To bee or not to bee? Don't text the answer...

I don't wish to alarm you fellows, but another catastrophe may be on its way:

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

No doubt this will hatch a whole swarm of puns, but the implications are really quite serious - especially for the US where CCD has become a real concern this year.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

The case against handsets

Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.

Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.

Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.

Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant texting.

Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.

I maintained interest in that article (especially its allusion to a German study of bee behavior around electric transmission lines)... but they lost me with the final 5 paragraphs in exploring every rumored defect caused by cellphones.

Alarmist reportage aside, CCD seems real, and I wonder what the heck is going on.

Wow, lately someone told me that it was proven cellphones would not affect my ability to reproduce, now you post such a scary article which suggests that cellphones are our doom and will eventually kill all of us in many different ways. Then again, I've heard warnings from at least one teacher and one professor that not everything wireless is a blessing, yet all the world wants wireless here, wireless there. I wonder what will be done about that. A solution may be a limit to cellphone use etc. but from experience I'd say we will just continue to ignore the disappearance of the bees until we starve to death, please excuse me, I'm gonna send some SMS to warn my friends...:sweatdrop:

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

No doubt this will hatch a whole swarm of puns

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I bet there will be a lot of buzzing about this topic!!!:beam:

I'd start storing massive amounts of honey for the day that it runs out, but I don't particulary like that stuff anyway.

The sperm is more problematic, to make sure the line is continued I did take precautions but a lot depends on the freezer not breaking down while I'm away...

Cell phones are nice in that you don't have to worry about making a bee line to the nearest phone in an emergency. Of course, if the research in the story is true, it soon won't be possible to do so anyway.

This also means you won't be able to call your honey on the phone in the future.

One of my pet peeves with cell phones is everyone using them rudely at inappropriate times. With today's calling plans we humans have more air time avaible to us than the bees do.

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Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts.

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This may be a good thing since CCD will make those "birds and the bees" talks impossible.

Television used cell phone frequencies for many years at much higher wattages. Article smells of fear mongering and cell phones are disliked by some people.

I'm betting it's a parasite of some kind. Also:

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Originally Posted by NationalGeographic

Bees, via pollination, are responsible for 15 to 30 percent of the food U.S. consumers eat. But in the last 50 years the domesticated honeybee population—which most farmers depend on for pollination—has declined by about 50 percent, scientists say.

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Also:

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Originally Posted by Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, Helsinki, Finland.

We found no evidence of increased risk of glioma related to regular mobile phone use (odds ratio, OR = 0.78, 95% confidence interval, CI: 0.68, 0.91). No significant association was found across categories with duration of use, years since first use, cumulative number of calls or cumulative hours of use.

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I'd assume the rest of the article is bs as well.

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Originally Posted by Fenring

I'd start storing massive amounts of honey for the day that it runs out, but I don't particulary like that stuff anyway.

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The problem isn't the honey but the plants which depend on bees carrying around their pollen.
I don't know how many and which plants that are, but people talk about food shortages etc.:shrug:

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

Television used cell phone frequencies for many years at much higher wattages. Article smells of fear mongering and cell phones are disliked by some people.

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I don't really dislike them, I have one myself after all.
But I do think that we had a huge wireless hype in the last years and the amount of wireless devices has more or less exploded. We are not talking about one or two TV towers here, we are talking about hundreds and thousands of cellphones and other wireless devices PLUS the TV towers you mentioned.
Disregarding everything scary you hear about as fearmongering isn't necessarily a good way either, just think of early testing of nuclear devices etc. would you say that when someone says a nuke is very dangerous that's fearmongering and someone just hates big bombs?
Sometimes we(humans) just find something and mass produce it without exactly knowing the consequences, if we aren't at least a bit careful with that, we may well destroy a whole lot, including ourselves.

I mentioned all this to my buddy yesterday, he used to keep bees in New Brunswick and knows a lot about them.

He said that when we get a warm day, even when there's snow on the ground, the bees will go outside to poop (the've been holding it in all winter since they don't poop in the hive). Now, once they're outside they might buzz around a bit and the cell phone waves make it hard for them to find their way back to the hive before the cold gets them or they just sit around outside it and the cold gets them there. He figures it (hopefully) won't be a problem when it's warmer because they'll have the time to make their way home and/or survive the "dizzy spells" sitting on the ledge of the hive.

