By Rashidat Oladele
Claim: Traditional scientist apprehends thieves using bees.
On 11th January, 2024 a video was posted by MOP Center and reposted by Warri warrior on instagram. As at 14th January it had gathered 1,015 likes, elicited 107 comments, and attracted 197 share on @mop centers page.
The video showed a man with his hands wrapped up with a bunch of bees. Walking behind the alleged thief was a traditionalist woman (witch doctor) in red attires, with a crowd of onlookers snapping photographs of the ostensibly shocking scenario.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C19qBz1rBi7/? igsh=anI1anhoeGxuM3A5
As the NatureNews, Africa’s No.1 nature publication, was committed to presenting factual insights to stem the spread of fake news especially among consumers of social media contents, the claim was subjected to fact-checking.
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Findings: NatureFact, the fact-checking unit of NatureNews carried out a research regarding the claim and we found out that the language spoken is Ugandan. This implies that the incident recorded in the video didn’t happen in Nigeria wheras it was posted in relation to political stance in Nigeria.
NatureFact also picked out the message the video was passing and used Google search tool.
https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/entertainment/counties/article/2001262116/ untouchable-why-ugandan-witchdoctors-now-send-bees-to-catch-thieves#google_vignette
Checking bing Ai tools and google there is no publication or known fact about bee being used to apprehend thieves.
The only discovery from our research is the use of trained bees to detect explosive compound.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2006/12/07/227361/using-bees-to-detect-bombs/amp/
Verdict: There was no scientific prove for the use of bees to apprehend thieves as shown in the video. The claim was not scientifically valid.
