve, but in the middle of a family’s field at night.

A herd can destroy, in just a few hours, the crops on which an entire family depends for its livelihood. Elephants knock down fences, damage water pipes and buildings, and encounters with people sometimes end in serious injuries and death — on both sides.

To the farmer, the elephant is an enormous shadow that may take away the food meant for his children. To the elephant, the field is a rich and easily accessible source of food that has appeared on land through which herds have travelled for generations.

Both the human and the elephant are struggling to survive. Both may be right — and yet they can still become enemies.

Why Are Elephants Afraid of Bees?

An elephant’s thick skin protects it from many dangers, but its eyes, mouth, and the inside of its trunk remain sensitive. Disturbed African honey bees can attack precisely these areas.

Elephants recognize the buzzing of agitated bees and often retreat before they are even stung. They shake their heads, throw up dust, produce warning sounds, and communicate the danger to other members of the herd. The experience is also remembered within the family group.

The idea of beehive fences is built on this natural behaviour.

Real beehives are placed around the field, alternating with cheaper empty dummy hives. All of them are connected by wire. If an elephant attempts to pass through, it pulls the wire, the hives begin to swing, the bees become disturbed and fly out. In many cases, the movement of the hives and the buzzing alone are enough to make the animal retreat.

This is not an impenetrable physical barrier. An elephant could easily destroy a wooden hive. The beehive fence works through the animal’s memory, hearing, and caution.

It is a living warning system.

Nine Years of Observations Near Tsavo

Between 2012 and 2020, researchers monitored 26 small farms in two villages near Tsavo East National Park in Kenya. A total of 365 real beehives were used in the beehive fences, with approximately 12 to 15 hives placed around each protected area, alternating with dummy hives.

Over the nine-year period, 3,999 elephant approaches to the monitored farms were analysed.

On average, the beehive fences deterred around 76% of approaching elephants. During the six monitored crop-growing seasons with good agricultural conditions, effectiveness ranged from 78.3% to 86.3%. The system worked best after sufficient rainfall, when more hives were occupied and the bee colonies were stronger.

This is a remarkable result for a comparatively simple barrier that neither kills nor injures the elephant, while at the same time potentially providing pollination, honey, beeswax, and additional income for the farmer.

One Ton of Honey from 365 Hives — Why So Little?

Over nine years, approximately one ton of honey was reported from the beehive fences, sold for around 2,250 US dollars.

If we simply divide the quantity by 365 hives and nine years, we obtain:

1000 / 365 / 9 = 0.304 kg

That is only about 304 grams of honey per hive per year — an amount that seems almost absurdly low to a beekeeper.

But this calculation is misleading. The project had 365 installed hives, but these did not represent 365 permanently occupied and productive bee colonies.

The hives were left to be colonized naturally by wild swarms, something which, in my more than 30 years of beekeeping experience, happens extremely rarely. So rarely, in fact, that I have never personally observed it. Hive occupancy varied greatly depending on rainfall, available vegetation, and environmental conditions. During the severe drought of 2017, the proportion of occupied hives fell by around 75%. At the worst point, occupancy dropped to roughly one fifth.

It is therefore incorrect to divide the total honey production by all installed hives. The honey should be related only to colonies that were actually occupied and strong enough during each season. However, the scientific publication does not provide all the annual data needed to calculate the exact average yield per active colony.

Drought Takes Away Both Nectar and Bees

The region around Tsavo is dry and subject to prolonged periods without sufficient rainfall. When drought strikes:

• flowering declines or disappears;

• plants produce little or no nectar;

• water sources dry up;

• bee colonies weaken;

• stored honey is consumed for the colony’s own survival;

• some colonies abandon their hives.

The effects of the severe drought did not end with the first rainfall. Low hive occupancy and poor honey yields persisted for about another three years.

Local African populations of Apis mellifera are more inclined to abandon their nests during starvation, overheating, or prolonged disturbance. This is an adaptation to a harsh and unpredictable environment: instead of remaining in a hopeless location, the colony seeks another territory.

