What on earth????????????

[Trog]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/isle_of_man/8680968.stm. It would appear from this story that they're posting bumble bee queens and drones to England to replenish diseased hives!

[gavin]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/isle_of_man/8680968.stm. It would appear from this story that they're posting bumble bee queens and drones to England to replenish diseased hives!

The photo looks like a bumble bee drone which isn't exactly the right way to revive ailing colonies. So much lazy journalism around.

There's a 'Contact Us' link at the bottom of the page which I've used before to correct the dumbos who put wrong pictures on these web stories. Last time they replaced a bumble bee picture with a solitary bee, an Andrena I think, even though it was a honeybee story.

[Trog]

I seem to remember the article also said the queens were being posted with 5 drones each ...

[gavin]

Oh yes! How confused can one journalist possibly get?!

Einstein said that mankind was doomed if it didn't fix the honeybee problems by posting cages of bumble bee queens and drones to desperate beekeepers .....

[Neils]

I presume the photo is just lazy photo editing, "that's a bee, it'll do", though I don't get the article.

How do these guys differ from certain other Queen Breeders? It seems to miss the obvious point that if you send "disease free" queens into a "diseased" area they'll probably just pick up whatever is going around. It's even in the article, they're not "disease free" because they're inherently better bees but because they're isolated from the problems [most of us] have to deal with.

[Stromnessbees]

Hi Trog, well spotted!

I couldn't believe how much can be wrong in such a short article. Having met Harry Owens last year on the Isle of Man I find it hard to believe that he should have said what was quoted there. I will make sure that he sees the web page. I have also used the 'contact us' function to give the BBC News team appropriate feedback.

Doris