Posted on 04/15/2007 6:31:50 AM PDT by wildbill
I read about this theory on mobile phone radiation being responsible for the disappearance of bees in our country. I can't post anything from the Independent (UK) because of copyright problems, but check it out at:
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
This is a serious problem that has bee keepers stumped. Why is it serious? Because bees pollinate the great majority of crops and Agriculture is our number one industry in America and the economy is being affected as this continues.
Aside from the economic loss, the loss of bees is increasing the price of food in your home and could eventually result in famine in America. Yes, famine.
Whether mobile phone radiation is responsible or not, no one can say for sure right now.
Add this one to global warming/cooling, acid rain, Y2K, ozone hole, etc
The timing seems wrong.
NEXT!!
Could you give me a brief description on the theory on how cellphone towers would wipe out bees? Is it just the radiation???
If only we could find something that would wipe out idiots and politicians.
It's all those funky ringtones that drive them crazy.
And for the media-based fear mongers promulgating these myths there is one and only one cure for all these ills: a President with a "D" by his (or her!) name.
How about we clone more bees?
Make up for the loss and then some.
Just a thought.
OK. So does this mean if we all are talking on cell phones out by the swimming pool this summer then the bees will go away?
Idiots AND politicians.
That's being redundant....
We need to make lots of little tin foil hats for the bees.
From Environmental New Service: (no mention of radio waves)
Honey Bees Dying of Mysterious Disorder
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pennsylvania, January 29, 2007 (ENS) - A die-off of honey bees has beekeepers struggling for survival and farmers worried about whether bees will be around to pollinate their crops this year.
An affliction recently named colony collapse disorder, CCD, has decimated commercial beekeeping operations in Pennsylvania and across the country.
“During the last three months of 2006, we began to receive reports from commercial beekeepers of an alarming number of honey bee colonies dying in the eastern United States,” said Maryann Frazier, apiculture extension associate in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. “Since the beginning of the year, beekeepers from all over the country have been reporting unprecedented losses.
Initial studies of dying colonies revealed a large number of disease organisms present, with no one disease being identified as the culprit, says Dennis vanEngelsdorp, acting state apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
Ongoing case studies and surveys of beekeepers experiencing CCD have found a few common management factors, but no common environmental agents or chemicals have been identified.
“Preliminary work has identified several likely factors that could be causing or contributing to CCD,” said vanEngelsdorp. “Among them are mites and associated diseases, some unknown pathogenic disease and pesticide contamination or poisoning.”
I think the bees were heavily invested in landlines...
There was a similar problem in the late 50’s early 60’s.
I suspect that there is something else going on, but cell phones might be a factor.
800 Mhz RF was around a long time before cellular.....
This is a troubling development where bees are concerned because they are essential in the pollination process for much of the fruit we eat. Where mobile phone radiation is concerned time will tell ... it's my opinion that down the road 10 or 15 years from now tumors in the cranium will become a concern and big news item. People who spend hours each day with a cell phone stuck to their ear (like many teenagers) will be the first to succumb to this health threat.
> Could you give me a brief description on the theory
> on how cellphone towers would wipe out bees?
> Is it just the radiation???
The conjecture is that the radiation interferes with
bee navigation. They can’t find their way home to the
hive.
So the problem would depend on the relationship of the
wavelength of the signal and the micro-geometry of the
bee sensors; and power of the signal. Due to different
evolving standards, this would have different outcomes
in different regions.
We might also expect to see little or zero effect in
“dark territory” where cell coverage is weak or
non-existent (which is most of the rural areas here).
I refuse to return to my work cube when a ‘neighbor’ doesn’t have his cell phone on privacy mode. Bees apparently have more sense than most humans. Next ......
Just more proof that you can be stung... by a dead bee.
http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/animals/afrhonbee.shtml
This is likelier culprit than cell phone towers. The only way to get rid of them is to destroy the entire hive. The Africanized bees are not good honey producers and are more aggressive. Keeping bees is much more difficult than before so fewer people are keeping bees.
“If only we could find something that would wipe out idiots and politicians.”
My coffee snarf humor for the morning!
The timing seems wrong.
Another problem with that theory is that the article states that the usual conditions found after a hive is abandoned are not found in these cases. Without going back and quoting exactly, something to the effect that robber bees and other things that ordinarily take over the hives shun these hives.
So how could cell phone radiation cause these various after effects?
I have reached a conclusion: Government grants are leading to the corruption of universities in particular and all research in general.
Witness the millions upon millions given to universities and other organizations to study global warming. They HAVE to find something wrong or they do not get any more grants. You do not get grants to study something that you have found to be perfection.
Congress should severely restrict grants, but they will not because all congressmen want the major universities and research organizations in their districts to prosper.
End of rant.
Something does seem to be disrupting the navigation of bees. Hives are being found with the queen and a few workers while all the other workers are MIA. Workers depart to gather pollen. If they cannot find their way back, it makes sense they are dying individually while lost. Nobody has found "clumps" of dead bees and millions and millions have died. It seems logical they are dying alone, some distance from the hive.
Unlike Varroa Mites which kill bees in the hives, this recent massive killing is very unusual.