This Is Not an Ordinary Apiary

The hives are distributed around the perimeters of 26 separate farms. They do not form a central apiary under constant professional management.

This makes regular inspections, swarm control, repairs, timely expansion of nests, and organized honey harvesting more difficult.

The farmers are primarily crop growers. Their main concern is their harvest and the safety of their families, while beekeeping is an additional activity. Some honey probably remained unharvested, was consumed by households, or never passed through the official reporting and sales system.

The publication reports honey that was produced and sold, but does not allow us to determine whether every harvested kilogram was recorded.

Hive design also matters. Both Kenyan top-bar hives and Langstroth hives were used in the project. An earlier study in the same area showed significantly higher occupancy and productivity in Langstroth hives compared with the top-bar hives used there.

One ton of honey does not prove that African honey bees are unproductive.

It shows that this was not an apiary of 365 continuously active colonies.

The hives were primarily components of a protection system.

As a honey-production project, the result is weak. As a protective measure, however, the result is impressive.

The real “harvest” is not only the honey, but also the maize that was saved, the farmers’ work that was preserved, and the reduced risk of humans and elephants killing one another.

The Beehive Fence Only Says: “Not Here”

This raises a more important question: what happens to the elephant that has been driven away?

The beehive fence protects a particular field, but it does not create new grazing land, a new river, or a new place to live.

It does not solve hunger or thirst.

It says only:

“Not here.”

The repelled elephant may return to the savannah, search for another water source, or go around the fence. It may try again at night or move toward a neighbouring, unprotected field.

Animals quickly discover weak points.

In the Kenyan study, researchers recorded 343 passages through gaps at the ends of fences, without the elephants passing through the hive sections themselves. After these openings were additionally protected with strings of metal cans containing stones, the number of crossings fell sharply.

This demonstrates both the intelligence and persistence of elephants, but also the essence of the problem: an elephant does not stop needing food when it encounters a fence.

It merely searches for another path to reach it.

Why Is a Cultivated Field So Irresistible?

During the wet season, savannah elephants feed mainly on grasses. During dry periods, they switch to leaves, twigs, bark, roots, and fruit.

To support its enormous body, an adult animal must find substantial quantities of plant food and water every day.

Agricultural crops are a far more concentrated and easily accessible source of nutrients than sparse, dry vegetation. Maize, sorghum, watermelons, and other crops are gathered in one place, are succulent, and require little searching.

To an elephant, a crop field is what an open warehouse full of honey would be to bees.

Ancient Routes Are Being Closed

Elephants do not necessarily spend the entire year within the boundaries of national parks. They use vast territories and follow traditional routes between grazing areas, forests, breeding grounds, and seasonal water sources.

In southern Kenya, herds move between the ecosystems of Tsavo, Amboseli, the Chyulu Hills, community and private conservancies, and land used by local people.

These routes existed long before modern roads, railways, farms, and cadastral boundaries.

Today, however, corridors are crossed by infrastructure and settlements or broken into small private plots.

Observations using GPS collars show that elephants use constructed underpasses beneath the railway through Tsavo. Many crossings take place at night, and the animals accelerate when entering the underpass — behaviour suggesting tension in a dangerous and heavily altered environment.

The elephant does not know what a cadastral map is, what private property is, or where the boundary of a national park lies.

It knows hunger, thirst, and the remembered route to water.

When that route is closed, conflict becomes almost inevitable.

How Is Kenya Trying to Help Both People and Elephants?

There is no single fence or technology capable of solving the problem.

A whole system of complementary measures is needed.

Protecting Migration Corridors

This is the most important long-term solution.

If a traditional route to water is built over, the elephant cannot create a new river for itself.

Kenya’s National Elephant Action Plan for 2023–2032 places emphasis on protecting and restoring corridors, connecting habitats, spatial planning, and ensuring that infrastructure takes wildlife movement into account.

Underpasses and wildlife passages can help, but only if the route leading to them and the land beyond them also remain open.

Community Conservancies and Fair Income

Some of the land around national parks is managed as community wildlife conservancies.

