Blog by Dr Lucy King, Project Leader

Our new beehive fences sponsored by Disney Conservation Fund are up in Mwambiti Village bordering Tsavo East National Park in Kenya, just in time for the new season of crops being grown by these rural subsistence farmers. We will be closely monitoring the deterrent success of these beehive fences to reduce elephant incursions into the farms. They have only been up for a few weeks and already this lovely beehive fence consisting of 15 hives and 15 dummy hives around Granton’s farm has 8 naturally occupied beehives!

Well done to Augustine Musyoka who is our Beehive Fence officer for our project in Mwambiti Village for all his hard work getting this project off the ground. Augustine joined us as an intern from Kenya Wildlife Service Training Institute in October 2014 and has worked his way up to now run this project in Mwambiti. He has spend many, many weeks in the village getting to understand the conflict, conducting questionnaires with the community and finally organising the mapping and selection of the 7 worst affected farms for this first phase of the project. He has also supervised and trained a number of other interns who have helped to build the beehive fences and they leave the project with a unique experience which we hope they will share with other communities. Great effort!

Photo: Our Elephants and Bees Project Beehive Fence Officer, Augustine (on right) discussing the new beehive fence and hive occupations with one of the community farmers as everyone waits for the next rains to come.