WATCH: Elephants trumpet their retreat as they flee angry bees

A group of elephants were recently caught on camera running from a swarm of angry bees.

According to Raw Wild while elephant hide is too tough for a bee to sting, that isn't much help if the bees target the more vulnerable flesh in an elephant's trunk.

Catherine van Eyk, a witness to the incident in the Kruger National Park, told the Daily Mail that the whole incident took between 15 to 30 minutes.

'It's amazing how the largest mammal in the world can be so frightened by such a small insect, ' she said. 

Elephants are well known for not liking bees. Researchers have found that they have special alarm calls specifically for the swarming insects. In fact, the alarm call for bees is the first that scientists managed to discern in the giant pachyderms, according Science.

According to research published in the journal PloS One, the researchers found the alarm call by playing a vocalisation they identified as being for bees to 10 elephant families. Six of the families fled. A similar call that lacked a key acoustic feature only resulted in two of the families moving away.

Elephants' dislike for bees is so pronounced that there is a project in Kenya where some communities are using beehive fences to keep the grassland giants away from their crops.

"We now have a total of 306 beehives that are protecting 22 farms on the frontline of crop raiding events," the Elephants and Bees Project says.