Today is World Bee Day! Not only are bees vital pollinators in our ecosystems, but they also have some pretty unique talents. One of those talents is that African honey bees can scare off elephants! That’s right, elephants are afraid of honey bees! Communities across Africa are using wild African honey bees (apis mellifera scutellata) to keep elephants out of their farms and homesteads by building fences of connected, hanging hives called beehive fences.

In Tanzania, Lorna McCallister, one of our 2022 Established Conservationist grantees, is helping to support communities in building beehive fences to protect themselves from elephants that enter their communities in search of crops and water. When elephants try to cross these fences to enter farms, they hit the connecting wire and the guard bees from the hives come out to sting the elephants around their sensitive eyes, ears, and trunk. Elephants learn to avoid these fences, thus reducing human-elephant conflict for these communities.