Local landowners may receive income from tourism, jobs, conservation projects, and lease payments in exchange for keeping important areas free from development and fencing.

This is crucial.

If the whole world wants elephants to be protected, it is not fair for only the poor farmer living beside a reserve to pay the price through the destruction of his crops.

People need to see economic and social value in a living elephant.

If the animal brings only fear, damage, and unpaid promises, tolerance will inevitably disappear.

Protection and Early Warning

Beehive fences are only one of the methods being used.

Other measures include electric fencing, floodlights, sirens, monitoring teams, GPS tracking, and early-warning systems.

Ropes and other deterrents using chilli peppers have also been tested, along with noise barriers and the planting of crops that are less attractive to elephants.

Every measure has limitations.

Elephants learn, become accustomed to repeated signals, and discover weak points.

Protection therefore has to evolve and form part of broader planning, rather than simply driving elephants from one field into another.

Compensating Those Who Suffer Losses

Kenya has a compensation system for human deaths or injuries, destroyed crops, killed livestock, and damaged property.

In practice, assessment and payment are not always fast enough.

For someone who has lost an entire year’s harvest, compensation that may arrive in the future does not replace the food needed today.

Fair and timely compensation is not a gift.

It is part of the price society must pay if it wants wildlife to be protected.

Relocating Individual Groups

In 2024, Kenya relocated 50 elephants from the overcrowded Mwea reserve to the more spacious Aberdare National Park.

The animals were tranquilized, transported in specialized trucks, and fitted with GPS transmitters.

Such operations can reduce pressure in a particular area, but they are expensive, complicated, and risky.

They can be applied to dozens of animals, not tens of thousands.

Relocation is also successful only if the new territory provides enough space, water, and food.

Is Kenya Succeeding?

The answer is both “yes” and “no.”

Kenya has achieved major success in elephant conservation.

After the devastating decades of poaching, the national elephant population has recovered significantly.

That is a genuine conservation achievement.

But the growth in elephant numbers coincides with an increasing human population, the expansion of agriculture, and the fragmentation of open land.

Success therefore creates a new challenge: more elephants must survive in a world where free space is shrinking.

Kenya is succeeding in saving many elephants, but it has not yet created sufficient conditions everywhere for peaceful coexistence between elephants and people.

This is not only a Kenyan problem.

It is a global question about the cost of wildlife conservation — and about who should pay that cost.

An Elephant Is Not a Pet

An elephant can recognize people, form long-lasting bonds, and show trust and affection.

But that does not make it a domestic animal.

It needs an enormous territory, varied plant food, large quantities of water, contact with other elephants, and the freedom to choose where it moves.

Keeping an elephant requires specialized veterinary care, qualified keepers, and substantial resources.

In some Asian countries, elephants have been used for centuries for transport, forestry work, ceremonies, and tourism.

Behind the outward image of the “tamed elephant,” however, there are often chains, restrictions, forced training, and disrupted social lives.

Orphan-elephant centres in Kenya follow a different philosophy.

The calves receive constant care and human closeness, but the ultimate goal is their gradual return to the wild.

The elephant is too intelligent, too social, and too devoted to freedom ever truly to belong to one person.

The Tears of the Displaced Elephant

Will anyone see the tears in the eyes of the displaced, hungry, and thirsty elephant?

Elephants can produce tears, but scientifically we cannot claim that every tear is an expression of sadness in the human sense.

Yet we do not need tears in order to recognize their suffering.

It can be seen in exhaustion, anxiety, nocturnal attempts to slip past barriers, separation from the herd, and the persistent return to places where water once existed.

The bees drive it away from one field.

An electric fence stops it at another.

A railway cuts across its route.

A settlement has expanded around the water source.

In the eyes of the displaced elephant there is not necessarily hatred toward humans.

There is hunger, thirst, and bewilderment at why the world it remembers no longer allows it to pass.

Seeing its suffering does not mean leaving farmers without protection.

Human life and human labour are no less valuable.

Compassion for the elephant must not require a poor farmer to sacrifice his livelihood.

