Bees used as security against dangerous wild animals in Singida

Manyoni. Members of the Maendeleo Nyuki Group living near the Rungwa Game Reserve in the Itigi Town Council, Manyoni District, have come up with an alternative method of countering dangerous wild animals by using beehives.

The group, which is based in Rungwa Village, has cooperated with the department of wildlife management of the Itigi Town Council to protect residents of the village from being attacked by dangerous animals such as elephants that usually attacked the village and affected residents.

Group Chairman Abinel Nombo said before discovering the new method, elephants were used to moving from the game reserve and entering the villagers’ settlements and causing massive destruction of their crops and sometimes deaths of some residents.

To control more effects to the residents and continue to make the elephants as an attraction to tourists in Tanzania, he said the Maendeleo Nyuki Group, financed by a non-governmental organization called the Southern Tanzania Elephant Program (Step), and had continued to increase the number of beehives as a fence to protect themselves from being attacked by the marauding elephants.

"So far we have attained great achievements. This is because since we came up with this method there has been neither resident, who has been attacked by the elephants in our village nor the elephants themselves being affected. The other day the elephants moved to the village, but when they saw the fence of the beehives they left," said Nombo.

Earlier, the members of the group asked Manyoni West MP Yahaya Massare to join Rungwa Councillor Edward Machapa and Councillor Jenny Chungwa (Special Seats) and become guardians of the group that would serve as a role model to other villages bordering game reserves in the country and facing the similar problem.