For about ten years, a story has been circulating on the Internet about a man who allegedly died after trying to have sex with a swarm of hornets. We checked whether this actually happened.
Since 2013, publications about a Swede who died under very unusual circumstances have been distributed on Russian and English-language websites. It is reported that the incident happened near the Swedish city of Ystad. Below we quote one of the posts on social networks: “A 35-year-old Swedish man died from hornet stings after sticking his genitals in a nest he found on his farm. News Sweden reports that 146 bites were found on the man's body, 54 of which were on the genitals. The body of a man, whom everyone around knew only by the name Hasse, was found by his neighbor. The man had difficulty recognizing his friend. “I only recognized him by the tattoo on his neck,” he told police. The deceased was still alive when he was found. He died within an hour. Police theorized that Hasse attempted to have sex with the nest after finding its sperm on some of the dead hornets. Fingerprints were found on the nest. “It’s hard for me to even imagine the pain he experienced,” said one of the doctors who performed the autopsy. Please note that a hornet sting is much more painful than a wasp or bee sting; in addition, hornets can sting several times.”
Such entries can still be found in large public pages on VKontakte, including "In secret" (1800 likes, 80 reposts), "Easter eggs and facts" (1000, 2100, post published July 2022), "Feminism: Visually" (4600, 1900), MRZLK (530, 60) and iFeed (450, 80), as well as in Twitter And LiveJournal. The news about Hasse, who died from bites, is on the websites "Fontanka.ru", Oper.ru (resource of Dmitry Puchkov), "Peekaboo", 9Gag And Reddit, and more about her told writer and journalist Nikolai Kononov.
Fact checkers from Snopes reportedthat the story of the rape of a hornet’s nest spread massively across the English-language Internet in the spring of 2013 - after publications in the British edition of the International Business Times (IBT) website on May 15. On IBT, in addition to the above information, there are other details: for example, the name of the neighbor is indicated - Bertil Ståhfrääs. And the quote about pain does not belong to the doctor who performed the autopsy, but to psychologist and expert on sexual fantasies Siv Underlivh. Initially, her last name was misspelled - During Livh, but the error was later corrected.
Back in 2013, some Russian media published refutations of this story. So, on the website of Komsomolskaya Pravda on May 17 the news came out under the headline "Man dies in Sweden after having 'sex' with hornets' nest." After retelling the plot, the following was added at the end of the text: “After several days, information was received from the British media that the story of the “tragic death” of a Swedish resident after copulation with a hornet’s nest, which spread across the world media, turned out to be a joke of one of the Swedish newspapers. The authors of the fiction turned out to be animal defenders, who thus expressed their concern about the fate of the hornets and their nests.”
But in fact, the original source of this news is Swedish satirical portal with fake stories Nyheterna Sverige (the name translated into English just means News Sweden, and in Russian it translates as “News of Sweden”). There's a fiction there published back in September 2012, only it was not about hornets specifically, but about wasps in general. Hornets is a genus of the largest insects in the family of true wasps.
On IBT indeed released a refutation with an apology the next day after the publication of false information. In addition, the site has edited the original news article. The rebuttal stated that they misunderstood the original humor due to the foreign language. As it turned out, telling names were used in the text: the neighbor’s surname can be translated as “erection,” and the psychologist’s as “genitals.” The name of the non-existent deceased Swede, Hasse, has no hidden translation.
As for animal rights activists, they were mentioned in the original text of Nyheterna Sverige: “Irate animal rights activists reacted strongly to this incident, and on several forums you can read about their mourning for the wasps. Here is a poem that has over 10,000 likes on Facebook* [the following is the text of the poem in Swedish. — Approx. ed.]". Perhaps the editors of Komsomolskaya Pravda misunderstood something and decided that abstract animal defenders were the authors of the whole fiction.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: Angry Asian Murder Hornets movie poster
Satirical news
- Is it true that the flight of a bumblebee contradicts the laws of physics?
- Is it true that if bees go extinct, humanity will soon die too?
- Is the story true about an American who asked to be transferred to a women's prison and raped a fellow inmate there?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
