Monty Wrong..

Today I stumbled across another entomology fail. This time in an online column by Monty Don on the MyMail Garden website. Monty is a presenter for BBC Series Gardener's World and I think it's fair to say he's generally accepted as an authority on how to grow stuff, although in May he annoyed a lot of beekeepers when on national television he suggested people could plonk a top bar hive in their garden and leave the bees to it. No swarm control, no monitoring colony health, parasite levels, viral loads or even checking food stores.. an irresponsible approach the outcome of which would actually be starving stressed bee colonies dying out all over the place. A beekeeper did complain to the BBC and published their response online, strangely the BBC stood by the bad advice of their presenter.

Anyway in Monty Don's Diary was a short article about Wasps. In it he briefly explains a little about the variety of wasps, social wasp nests, venom and the genuinely useful role of wasps to the gardener as well as a few creatures that predate wasps. Unfortunately the photograph accompanying the article is quite clearly showing Honey Bee workers standing on wax comb.

Those "wasps" look suspiciously furry, and bee shaped.

Definitely not wasps. In fact the comb they're on contain capped calls honey. The article was posted in August 2015 and a quick glance at the comments shows at people have pointed out the error but it's not been addressed... I'd expect that lack of attention to detail from say an amateur blog written by an enthusiastic amateur but not a paid column written by a professional writer.