That's no Bee BBC

Whilst browsing the web at work and catching up on the world's events a few weeks ago I was surprised to find the Taliban make money from honey sales. Yep, they keep bees just like myself, Steve Vai and Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Who'd've thought it? It's mentioned in a page called Taliban expert view: Money from honey.

I'm assuming the 'expert' isn't an entemologist because the 'bee' in the photo accompanying the article definitely wasn't a bee. The huge faceted eyes are the first giveaway, too big for a worker, too small for a drone and too visibly faceted -bee eyes look shiny to us. The shape of the  back is wrong too, and it's only got two wings whilst bees have four. The first tergite looks to have some light brown marking suggesting it's a drone fly, Eristalis Tenax, which is a European member of the hoverfly family. Not only do they not make honey but I very much doubt they live in Afghanistan either.

You might make money from honey, but you won't get honey from that.

I messaged the BBC News Facebook page back on the 1st October to point it out, the message was read a couple of days later but there was no response ..so I sent a message via the BBC Complaints page. They responded eventually but seemed strangely reluctant to acknowledge they'ed posted the wrong insect:

"This photo was only included to generally illustrate this aspect of Taliban fundraising but we take your broader point and have changed it to an image which more clearly shows bees making honey."

I'm not sure how they're suggesting a photo of what was probably a European Hoverfly sunning itself illustrated fundraising through honey sales but they have now changed the image to one showing actual honey bees.

Honey Bees! They fixed it.

A more pedantic person might  point out that these bees are probably not actually making honey as they're standing on brood comb, brood comb with a fairly patchy laying pattern but I think it's close enough.