His thoughts.

So, your friend theorizes that bees use some means of navigation that gets disrupted by radio waves?

NASA kids' site about radio waves .

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

So, your friend theorizes that bees use some means of navigation that gets disrupted by radio waves?

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Well, he pointed out that many animals have an inherent sense of direction and that is caused by something physical, magnetic waves perhaps, so if the cell phone waves are physical as well, maybe they're getting interference.

I don't buy that radio wave nonsense. They have their own radio station here in Philadelphia, B101, so it can't be that harmful to them.

Yup, the bees navigate using electromagnetic waves. So if they are at the same frequency and wavelength as the cell phone, it is possible that they interfere with each other. I got a lecture about this from my girlfriend after I showed her this thread, and she's studying these things at the university here...

But I remain skeptical about this, as I do with any anti-electronics hysteria.

I think it's time for mutant bees with a GPS receiver, then we could keep our cellphones.:2thumbsup:

I threw mine into the wastebin for now, once we can safely say the problem is gone, I may buy a new one.

You have a good point about the GPS Husar. If the phones have GPS built-in, we could cell them to the bees... :inquisitive:

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

You have a good point about the GPS Husar. If the phones have GPS built-in, we could cell them to the bees... :inquisitive:

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Or we could just lie about the GPS and take advantage of the desperate bees in a kind of sting operation.

(You know, we could drone on about this subject forever...)

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

(You know, we could drone on about this subject forever...)

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You rang?

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Originally Posted by drone

You rang?

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More of a buzz, really. :wink3:

Pah! I've got the real scoop on the bees.... :book:

They're all leaving earth ahead of a Vogon demolition fleet that's scheduled to demolish the planet in order to make way for an intergalactic hyperspace bypass. They've been trying to warn humans for years, but we've misinterpreted the warnings as attempts to defend their hives.

You know that intricate dance they do, which we all thought was a means of communicating navigation information? The actual message is:

"So long, and thanks for all the pollen."

Bon voyage, our colorful apian friends. You will be missed... at least until August 13, 2007.

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

More of a buzz, really. :wink3:

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BG has a phone in his bonnet. :beam:

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Originally Posted by Kommodus

Pah! I've got the real scoop on the bees.... :book:
...Bon voyage, our colorful apian friends. You will be missed... at least until August 13, 2007.

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Ah ha! The Flight of the Bumble Bees, eh?

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Originally Posted by Adrian II

BG has a phone in his bonnet. :beam:

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Not a hang up to have when one is a moderator - he should bee-hive better as an example for the rest of us.

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

Not a hang up to have when one is a moderator - he should bee-hive better as an example for the rest of us.

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Yeah, what with his honeycombed reputation..

A-pollen' behaviour by BG for sure.

Everybody here simply accepts that I pretended to have thrown away my cellphone because of a theory?:inquisitive:
Or am I that obvious?:sweatdrop:

Another idea I had was that when you have acellphone close to you and a bee starts pestering you just call your girlfriend or boyfriend, they will think you actually care about them AND you get rid of the bee.:2thumbsup:

As a scientifically enlightened American, I know better than to buy into any of this until I've seen it on Mythbusters.

Wait just a doggone minute... haebeus corpus, right? Who habe's da corpus? When they abandon their hives, they gotta go somewhere... I mean, when the Missus and I have a row, and I storm out and head for the bar, if I didn't make it there, someone would eventually find my ugly body, right? So where are these hundreds of millions of little bee bodies?

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

Wait just a doggone minute... haebeus corpus, right? Who habe's da corpus? When they abandon their hives, they gotta go somewhere... I mean, when the Missus and I have a row, and I storm out and head for the bar, if I didn't make it there, someone would eventually find my ugly body, right? So where are these hundreds of millions of little bee bodies?

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Eaten. decomposed. overlooked.

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Originally Posted by Ichigo

Eaten. decomposed. overlooked.

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The silent victims. :shame:

I think the works of Douglas Adams are about to be shown to have been prophetic (although he thought is would be dolphins instead of bees).

"So long and thanks for all the flowers..."