Bee Poo At The Beeb

Martin Belam
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Published 16 September, 2005
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This week the BBC Homepage received probably my favourite email in all the time I've been attached to it. Someone claiming to be a four year-old used the Contact Us link on the homepage to write in to the BBC with the following query:

How do bees poo and what does it look like?

Now you may think why would you mail the BBC about that?

Except that today I was sitting in the audience waiting for a presentation about Flash Player 8 and told a friend in the row behind me about the email. Whereupon a complete stranger who was a colleague from another part of the business who happened to be sitting next to me turned round and said:

It's yellow, and the size of a pin-head.

Which seemingly proves that whatever question the public send in to the BBC, someone within the organisation will probably know the answer. However, how that person ends up by random chance sitting next to the very person who needs the answer, that I can't fathom.

5 comments so far

It's good to see that license fee payers money is being well spent on maintaining those folks with brains the size of planets.

So, bee poo is small. But can you find it in the woods? Or is that just bears?

Although not answering the vital "how" part of the question I notice. Tchuh. ;)

isn't that what t.g is for?

(For non beeboids t.g is short for talk.gateway, a BBC-wide messageboard that is part of our intranet)

We get around 700 unsolicited contacts to the homepage a week - that's an awful lot of threads to start ;-)

Funny this should be the topic as i was talking to a 93 year old lady and she said she has never eaten honey through fear bees must excrete in their hives, therefore, honey must contain traces. does anybody know the facts about this so i can put her mind at rest?

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