Can a bee sting to the penis permanently enlarge it? No, that's not true: The story was originally put out in November 2019 (archived here) by a South African satire website named Ihlaya News that previously disguised itself as news and got widely picked up by English-language websites in Africa that didn't realize the source of the story was a joke.
This version of the claim appears in a Facebook post (archived here) on December 18, 2021. Here's what it says:
Bee string to the penis can permanently enlarge your penis
This is what the post looked like on Facebook on December 23, 2021:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Dec 23 15:08:20 2021 UTC)
Under the title of the ihlayanews.com site, there is a disclaimer that reads "nuusparodie waarvan jy hou." In Afrikaans this means "news parody you like." And "ihlaya" means "a joke" in Zulu. The Facebook page associated with the site has a big disclaimer at the top of the page as well:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Dec 23 15:49:16 2021 UTC)
The site previously looked very much like a news website until at least November 2019 but has changed since. It used to post most stories in a category named "FEATURED NEWS" (which would appear three times above each article). That has been changed to just "featured." The name of the site used to be "ihlaya news" before it got changed to "n p a s."
However, the site still misleads many people by having a domain name with "news" in it and by not being more clear about the fictional nature of its content.
Lead Stories has written about ihlayanews.com before. Here are some earlier articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: Nigerian Man Did Not Hack The US Govt And Give His Family And Friends Permanent Citizenship
- Fake News: Male Birth Control Testing NOT Stopped, Men's Testicles Did NOT Start Exploding
- Fake News: Hotel Cleaner Did NOT Steal Sperm From Used Condom, Did NOT Win Child Support Battle
- Fake News: Study Did NOT Conclude Bigger Than Average Penis Is a Disability Associated With Low Mental Capacity
