Cell phones possibly causing death of honey bees

Ha, wouldn't that bee funny... another affect of EM radiation from humans affecting insects.

Moths have been circling street lights for decades. Unlike the bees, nobody ever worried about them. They should have pollinated more of our crops.

Doesn't seem to be a very plausible primary cause. Colony Collapse Disorder was first noted in 1896 - decades before any phone was in use.

The latest round was first noticed in 1971 and had been on-going sine then. When did cell phones start widespread use??? It certainly wasn't in the 1970s...

It's Disco.. That has to be the cause...

Was it a coincidence they were named the Bee Gees? It appears not.

Ok. Now that I'd believe!

That's interesting, but I asked my dad about this and he said it is not true

I READ SOMETHING ABOUT THE EARTHS POLES CHANGING POLARITIES EVERY 10,000 OR SO YEARS AND I HEAR THE 10K MARK IS COMIN UP AGAIN, COULD THIS BE RELATED? IM NOT ON EXPERT IN ANY RESPECT JUST REPEATING THINGS IVE HEARD.

Damn caps 2 late now LOL!

I called my beekeeper on his cell to see what he thought. He said the bees have developed new technology that allows them to do distributed, wifi connected honey production, with no need for hives.

Well, those bees need to spend more time talking to each other and not on their cells.

Wireless: Case of the disappearing bees creates a buzz about cellphones

By Eric Sylvers
Published: April 22, 2007

Milan: The headlines were catchy, the subject compelling and, in some cases, the newspapers well respected.

"Cellphones linked to honeybee deaths." "To bee or not to be near mobile phones." "German study links cellphones to drop in honey bee population; Radiation said to interfere with homing ability." "Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees."

All rather dire if you try to imagine a world without honey and especially if you happen to have read a quote that has been attributed to Albert Einstein saying that if bees were to disappear, the human race would follow suit four years later because of the important role bees play in pollinating plants.

The bee story had an extra appeal for those people who use their cellphones rather tentatively because they think the privilege to speak on the move may be frying their brain cells one by one. So now, if the headlines are to be believed, we learn that our cellphone and those long calls from mom where she refuses every attempt to cut short the conversation not only are going to lead to our demise, they are killing millions of bees.

Good story for sure, except that the study in question had nothing to do with mobile phones and was actually investigating the influence of electromagnetic fields, especially those used by cordless phones that work on fixed-line networks, on the learning ability of bees. The small study, according to the researchers who carried it out too small for the results to be considered significant, found that the electromagnetic fields similar to those used by cordless phones may interrupt the innate ability of bees to find the way back to their hive.

Today in Technology & Media
searching for answers for the recent disappearance of millions of bees in the United States - what researchers are calling colony collapse disorder - jumped on the possible explanation though there was one particular, cellphones and cordless phones emit different types of radiation and what you learn studying one type is not necessarily significant to the other, according to the researchers.

"We cannot explain the CCD-phenomenon itself and want to keep from speculation in this case," Jochen Kuhn, a professor in the physics department at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany who co-authored the bee study, wrote in an e-mail message. "Our studies cannot indicate that electromagnetic radiation is a cause of CCD."

While beekeepers consider it normal to lose about 20 percent of their bees in the off-season while the bees are hibernating, it has been reported that recent U.S. losses have ranged from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast to as much as 70 percent in parts of the East Coast and Texas. The bees simply disappear from their hives, apparently having gone one last time in search of pollen and nectar, only never to return.

"If the Americans are looking for an explanation for colony collapse disorder, perhaps they should look at herbicides, pesticides and they should especially think about genetically modified drops," said Stefan Kimmel, a graduate student who co-authored the study last year with Kuhn and other professors.

The speculation about the bees and cellphones heightened when reports that colony collapse disorder had reached Britain and several other European countries. The British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs squashed speculation regarding Britain. The mortality rate among bees has been 22 percent so far this year in Britain, compared with 15 percent last year, though the results are not yet significant because only 2,000 colonies have been inspected out of about 25,000, said Abbie Sampson, a senior press officer with the DEFRA.

"It's not my fault if people misinterpret our data," said Kimmel. "Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal."

Einstein is credited with saying that if we lost the bees humans would disappear within 4 years.

I actually think it would be pretty funny if after all the centuries of doing everything we could to destroy each other with wars and in general dumb ass behavior we finally did it with cell phones.

I don't care for honey anyway. It's too sticky and any slight mistake with it results in awkward moments. I consulted my dietician and she said it was just pure sugar so I thought I'll have the sugar then.

oh god i fell on the floor laughing! ok i stayed in my chair but exaggeration is fun

Ha, I figured this is what happened

It's so much fun watching the media create stories based on science articles. There's a very fun 'conflict of interest' going on here. Science wants to report dry factual results, but media wants to 'spin' everything for maximum viewer exposure. It's almost like a more subtle form of tabloidism which main stream media is adopting.

I don't blame the media for this, I blame the audience.

It's not what the bees make. It's the pollinating of blossums for fruit, etc, that's the problem.

So, while the story may not be accurate, the bottom line is that there MAY still be a problem with bees in the future, right?

Not even in the future..it's happening in the present. This is a massive loss ..right now!

It's odd that the bees would simply not return from their forrays.

If the bees were dieing from an infection or poisoning, you would expect to find more dead bees around the hives.

If bees have been declining for a hundred years and it's only getting worse now, maybe this is a cyclic thing with bee populations. Or maybe it's related to rising temperatures, except then you would simply expect bee populations to push further north.

Are Africanized Honey Bees exhibiting the same declines?

I hear they're looking for volunteers to find out.

Go for it. It'll be good target practice for you. It'll be your best chance to start shooting wildly in every direction, a pistol packer's wet dream