Farmers, Elephants, and Bees

http://animals.oreilly.com/elephants-and-bees/

by jeffbarson • 13 years ago

143 58 13 years ago

animals.oreilly.com

milliams• 13 years ago

Bees?!

Zikes• 13 years ago

Man, that's a crazy good idea. First, it's 85% effective in solving the elephant problem; second, free honey which makes the fence a profitable venture in its own right; and third, the bees will pollinate the crops they're protecting, potentially maximizing crop yield.

zeteo• 13 years ago

Free honey? Beekeeping is actually a lot of work (especially when the hives are spread out like this). Also they say it's up to 85% effective, so that's the maximum not the average.

graeme• 13 years ago

Yes, I imagine widespread adoption of this idea will lower honey prices and therefore increase the effective cost of the fences.

Still, it's neat to have a fence that's a potential source of profit if managed efficiently and depending on local prices. Elephant related cost savings will subsidize the cost of bee-keeping.

masklinn3• 13 years ago

> Free honey? Beekeeping is actually a lot of work

True, but you can decide your tradeoff: if you don't want or need much honey, don't gather it. The bees will be healtier as well, as a result.

msandford2• 13 years ago

I wish there was some way for her to profit off of the idea not for the sake of getting rich but to encourage others to take a look at solving other problems. Profits as signalling rather than for the sake of profits.

maxerickson2• 13 years ago

It says in the article she was given an environmental prize. It's $100,000:

http://www.thestandrewsprize.com/lists/2013.htm

simonsquiff2• 13 years ago

Yes but she said in that article that the money will go towards expanding the programme:

'The recognition and financial support will enable us to expand our vital research work and protect many more rural farming families from elephant invasions.'

I was friends at university with Lucy - she's amazing and the success and expansion of this work will definitely be her main motivator. She's doing it because she adores elephants and spending the money on protecting even more of them will be her main priority.

Like all 'overnight successes' (she's been working on this for over 10 years) it's the result of many years of tough grind and convincing skeptical people you have a viable idea. It's great to she's getting the recognition she deserves.

frogpelt2• 13 years ago

Interesting notion. You want her to profit but not to get rich. It's amazing how being rich has been demonized by society of late.

Profit for the sake of profit works as signalling just as well as any other profit.

msandford2• 13 years ago

I'd be happy if she got rich, that would be fine by me. I think the economics of her getting rich off of it are hard for me to imagine, but I don't have any problems with it. Since I can't imagine a way for her to get rich given the rural (and thus likely poor) nature of the problem she's solving I was simply providing a caveat.

freehunter2• 13 years ago

He said "not for the sake of getting rich". This indicates he's okay with her being rich, but he hopes she becomes rich for the sake of helping with an innovative idea rather than pure profit-mongering.

grecy2• 13 years ago

We just need more people who's motivations are not monetary.

Take a look at your average soup-kitchen volunteer - they're the kind of people we need.

scrapcode• 13 years ago

This is what innovation actually looks like.

TallGuyShort2• 13 years ago

Brilliant! I'm a little confused by this line though:

>> If an elephant makes contact with one of the hives or the connecting wires, the beehives all along the fence will swing and release the bees.

The first part made it sound like elephants would stay away from this perimeter just because there was an active beehive, so it's unlikely the elephant would get close to the fence anyway. But then if it does, wouldn't the sudden release of all bees drive the elephant into a panic precisely when it's choices are to run into the field or away from the fence? Or am I just misunderstanding something?

barristan• 13 years ago

They do say an elephant never forgets. It's possible that after stomping through the fence and releasing all the bees the elephant simply continues to charge into the field. But once the elephant is shooed out of the field, the next time it considers entering, it will remember the bees and might reconsider.

It's also possible the elephant doesn't stomp through the fence, but simply meanders toward it until it feels the wire. After which some of the bees come out and the elephant simply decides to not break through the wire and to instead return from where it came.

maxmcd• 13 years ago

I was confused about this as well. The construction manual is much more specific. More information on page 4: http://www.elephantsandbees.com/research_project/Beehive_Fen...

It seems that fences are set up to prevent elephants from entering entirely. Although they are spaced widely (and a weak breakaway trip wire is strung from hive to hive), so that if an elephant is trapped, or approaches the fence violently, it can still pass through without damaging the hives.

I'm guessing that has to do with their 85% effectiveness. Most of the time the fences work, but when they don't they want to minimize hive damage.

apalmer4• 13 years ago

I like the ingenuity of it, seems pretty counter intuitive though. I mean keeping the elephants away by bring swarms of african killer bees into close proximity with humans... not sure if the trade off is worth it. There is a reason elephants are afraid of them.

That being said I am sure the farmers understand the risks more than I do, if they are down with it seems like a good solution

to3m• 13 years ago

Who says they are killer bees?!

mikeash2• 13 years ago

Occasionally suffer a relatively harmless sting from a bee versus have elephants destroy your livelihood... doesn't really seem like a difficult choice to me.

apalmer4• 13 years ago

These are african bees, what we in america refer to as 'killer' bees. These bees are highly agressive and are much more likely to swarm a perceived threat, and once swarming will not stop stinging the preceived threat for potentially hours.

