Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the scientist who saved the elephants

Photograph: AP

Dec 9th 2025|4 min read

FEW ANIMALS scare full-grown African elephants. But bees are among them. So it was to bees that Iain Douglas-Hamilton looked when he sought to draw a line between those pachyderms’ domain and humanity’s. The farmers of Samburu, the Kenyan county where his research was based, bear elephants no ill will as long as the beasts keep out of their smallholdings. But the elephants do not know that. Bee fences—hives established at regular intervals on a farm’s perimeter—not only deter the interlopers, they also yield a mellifluous profit.