A story from Thailand: Bees and Elephants

In ancient myths across the globe, bees have not only made an appearance as friends of man, but also to other species. The following story comes from Thailand and describes the relationship between bees and elephants. While this story is clearly a tale, is does give some insights as to how cultures may have figured out how to take honey by smoking out the colonies, a main method of bee keeping today. In order to calm bees down, bee keepers lightly blow smoke onto the hive which stuns the bees in a relatively harmless way for a short period of time thus allowing the bee keepers to take honey. I will post at another point about bee keeping methods, but for now enjoy the story!


In ancient times, elephants did not have the long trunks they do today and bees did not live in nests in hollow trees. Instead, the built their nests on branches in the open air. One year the rains were extremely meager and the land became dangerously dry. The elephants found it increasingly difficult to find enough leaves to feed on. The bees were also having trouble collecting the nectar and pollen they needed, as all the flowers were dying. Finally, as dry as tinder, the forest caught fire. The elephants tried to outrun the danger, but the lumbering creatures soon grew tired as the flames spread unchecked. When they called for help, the bees offered to lead them to safety in return for free transport. The elephants opened their mouths, and the bees flew inside to escape the hot air and choking smoke. They settled in the elephants' short snouts and from there directed their companions to a nearby lake. The elephants waded into the middle of the lake and stayed there until the fire had spent itself. 


It was now time to leave the lake and resume their hunt for food, but the bees had become accustomed to the cool, dark interior of the elephant's snouts and began building their hives there. The elephants bellowed and trumpeted in rage and began to exhale mightily in order to evict their unwanted lodgers. After several hours of trumpeting and exhaling, their snouts had stretched into full-sized trunks, but the bees remained stubbornly inside. The elephants finally decided that since the bees had flown inside their snouts to escape the smoke, smoke would be the best way to get them out. So they walked into the still- smoldering ashes of the fire, inhaled deeply, and held the smoke in their mouths and trunks until the bees had fled. 


Then they returned to the lake to drink and cleanse their palates. Thanks to their new, improved appendages, they could reach the water without having to stoop. The evicted bees, having become very comfortable building their hives in cool, dark places, searched for something similar and found that the next best thing to an elephants' trunk was the hollow trunk of a tree. This is why an elephant's trunk was the hollow trunk of a tree. This is why an elephant's nose and the body of a tree are called trunks, and why bees who live in hollow trees are called phung phrong or "elephant's mouth bees." - Found in Stephen Buchmann's book, Letters from the Hive: an Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind.

Cited Sources:

Buchmann, Stephen L., and Banning Repplier. Letters from the Hive: an Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind. New York: Bantam, 2005. Print