As a former beekeeper, I don't think this is funny and it is going to impact us.
I read an article on this a few weeks ago. Here’s a link and some of the info from the article:
But David Hackenberg and many of his fellow beekeepers think they know what is killing their bees: an increasingly prevalent class of insecticide called neonicotinoids that they suspect for the following reasons:
- Neonicotinoids have been strictly limited in France since the 1990s, when they were implicated in a similar mass die-off.
- The use of neonicotinoids has spread rapidly in recent years as the hives began collapsing.
- Neonicotinoids are artificial forms of nicotine that act as neurotoxins to insects, entomologists say. That may account for worker bees neglecting to provide food for eggs and larvae, and for a breakdown of the bees’ navigational abilities.
The first widely used neonicotinoid was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1994, and quickly became popular, said Mark Mossler, a plant medicine expert at the University of Florida.
Neonicotinoids are less toxic to humans than most old-line pesticides and, because they are absorbed by the plants, can be narrowly focused to the pests that feed on the treated crop. But because the chemicals are taken up by the plants, they are likely to appear in nectar and pollen of crops that cover vast areas.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/08/Floridian/One_beekeeper_s_chaos.shtml
Very simple....infected with Califoria-itis....since native west coast bees are not social (don’t make hives)...
And...it gives idiots a bad name.
Personally I think the cause is the Illuminati, fluoridated water and the Joooooooooooooooos.
Looks like Karl Rove has been busy as a bee!!!!
The bee keepers I know say their worst problems are mites and drought.
Bayer’s Gaucho blamed
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/26/millions_of_bees_dead_bayers_gaucho_blamed.htm
the cause has been known for at least 3 years......LONG before we heard much about the bees.
But it's kinda hard to sue the sun, even for shysters.
Micro wave tower?
A testable thesis. Someone (you) is doing some good thinking about the problem instead of doing the Chicken Little routine.
That makes more sense than the other theories I have seen.
In other words, since there are not reports of thousands of dead bees around their hives but rather they are just disappearing, the only explanation left is that they fly off and get lost.........
I think the bee problem is related to the excesses of "I Love Lucy" and "The Andy Griffith Show" reruns on cable TV.
And do the Queens say anything? No! There is NO discipline anymore!
Some ‘scientists’ placed a cell phone near an active beehive, and the bees wouldn’t return to the hive.
So as you can see, the theory is just chock full of science and logic.
(giggle)
You beat me to it!!! LOL!
ANOTHER UPDATE: Steven Den Beste emails:
. . . .The claims in that article about cellphones and bees sound like the global warming hysteria, up to and including the predictions of apocalypse.
For instance, there was this claim: "Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees."
That's wrong. Corn, wheat, rice, rye, barley, and all the other grain crops do not rely on insects for pollination, and they make up the majority of the calories consumed by the human race.
It's true that there are a very large number of crops which do rely on insects, but many of those do not rely on honey bees, or at least do not have to. In many areas, they use a different kind of bee that looks a lot like a honey bee but is much different in life cycle. These bees don't produce honey, and all the females are fertile, with each producing 5-10 grubs. They work collective laying sites with the grubs being placed in holes in wood.
In the wild they use dead trees, but the farmers that rely on them put up boards with holes drilled in them for the bees to use.
Honey bees are important, but the current problem doesn't mean the human race is going to starve to death.
MORE: A more skeptical take:
Many beekeepers are skeptical of the reports or at least how they're adding up. For 100 years, beekeepers have logged periodic reports of sudden and inexplicable bee die-offs.
People refer the latest die-off by its initials "CCD," but one Georgia beekeeper instead calls it the "SSDD" crisis for "Same Stuff, Different Day."
"People have lost bees from the beginning of time," Sowers said. . . .
Most empty hives have been discovered at large, commercial migrating bee farms - and that has led some beekeepers to theorize that it's the stress of being trucked cross-country that's killing the bees.
"The (bee's) instinct is to go out and collect pollen and nectar, and that's what they do. When they can't get out of the hive, it puts them under stress. They need to go to the bathroom on a regular basis, but they won't go in their hive," said Ken Ograin, an Elmira beekeeper. . . .
Finally, beehives simply die. Scattered reports of large-scale mortality date from 1915, 1960 and 1987. Scientists don't always know why.
"This may be a repeat of that situation where we simply don't figure it out," said Morris Ostrofsky, president of the Lane County Beekeepers Association.
In fact, some farmers say they are puzzled about the dire news stories appearing in local, state and national media in the past several weeks.
"It's not new this year," Williams said. "If you know what I mean."
Media hysteria? It's just possible that might be involved. (Via Slashdot, which also features other skeptical comments on this story.)
Unlike Varroa Mites which kill bees in the hives, this recent massive killing is very unusual.
I well remember the mite infestation we had in the 50 - 60 era. We also had the wax worm problem in Texas back then. We lost all but four or five of 35 hives within a two year time span.
I should have posted an article from the Austin paper yesterday. There is a guy south of Austin who has a thriving bee business. He is shipping live bees all over the country to replace the dying hives.
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