Posted on 04/18/2007 5:36:58 PM PDT by Daffynition
The radiation emitted by mobile phones and other gadgets could be responsible for wiping out up to 70 percent of the United States bee population, according to some reports.
Whilst the theory might seem far fetched scientists are blaming mobile phones as they attempt to solve the mystery of the disappearing bees. Apparently the radiation interferes with the bees navigation systems and prevents them from finding their way back to their hives.
Last autumn bee keepers started reporting Colony Collapse Disorder on a large scale. Apparently the bees vanish from the hive and die, alone and away from home. Without the bees the hive will die. The problem has now affected half of American states with the East Coast reporting 70 percent of its commercial bee population missing.
The problems are spreading throughout Europe with alarming implications. Albert Einstein famously stated that if bees disappeared "man would have only four years of life left".
Research in Germany has show that bees change their behaviour near power lines and a new study at Landau University indicates that bees refuse to return to their hives if a mobile phone is nearby.
Leading scientist Dr George Carlo, leader of a large scale US government study into the effects of mobile phones, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."
No, but it could be TV. Or cars.
sub spots = sun spots?
The debate over the causes of bee deaths on both sides of the Atlantic has focused on a number of suspects:
* The American "Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group" has discussed something called "the AIDS of the bee industry." But it's not clear to anyone whether the busy insects might be suffering from a new, unknown sexual infection or a known one.
* Bacteria from genetically modified crops could affect the bees' intestinal surfaces and make them vulnerable, according to Hans Hinrich Kaatz from the University of Halle, in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE.
* Manfred Hederer, President of the German Beekeepers Association, told SPIEGEL that he believed the bees were dying from "some kind of poison, a certain active agent, which we have not discovered."
* Climate change is also on the list. Global warming has changed growth and blossoming periods of plants in many parts of the world, which in turn can influence animals.
* And now "mobile phone radiation" should be added to the list, or -- as The Scotsman put it over the weekend -- "emissions from mobile phone towers."
One last theory: Overcultivation
Jürgen Tautz, a bee researcher at the University of Würzburg, is sceptical about the mobile-phone theory but still calls it "worth researching." It's known, he says, that honeybees are "react with extreme sensitivity to changes in the earth's magnetic field." Tautz plans to let a working group he's organized study the question of whether some unpleasant interaction might exist between radio networks and honeycombs.
But bees are in danger, Tautz said to SPIEGEL ONLINE. Their range of food has narrowed; in the meantime the climate has warmed and genetically modified foods have become part of their daily environment. Mobile-phone radiation could be one of the many new stress factors that bees have to contend with, he says. "But I'm sure mobile-phone signals would have no effect on a healthy, unstressed bee population."
But it's still a matter of debate whether the bees are healthy and unstressed. Professional beekeepers have warned for years about rising problems in their colonies:
* Varroa mite disease, from Asia, with the discouraging Latin name varroa destructor, has threatened European bee populations for over 20 years.
* Because farmers spray wildflowers as weeds and prefer monoculture -- planting the same crops year after year on a given plot of land -- the bees' range of nutritional food has shrunk.
* Beekeepers also list the introduction of so-called green genetic engineering as a potential problem. But the actual acreage of these open-air experiments in Germany represents less than 0.1 percent of the nation's total cultivated area.
Another explanation -- one not unknown among apiarists -- may be even more important. Tautz believes that intensive beekeeping may itself be one of the main problems. Raising dense colonies of bees narrows the genetic pool for a population, and less genetic variation weakens any species. In Turkey, where bees haven't been cultivated as intensely as they have in Germany, for example, mass deaths like the ones observed now in Europe and the United States would be unimaginable.
I think our forefathers were a little smarter in that they tended to two and three story building which minimizes the footprint and also the size of the roof that must be maintained. Of courrse if the bees are gone humans could hand pollinate the plants ;that will insure at lest full employment seasonally!
Mosquitoes don’t have to find their way home … they just have to find you!
He was stung by 1,000 bees; here's his tale (91 year-old man survives African bees)
Corpus Christi Caller-Times ^ | April 13, 2007 | Mike Baird
Posted on 04/13/2007 9:29:13 AM CDT by Paleo Conservative
"Some reports". Yeah right. Which reports? Clarabelle Ecowacko's Moonbeam report? A usual reporter tactic. Claim reports or studies exist with specifics.
Whilst the theory might seem far fetched scientists are blaming mobile phones as they attempt to solve the mystery of the disappearing bees.
Once again... "scientists". Which "scientists"? Self-appointed Earth First "scientists"?
We’ve noticed here that the native bees are making a comeback in the Rockies. They are black and white striped bees that were thought nearly extinct when they were pushed out by honeybees. Locally I’ve read reports that the honeybees are being killed by a new breed of mites that don’t affect the native bees.
Reports, reports, reports. Studies, studies, studies. Yada. yada, yada. Too often they’re just politically motivated claptrap.
More likely micro wave transmission is killing the bees.. so in a sense cable, mobile phones, regular phones, and other data transmission... is the culprit..
I don’t know enough about the studies that need to be done on this, but I do know something about bees. I’ve kept them for over 30 years and for at least six or seven years they were about 1,000 feet from a microwave transmission tower. Bumper crop years in the location.
No, my money’s on the mite-as-a-vector avenue of inquiry.
Evidently mosquitoes don't have GPS. They don't care where they are so long as there's a human to feed on.
Bees have to use their GPS to find the hive and their (Ta Da!) Queen with her Royal Jelly again. Our cellphones evidently block the bees and sons of bees from accessing the GPS satellites. :^))
Can you sting me now?
Can you sting me now?
...
NO, NO, NO!!
I gonna 'splain the plan to you. Apply for a gubmint grant to study the global warming aspect of the bees and Sons of Bees losing their ways to the hives. Must be worth at least $250,000 in grants, which you can probably get renewed yearly.
I hope a solution to this can be found soon.
Do you think the wild populations of other pollinators can carry the load?
No. That is why the concern.
. . . coupled with the mania for uniform grass lawns. I've encouraged clover growth in my lawn and I have bees.
Clover is great for providing natural nitrogen to the soil as well as taking up excess moisture and growing in the shade-- two elements in abundance in SW Pennsylvania. As a nice addition, clover lawns need to be cut only about twice a month rather than the weekly cutting required on grass lawns.
I don’t think the solution to these problems is on the horizon, but we’ve been dealing with CCD long before the media picked it up in February. I’ve had CCD losses for over six years.
No, I don’t think native pollinators will pick up the slack. Too many crops are symbiotic with the European honey bee. Native pollinators are often individuals that are too specific and their populations are small. The social groups, OTOH, are too sparse. In the past, about 90% of the aggricultural pollination was done by “wild” (actually feral bees from European colonies) bees. Today, the wild be population is considered extinct and all wild colonies have a life expectancy of two or three years.
Ding ding ding! The varoa mite problem and others stated on this thread have been well known for years. I work on marketing Apistan (apistan.com) to combat the mite problem years back. The only reason the cell phone “possiblity” is being discussed is that researchers need a new funding ploy to garner grants.
It would be quite ironic...
First horse...EU, NAU, etc.
Second horse, Iran, Iraq, North Korea
Third horse...the bees
Followed by the fourth horse
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