Show an elephant a mouse and it will carry on regardless, but angry bees could drive a whole herd to run away.

At six tonnes, a bull elephant may be 60 million times heavier than an African honey bee but it goes weak at the knees at the sound of buzzing.

The bees weigh just a tenth of a gram, but their stings allow them to punch well above their weight if they feel threatened. Scientists who played the sound of angry buzzing to herds of elephants in Kenya found that virtually all the animals ran away.

Lucy King, of Oxford University, said that it appeared that the elephants had learnt the hard way that African honey bees were not to be taken lightly. The only herd, of the 18 tested, that was unmoved by the recordings was dismissed as too ignorant about bees for its own good, probably because they lack experience of bees. On their own, the insects would be little more than an irritant to the elephants, but African honey bees produce a pheromone when they sting that attracts every bee that is nearby. The resulting swarm, which can contain more than 10,000 bees, will attack any creature that is perceived as a threat to the hive. “We were surprised at how quickly [the elephants] responded to the sounds by running away,” Ms King said. “Almost half of our study herds started to move away within 10 seconds of the bee playback.”

Researchers reported in the journal Current Biology that a range of behaviour was exhibited by elephants when they heard the recordings. Feeding, sleeping and playing would stop, heads would be raised, ears pushed out and trunks waved to sniff out the source of the noise. One of the herd, usually an adult, would begin to move away, followed by all the family with their tails raised while they made repeated backward glances.

“Elephants respond to the buzz of disturbed and aggressive bees with alarm by moving away,” the researchers said. “Elephants are aware of bees, they retain a memory about bees and they can identify bees by sound alone. Conditioning to the buzz may have been learnt either directly by being stung, through observation of another elephant being stung or by social learning during a family retreat.”

Humans are advised to stand still when threatened by a swarm of bees, but the reaction of most creatures would be to run away as fast as possible, which excites the bees to sting many more times.

The finding that the sound of angry buzzing scares off elephants, without them needing to be stung first, raises the possibility of farmers in Africa using hives to protect their crops. The scientists, from Oxford University and the charity Save the Elephants in Kenya, said that “strategically placed beehives” could reduce conflict between farmers and the elephants.

Previous research has shown that acacia trees with beehives suffered significantly less damage than those without hives. By placing beehives close to fields, the farmers could scare off the elephants, which in turn would reduce the numbers shot for destroying crops. Ms King said: “If we could use bees to reduce elephant crop-raiding and tree destruction, while at the same time enhancing local income through the sale of honey, this could be a significant and valuable step towards sustainable human-elephant coexistence.”

According to popular belief, elephants are terrified by mice, a myth reinforced by the Walt Disney animated film Dumbo, but the notion has been dismissed by naturalists.

Lee Sambrook, who is in charge of elephants at Whipsnade Zoo, said that they may react to a scuttle in the hay if the rodent was not seen clearly, but that they “wouldn’t be afraid of a mouse”. Mice and other small creatures were more likely to get squashed by an elephant than frighten it. “We often find rats and mice which have been squashed flat by the elephants, either intentionally or by stepping back on them unawares,” Mr Sambrook said.

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