Jo Widdecombe responded to the BBKA forum and said that the bees shown were not blacks....

"The Countryfile report was a bit misleading. The footage with the close-up of bees interspersed throughout the reports on black bees were not my bees. To me they looked more like a Buckfast cross.

Cornish native bees do not have any ginger stripes. Some colonies could be seen in some of the footage but unfortunately no close-ups. So if anyone thinks the bees shown close up weren't native, they were correct, and it is not me being ignorant of what a native bee is".

BIBBA have a black bee reserve in Essex too - it was shown on our local news a couple of weeks ago with three colonies put there recently.

As far as the question "is Scotland no longer a part of the UK".... Well for now it is, lets hope it stays so (as long as you behave yourselves! However I am sure that many Americans and other will think that Scotland is a small island off the N of England - say Shetland or something!