Bees in the news

There's only two things that irritate me - people and things.
Being a bee keeper a thing that irritates me is the generally brainless and ill informed reporting of bee issues in the national press and interwebnet. One journalist will cobble together a lazy, inaccurate  piece of crap and other journalists too lazy to do their own  research and reporting, just copy it. And if you work for the Express or Mail you PUT THINGS IN CAPITALS in the middle of a sentence for no good reason.

Therefore despite the amount of coverage the plight of bees may have, its not surprising there are  urban myths and misconceptions about bee issues caused by stupid journalists.
I have a growing collection of daft newspaper articles and in my upcoming world speaking tour, coming to a Women's Institute  near you, I show a few of these. My all time favourite was something about swarms and how you can prevent them by moving the queen to another part of the hive. Tragically I fell into a coma after reading it and have never been able to find it again.

Another popped up today and I thought I might share it with you, my dear reader, and then post them as and when I come across them.
But first we could have a look at a brilliant piece of journalist that appeared in the Lancashire Evening Post, which isn't easy to get delivered to Ravensden.

The article is about Steve Garner, who looks a bit like a cross beetween an albino Darth Vader and a ragged Mel Gibson,  and Steve is a bit cross.

It says:-

'A bee keeper is buzzing mad about new advice being handed out on bumble bee swarms.'

It's a little known fact that the media are bound by something known as 'The Bee and Related Species Reporting Requirement Regulations 1994' which puts a statutory requirement on them to include the word 'buzzing' in anything relating to bees. Although not statutory, the Regulations also state it is considered good journalistic practice to have the words 'sting', 'bumble', 'hive, 'bee'' and ' swarm' in some sort of lame pun.

The reason Steve is so cross is that when people phone South Ribble Council about a bumble bee swarm they are given the number of the British Beekeepers Association.
Steve goes on to say:-

“Why on earth are the council giving out a contact number or website address for bumble bee problems when the BBKA have absolutely nothing to do with bumble bees? “It’s like them telling you to ring the BBKA about a blocked drain.”

Steve is obviously correct and this explains why the BBKA won't deal with any blocked drain I have.

However there's a slight problem.

Bumble bees don't swarm.

Who says so? Something called the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust, that's who.

However, Steve has apparently

been called out to 300 bumble bee swarms in 30 years,

Oh dear.

The South Ribble Council politely suggest:-

“We invite Mr Ganner to meet with us to

dicuss [yes, they did say 'dicuss'] his concerns.”

I would suggest they firstly discuss his level of  medication.