Plan Bee

      More Letters From Paradise
              Plan Bee

A story from the Associated Press, in our local paper, caught my eye. The story was written by Vicky Ge Huang, and it was all about elephants and bees. You see, I like both elephants and bees. I was once kept bees, but I never kept an elephant.

According to the story it is estimated that there are 3,000 wild elephants roaming the   Thai countryside. The elephant's home has been the dense forests,but because of logging, leading to agriculture, the elephants are hungry.They travel in herds eating pineapples, a favorite food, and bananas. Distressed farmers planted pumpkins instead, knowing that elephants disliked them, but they ate them anyway. The farmers tried using firecrackers to scare the elephants away, and electric fences. Nothing seemed to work.

The Thai Department of National Parks found the solution to the problem. The answer was bees! Oxford University research found that elephants were afraid of bees. Bees have been used against elephants for several years in Africa.

Thai farmers would place a box of bees on stilts at an elephant's eye level,and connect the box of bees to another box of bees with a rope, and so on. The result was a rope fence connected at intervals with a box full of bees.

Once the elephants struck the rope, out flew hundreds of bees! Once stung the elephants never returned. The farmers now enjoy selling honey and beeswax.

So, now the farmers are happy, and can continue growing pineapples. Some are shipped to Hawaii. But what about those hungry roaming elephants? This reminded me of an old question. How do you get down from an elephant? Answer-You don't, you get it from ducks and geese.

     Aloha
     Grant