UN-BEE-LIEVABLE: Complaint over ad for bees putting 'child in dangerous situation'

A number of complaints against an advert for an Irish breed of bees have been upheld, the Advertising Standards Authority has confirmed. 

The complaints were made against a magazine advertisement advertising the Irish Buckfast Queen bee breed. The ad featured two images; one image featured a child pointing to bees on a beehive, while the second image featured bees in the palm of a hand.

The complaint centred on a safety issued as both people featured were not wearing protective clothing.

The complainant believed that the illustrative pictures used in the advertisements were irresponsible "as they suggested that bees could be handled without safety equipment."

They said that a child was shown in a "dangerous situation close to a beehive, and that no bee association would recommend that a child be brought near a hive or be used for advertising purposes."

They also said that the picture of the shirtless man on the website was "negligent" for similar reasons.

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Also, the complainant believed that the claims that ‘Buckfast queens offer more honey per colony’; that they had ‘better disease and parasite resistance than other breeds’, and the more general claim that Buckfast bees offered “simpler and better Irish beekeeping” in the advertising were "misleading", particularly to new or inexperienced beekeepers, and that these claims were made "without any scientific backing."

The complainant claimed that hybrid bees, such as the Buckfast bee, are considered by most beekeepers to be aggressive in nature and should only be handled with the appropriate safety equipment.

In response, the advertisers, while sorry to hear a complaint had been received concerning their advertising, stated that the information in their advertising "was true and could be proven."

As substantiation, they provided extracts from the book ‘Queen Bee: Biology, Rearing and Breeding by David R Woodward’ which included descriptions of four major races of honeybees that were of economic importance. The advertisers suggested that the Executive contact the Federation of Irish Beekeepers for their opinion and that their advertisement had run for over ten years without issue.

On the issue of safety and depictions of dangerous activity, the advertisers said that they sold "docile bees" that could be handled without protection, but that this "should not have been taken that they advised beekeepers not to use protection."

They said that the black native Irish bees were not docile and could therefore not be handled in the same way as the Buckfast bee they breed in their own apiary.

The ASA Executive noted that the extracts provided by the advertisers did not refer to Buckfast bees and therefore did not provide substantiation for the advertising claims that they ‘…offer more honey per colony’; that they had ‘better disease and parasite resistance than other breeds’; or that they offered ‘simpler and better Irish beekeeping’.

The ASA upheld both complaints and ordered that the adverts do not appear again in their current form.