No April Fools Joke

This story starts out as a typical BBC piece about how Masai tribesmen in Kenya are turning to beekeeping as a livelihood-- but it gets a bit more interesting than that. 

First comes the part where the tribesmen described how they didn't have money for proper equipment and had to harvest the honey naked.  But that's not the best part:

[The Masai] say that mongooses raid the beehives at night and eat all the honey. It is believed locally they do this by farting - although animal behaviorists say they are not known to be particularly flatulent animals.

"The mongooses are very clever animals. They normally climb up the trees where the beehives are," says Mr Matampash, who runs Neighbors Initiative Alliance, a non-governmental organization backing the beekeepers.

"Once up there, they break wind - forcing the bees to flee from the foul smell and then they knock down the beehive and eat the honey.

"We cannot kill the mongooses since they have a right to survive but we're devising ways to contain them. For now, they remain our number one enemy.''