Responses of African elephants towards a bee threat: Its application in mitigating human–elephant conflict

Abstract

Human settlement expansion into elephant ranges, as well as increasing elephant populations within confined areas has led to heightened levels of human–elephant conflict in southern African communities living near protected areas. Several methods to mitigate this conflict have been suggested including the use of bees as an elephant deterrent. We investigated whether bee auditory and olfactory cues (as surrogates for live bees) could be used to effectively deter elephants. We evaluated the responses of elephants in the southern section of the Kruger National Park to five different treatments: (1) control noise, (2) buzzing bee noise, (3) control noise with honey scent, (4) honey scent, and (5) bee noise with honey scent. Elephants did not respond or displayed less heightened responses to the first four treatments. All elephants exposed to the bee noise with honey scent responded with defensive behaviours and 15 out of 21 individuals also fled. We concluded that buzzing bees or honey scent as isolated treatments (as may be the case with dormant beehives) were not effective elephant deterrents, but rather an active beehive emitting a combination of auditory and olfactory cues was a viable deterrent. However, mismatches in the timing of elephant raids and activity of bees may limit the use of bees in mitigating the prevailing human–elephant conflict.

Beehive fences as a sustainable local solution to human‐elephant conflict in Thailand

“…These findings are in line with studies describing African elephants to exhibit freezing and slow retreat behaviors when confronted with African bees (King, Douglas‐Hamilton, & Vollrath, 2007; Ndlovu, Devereux, Chieffe, Asklof, & Russo, 2016), both indicators of subordination (De Silva, Schmid, & Wittemyer, 2017). Other exhibited attentive or alarmed behaviors were the spreading of ears (expression of alarm, excitement or surprise, Poole & Granli, 2009), flapping ears (Ndlovu et al, 2016), tail in the air (fearful, playful or excitement, Poole & Granli, 2009). As bee stings are especially painful up the trunk, around the eyes and behind the ears (King, 2019), we specifically looked for behavior that would indicate elephants protecting these sensitive areas.…”

“…Indeed, we observed elephants closing their eyes, putting their trunk in their mouth, and flapping their ears when attempting a fence break. Interestingly, our study showed that only 1.1% of the elephants responded to the bees with headshaking, which seems to be a more common reaction to bees in African elephants (King et al, 2007; Ndlovu et al, 2016; Soltis, King, Douglas‐Hamilton, Vollrath, & Savage, 2014). However, our results are in line with the findings of a study in Sri Lanka that showed that none of the Asian elephants expressed head shaking as a response to bees (King et al, 2018).…”

Noise matters: elephants show risk-avoidance behaviour in response to human-generated seismic cues

“…The retreat response is an output of a trade-off between the advantages of the response (risk-avoidance) versus the costs (less time for beneficial activities such as feeding) [ 4 ]. In the case of the sound of bees, the elephants consistently retreat to this acoustic stimulus as they associate it with the risk of stinging [ 20 , 32 , 36 , 37 ]. In the case of human voices, elephants are more likely to retreat to Maasai men voices as they associate it with a higher threat [ 4 ].…”

The efficacy of interventions to protect crops from raiding elephants

“…However, such hives can be pushed over or broken by advancing elephants and may only be effective if the hive has high levels of bee activity (Vollrath and Douglas-Hamilton 2002;Ngama 2016). For these reasons, the effects of beehive fences may be short term (Nair and Jayson 2016) or perhaps even ineffective (Ndlovu et al 2016). That being said, beehive fences have been found to deter elephants in study sites where there is sustained engagement from non-governmental organizations such as in Laikipia County, Kenya (see King et al 2009King et al , 2011.…”