It is also expensive -- about 150,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,100) to install hives -- well beyond the means of subsistence farmers, though the project organisers say it is still cheaper than electric fences.
'I was going to die'
Just moments after AFP arrived at Mwanajuma Kibula's farm, which abuts one of the Tsavo parks, her beehive fence had seen off an elephant.
The five-tonne animal, its skin caked in red mud, rumbled into the area and then did an abrupt about-face.
"I know my crops are protected," Kibula said with palpable relief.
Kibula, 48, also harvests honey twice a year from her hives, making 450 shillings per jar -- enough to pay school fees for her children.
She is fortunate to have protection from the biggest land mammals on Earth.
"An elephant ripped off my roof, I had to hide under the bed because I knew I was going to die," said a less-fortunate neighbour, Hendrita Mwalada, 67.
For those who can't afford bees, Save the Elephants offers other solutions, such as metal-sheet fences that clatter when shaken by approaching elephants, and diesel- or chilli-soaked rags that deter them.
It is not always enough.
"I have tried planting but every time the crops are ready, the elephants come and destroy the crops," Mwalada told AFP.
"That has been the story of my life, a life full of too much struggling."