Real help means that beyond the beehive fence there should be an open corridor, water, and a place toward which the animal can be directed.

Otherwise, we are not solving the conflict.

We are merely moving the suffering somewhere else.

How Can We Really Help?

Elephants are not the property or the problem of Kenya alone.

They are inhabitants of the Earth.

Above them is the same sky that is above us.

Practical help must be directed simultaneously toward elephants and toward the people who live beside them:

• preserving migration corridors;

• protecting fields without killing animals;

• ensuring fair income and compensation for local communities;

• restoring habitats and water sources;

• training and supporting beehive-fence programmes;

• providing veterinary care and returning orphaned elephants to the wild;

• monitoring, early warning, and rapid response in conflict situations.

Save the Elephants develops the Elephants and Bees project and other tools for peaceful coexistence.

Big Life Foundation works to preserve important wildlife corridors through agreements with local landowners.

Sheldrick Wildlife Trust rescues and raises orphaned animals with the goal of returning them to the wild.

Help does not have to be enormous.

It needs to be consistent, transparent, and directed toward a specific result.

It is better to be able to say:

“We helped keep a specific part of a migration corridor open.”

or:

“We supported the construction and maintenance of a beehive fence for a specific farming family.”

Then a donation has a place, a face, and a measurable result.

Beekeepers around the world have a special connection to this cause.

Bees can protect crops, provide farmers with additional income, and reduce the risk of elephants being injured or killed.

But the fence must be only one half of the solution.

The other half is the open route by which the displaced animal can reach food and water.

Under the Same Sky

We cannot give a home to every elephant.

But we can help ensure that its home is not taken away.

We can protect the farmer without declaring the elephant an enemy.

We can protect the elephant without expecting a poor person to bear the cost alone.

We can turn compassion into a corridor, a water source, a beehive, compensation, or a saved harvest.

A beehive fence can save one field.

Only a protected route to food and water can save the elephant as well.

And here we return once again to the word with which we began:

Harambee – Let us work together!

Not only the bees among themselves.

Not only the farmers in one village.

Local communities, conservationists, scientists, the tourism industry, the state, and people from distant countries who understand that elephants are part of our shared natural heritage must all work together.

Because above the displaced elephant is the same sky that is above us.

Sources

• King, L. E. et al. “Impact of drought and development on the effectiveness of beehive fences as elephant deterrents over 9 years in Kenya,” Conservation Science and Practice, 2024:

https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.13242

• Save the Elephants – Elephants and Bees:

https://savetheelephants.org/elephants-and-bees/

• National Elephant Action Plan for Kenya 2023–2032:

https://www.awf.org/about/videos-publications/books-and-papers/national-elephant-action-plan-kenya-2023-2032-2023

• Big Life Foundation – habitat and wildlife corridor protection:

https://biglife.org/what-we-do/habitat/securing-wildlife-habitat

• Sheldrick Wildlife Trust – rescuing and returning orphaned elephants to the wild:

https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/

And if you are strong not only in words, but also in deeds, here is how you can adopt an orphaned elephant:

We have already done it.

We adopted Kipekee.

You can do it too!

https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/orphans/kipekee

Kipekee is a female elephant calf, now around 15 months old. She was only about one month old when she was rescued in June 2025 in the Maasai Mara region.

The official cause of her orphaning is exactly Human–Wildlife Conflict.

Her story is a painful one.

Her mother was severely lame and living in an area with intense human activity. There were arrow wounds on her body. Her condition became so serious that she stopped producing milk.

Little Kipekee was left without food and eventually became separated from her mother.

For around three days, the calf wandered alone.

Eventually, she followed a herd of domestic cattle to a human settlement.

When rescuers arrived, Kipekee was exhausted and malnourished and collapsed before their eyes. The veterinarian had to give her emergency intravenous fluids.

The team also tried to save her mother.

She survived the veterinary procedure itself, but died the following day.

Kipekee became a true orphan.

And her name is beautiful:

Kipekee means “unique,” “one of a kind” in Swahili.