In Uganda, farmers have discovered an effective weapon to expel elephants that enter farms and corrupt them. Some time ago, the Santo Okelo farm was almost attacked by outsiders, and these intruders were not human, but four elephants came at sunset to eat a snack of sesame. But this time, the elephants did not reach the perimeter of the farm until they were suddenly forced to run away, and they hit their feet on the ground and raised their tail in the air as they fled the farm. The reason for her escape was the attack by the bees. Okelo placed her cells (about 60 cells) in the shape of a barrier around the farm. A few years ago, any visit to the farm by the elephants, living in the nearby Murchison Falls National Park, meant the proven loss of Okelo, whose crop is the main source of income. "In the past, I used to bear the loss and start growing sesame again, but now bees are protecting the crop," says Okelo.
Farm invasion
Elephants began to invade farms and villages in this part of northern Uganda in early 2000, when communities displaced by decades of fighting between the government and rebels known as the LRA returned to the areas they had displaced. They met the herds of elephants roaming freely in the area, who did not hesitate to eat the fruits and vegetables grown by their new neighbors.
This was a problem that required creative intervention. When elephants became ravaged by farms, livelihoods were destroyed, and economic gains to communities already affected by the war were hampered. But when communities attacked these elephants in response, they threatened the ecological balance in northern Uganda and threatened the biggest source of hard currency, tourism. . "Over the years, the growing number of resource animals has been taking part with the growing population as well," says Bhajir Hanji, spokesman for the Uganda Wildlife Service.
Amazing solution
Over the years, governments and communities have tested a wide range of solutions, including repelling elephants with the smell of chili, building electric fences, intimidating animals by beating metal pots, and setting fire to small farmers near their farms to keep elephants away. But these strategies were "not effective enough," says local leader John Bosco Okolo.
In 2009, Okulo was one of a group of farmers and local leaders selected by the International Fund for Animal Welfare to travel to Kenya's Tsavo National Park to study how local communities use bees to protect their farms from elephants. Armed with an amazing new reality, elephants are afraid of bees, and they fear being stung in the back, eyes and mouth so hard that they escape even the sound of bees recorded in a recording machine. To protect the farm, the team learned to suspend the hives between two trees or solid columns and then connect them to wires. Each time the elephant touches the wire, the beehive vibrates, and the elephant withers as soon as it hears the bees' sound. In a study by researchers in Kenya, these cells repel about 80% of attacks by elephants.
But when the Okolo group presented the model they studied in Kenya to local farmers in Uganda, they faced some problems. Local pesticides eliminate bees, meaning that farmers using bees have to find other ways to protect their crops from insect-destroying insects. Bees are also expensive. The cost of local hives, made from palm trees or bark, ranged from $ 4-8 per cell. This makes them out of reach of many farmers in the area, who mostly live on a dollar or less a day. Then there is the question of the bees themselves, management of the hives takes a long time. Many farmers spend an hour or more a day conserving cells, where bees must be clean of termites, ants and spiders. Neighboring weeds must be cut to keep the snakes away. The bees themselves may be aggressive, especially during the afternoon when Busy with the production of honey.
But this method is also limited, as the number of elephants and population continues to increase. In the 1970s and 1980s, when illegal fishing was taking place in Uganda, Uganda had about 700 wild elephants, and today it has about 5,000 elephants, including 1,330 in the Murchison Falls, according to an aerial survey in 2014. At the same time, Uganda is considered one One of the fastest growing populations in the world, according to UN data. This continues to cause more and more frictions between people and elephants, and more frustration as well.
- Elephants fear
Exposure to bites in
Back and eyes
The mouth is so intense
They even run away
From the sound of bees
Registered in the machine
to sign up.
- Management of bee hives
Takes a long time.
Many spend
Farmers hour or more
Daily maintenance
Cells, where they must
Keep the hives
Clean of termites
Ants and spiders, as
The grass is nearby
It must be cut to keep
Snakes away, as that
Bees can be
Aggressive.