Honey bees come in handy to keep jumbos at bay

Coimbatore: When an elephant knocked down the compound wall of his house at Onampalayam near Thondamuthur, George Thomas, a farmer and a retired engineer, decided to find a permanent solution to the problem. That was not the first time that he had spotted an elephant around his farm land after he started living there five years ago. Based on research and expert opinion, he set up beehives around the compound wall of his farm land.Since then, he has not seen any elephant intrusion.
Ever since George moved moved with his family to Thondamuthur, they started spotting elephants around the farm land. "As time passed, I got used to them passing the land but when one elephant knocked down the compound wall of my residence, I decided it was time to do something. Recollecting my childhood memories, I knew that elephants were afraid of bees. I did some research and realized that in countries like Africa bees were used successfully to keep elephants at bay," he said.
He set up beehives around his home. Since then, 18 months have passed and they have not seen any elephant intrusion. "They pass by the farmland but are always at a distance of 100m from my land," said George Thomas. He grows a variety of fruits, spices and vegetables.
T Manoharan, professor and head of the entomology department, said that the technique was introduced by Professor Fritz Vollrath, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, CEO of 'Save the Elephants' and Dr Lucy King. They investigated and identified that elephants responded with alarm to the buzz of aggressive bees and quickly moved away from the sound source. "Though it is becoming a popular solution, not many farmers have tried this due to lack of knowledge and the time involved in maintaining the hives," said Manoharan.
An expert in bee keeping, M R Sreenivasan said the hives are set up around the farm on posts, tied with a string. "When the elephant tries to enter the farm, the disturbed bees come out in swarms to attack it. The hives must be set up in a specific way, different from that of normal bee keeping," he said.
The hive is called top bar hive that is hung on a string. These hives do not have frames but only a central bar that tapers at the bottom. Honey is stored in the central bar and the bees settled around it.
Arun Prakash, a farmer with several acres of land in Alandurai, said he had set up bee hives around the farm eight months ago. "My yield has increased since then and the frequency of elephant attacks has reduced. But we are yet to set it up on strings. If the technique is rightly followed, elephants would topple the bee hive boxes as it happened once in my case," he said.
He has set up 60 bee hive boxes around his farm.
K Veerasenthil, a farmer in Sirumugai said that in India, the elephant attacks during the day. "At night, the bees do not attack and are mostly dormant. So unless research is carried out to suit our condition, it would not yield fruit," he said.
Irrespective of whether they help reduce man-animal conflict, most farmers say that bees do help increase their yield.