Elephants which are more than 10 times as big as a person with a much thicker hide are not 'paranoid' of bees. Their fear is well justified.

durkie• 13 years ago

"Killer" is a misnomer -- in the beekeeping community, for obvious reasons, they prefer the term "africanized". And it is likely that these bees, being in Africa, are or will very soon be africanized.

But it is still possible to safely and enjoyably keep and tend Africanized bees -- you just require some extra precautions, like smoking the hell out of them when you're working the hive, and leaving your protective gear on even after you're far from the hive.

A friend of mine did beekeeping in Paraguay through the Peace Corps (the last country featuring a Peace Corps beekeeping program), and said bees would still be ramming his face veil, even after walking several kilometers away from the hive.

That was, however, after he had been working them for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Generally bees don't bother you if you're not bothering them. And if they do, you might just wear a veil when harvesting the crops closest to the fence.

apalmer4• 13 years ago

I understand that 'killer' is a misnomer, in fact i debated the use of the term but in the end chose to use it precisely because a lot of the posters in this thread don't seem to be aware that (most?) common african bee variant is what we generally refer to as the killer bee.

To go from occasionally having an interaction with Elephants, to everyday working your field in close proximity to highly aggressive bees that relatively commonly swarm intruders.. is not a guaranteed win. I don't know enough to evaluate the trade off and I said as much.

dspeyer• 13 years ago

"Killer" bees are africanized. That is, they are european/african crossbreeds. These are simply african bees. Much safer.

apalmer4• 13 years ago

thanks for the clarification

grimtrigger• 13 years ago

I have to wonder, why are these kind of solutions driven by outside players instead of local communities? Is there some kind of informational advantage the locals don't have? Elephants scares bees seems so simple that I'm not sure why locals weren't already doing it.

icegreentea• 13 years ago

Firstly, there are all sorts of biases involved. We're far more likely to hear about situations like these, than native development of solutions.

Secondly, there is a non-trivial cost to thinking up ideas and experimenting. Beyond costing time and resources that the farmers may not have/may not want to spend, experimenting as a whole is pretty risking. Being an outside player with far greater ability to take on risk has an obvious advantage.

Thirdly, while the farmers probably don't want to fight elephants, in the scheme of things, they probably individually rate the well being of elephants lower than their survival. We on the other hand probably rate the importance of the two far more equally, and thus have a greater incentive to solve the problem in such a way.

DanBC• 13 years ago

Lots of ideas seem really simple with the benefit of hindsight.

Here's an idea that took someone 30 years to come up with.

(http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94996/GLOBAL-Follow-the-fizz-...)

But it's really obvious! Why wasn't anyone doing this before?

notahacker• 13 years ago

This is brilliant. Why aren't the likes of Coca Cola doing it on a wider scale?

randomafrican2• 13 years ago

Incentives.

For many locals, just shooting the elephants would be the solution. Outsiders care about the elephants and the humans (most of the times, in that order).

leeoniya• 13 years ago

i wonder what happens in the 15% of cases when it's not effective, do the destroyed bees nests unleash a swarm of African bees on all bystanders?

grecy2• 13 years ago

..and do the elephants get tangled up in the wires connecting the separate hives?

rhjacmason• 13 years ago

good idea

Ihmahr• 13 years ago

85% effective, but once the elephant is in he might not want to go out.

nostromo2• 13 years ago

The original problem is that farms are blocking elephant migration paths. "The elephants’ key migratory routes have been cut off in many places."

And now you've replaced a fence that they can break through with a fence made of bees. Yes, this is probably good for the humans, but I don't see how it's better for the elephants.

rosser• 13 years ago

From TFA, above the photo of Ms. King standing next to a hive fence, "The farmers leave wide pathways between their crops so elephants can move past the fences along their migratory routes."

nostromo2• 13 years ago

Thanks, I didn't see that paragraph. (Perhaps my eye thought it was a caption.)

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

> Yes, this is probably good for the humans, but I don't see how it's better for the elephants.

Well, now they don't get shot, presumably.

randomafrican2• 13 years ago

That's not the only problem. In many places the elephant population is overgrowing the reserve sonthey get out.

And few people would be verynpleased with an elephant going through their crops.

666_howitzer• 13 years ago

I would have just used loud speakers which made "buzz" sound , hooked it onto a motion sensor and PV for power. Voila! Problem solved.

protomyth• 13 years ago

That tends to get you "the boy who cried wolf" effect and is often eventually ignored by animals.

13b9f227ecf0• 13 years ago

I'm sick of near daily hearing about white people "helping" Africans and African animals. Let the Africans run Africa in their own way.

gcb0• 13 years ago

it all makes it sound like taking care of 200 hives per Km is an effortless task.

lostlogin4• 13 years ago

Not effortless and not easy - but not unrewarded. Farms pay to have hives for pollination here - a weekly fee.

Farmers, Elephants, and Bees

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