Boinda: At a time when several villages near the forested areas of Handapa and Athamallik ranges in Angul district have been grappling with elephant menace, the Forest department and the Khadi Board have jointly launched honeybee projects at Laxmipur under Handapa range and at Rathipur under Athamallik range on a pilot basis. It is scientifically recorded that elephants get annoyed by honeybees.
Elephants also fear the swarms of bees which can bite their sensitive parts like trunks and eyes. The collective buzz of the bees is very annoying for elephants and it will force the pachyderms to return to their habitats. The programme was launched recently in the presence of Khadi Board director Samir Kumar Mohanty, Athamallik DFO S Anand, forester Subrat Satpathy and other senior forest officials. In the first phase, the Khadi Board has provided 100 bee boxes which were hung at different places in forests.
Forest officials said that 10 villagers will be trained for bee keeping in the first phase. It was stated that this project was launched on an experimental basis after its successful implementation in Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Assam. Local people exuded hope that the project would be of great help for containing jumbo menace and creating livelihood. The project is aimed at reducing elephant-human conflict using bees. Fences have been erected by setting up bee boxes on the passages of elephants to block their entrance to human settlements.
The bee boxes have been connected with a string so that when elephants attempt to pass through, a tug or pull causes the bees to swarm around elephant herds and dissuade them from progressing further, it was stated. Moreover, this project is expected to be a sustainable solution to the human-elephant conflicts that are very common in Handapa and Athamallik ranges, forest officials said, adding that it is a cost-effective way to ward off the animals trying to enter villages without causing any harm to them.
