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Are Mobile Phones Wiping Out Bees?
Mz6 wrote with a link to an article on The Independent site about a most unusual scientific theory. "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."
Does this mean the best way to cope with being 'attacked' by a bee, is to whip out your mobile make a ringing sound then pass it to the bee and say "Its for you"?
Other reasons Bees are gone..
*Sunspots
*Global warming
*Terrorism
*CowboyNeal
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I for one am extremely suspicious about claims that bees are being wiped out by mobile 'phones. Here's an example of why:
US = 301,505,000 people in 2,718,695 sq miles = 111 people per sq mile
UK = 60,609,153 people in 94,526 sq miles = 641 people per sq mile
So, why is it that the US is suffering this major disappearance of bees when the UK isn't? Seeing as the density of mobile phone signals is going to be FAR higher in the UK? Ok, i accept that mobile phones in the UK work on different frequencies, but from what I've heard, the same thing is happening in Poland and Spain , which both have far lower population densities than the UK, and the same mobile phone frequencies. Of course, Poland and Spain import far more US Genetically Modified crops than the UK does.
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
Presumably if we could work out exactly what EMR does to bees navigation capabilities then we could exploit this "feature" to send the bees exactly where we want them.
OTH can people who react strongly to bee stings now carry a device to ward them off?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Won't somebody please think of the bees?!
Bees are not the only insect that pollinates the plants. If one reads The Origin of Species there are mentions of many different ways for plants to propagate. Bees are generally being pushed aside by the wasps, at least here in England. Many other creatures can spread pollen, along with wind itself.
The problem with plant propagation in the wild is there is a rough 500:1 chance if successful growth to maturity for the seedlings.
Why UNIX?
Bees should wear those
It looks like the sort of work he might do, but a one-sentence paraphrasal is scant information on which to base any comment.
... a valid excuse why kids don't have to eat their vegetables. Because there aren't any!
Cells are everywhere. We have 6 competing companies for a market of maybe 5 million people. Everyone here has at the very least one (Average is as far as I know about 2.something).
Still, no shortage in bees. Quite the opposite!
On the other hand, though, we don't have crops with altered genes...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unless this has something to do with the frequency, this sounds very unlikely to me. Mobile technology usually starts out in Japan, then moves to western Europe. The US are the pretty late adopting mobile technoly. Shouldn't this bee problem follow the same pattern? Anybody heard of problems with bees in Japan about one or two years ago?
I hope not.. I love bees! ;-)
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. - Will Duran
THE BEEEES
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
Who the f*ck uses a cellphone in the middle of a crop field?
Go away, dude. Your kind of storytelling does add nothing to the world of news. You are the wheel that makes fart noises on the Slashdot wagon. We don't want to read the yellow press BS you believe is interesting.
We are too intelligent for your kind of "journalism". Stop insulting us. Please!
So this is another try to take useful technology out ... let me see.....
in the name of
SCIENCE
What the heck?
Where are the statistics, the standard deviations, the
chi-squares... C'mon I am getting tired of people trying
to make me afraid.
Of course 30% of the species are also going to disappear.
Maybe global warming is due to cellphones as well.
Unbelievable as it is.
Defective by design.
It's because they can't get decent 3G coverage, they're pissed off bees because they can't communicate effectively without mobile broadband. Unlike their Japanese bee friends, who have the next gen phones, along with Tamagotchi bee larvae which they have to feed virtual pollen.
Meanwhile, crickets totally have it sorted out, having traded regular cell phones for their newer kneephone. Ergonimically designed for the chic cricket who is out to look down on the average locust.
Task Mangler
We all appreciate your effort to eradicate the bees and to keep the cellphone conglomerate's profits in check. Thanks for doing your part.
...i hate bees
portfolio
I put forth a new theory...
It's because of the ketchup bottles.
They were clear before, and you could *see* how much was left, but more importantly, how nasty the remaining amount looked like. When the inside of the bottle got so nasty, as to have the ShakeIt-Until-Even technique fail, the bottles would get tossed out.
These bottles would eventually find their way to dogs, which would eat all ketchup.
The nasty ketchup would give the dogs indigestion, and they would go take an acid shit near flowering plants.
The acid shit would put the soil pH precisely where it needs to be, so the plants create better tasting flowers for the bees.
With the new solid-color bottles, when we toss them out, they have too little ketchup amount in order for the dogs to get indigestion (ie, no shit).
The alternate idea I have has to do with the Titanic.
After all these years under the sea, finally, the women's make-up powder is reacting at those extreme pressures and depths. The resulting gases rise to the surface, and are carried by perfec harmonic frequencies to the US. These harmonics are created by the bees' perfect resonance buzz.
The bees find the gaseous make-up powder noxious, so, they're all chillin' down in South America where there isn't such a proliferation of boutiques.
Speaking as a PhD candidate in biostatistics, the article quotes thoroughly discredited theories of the effects of cell phones on humans. Unfortunately, the media routinely quotes the opinions of obviously fraudulent scientists, or quotes others out of context, to sell the "conspiracy theory" angle to the willing masses.
Medical misrepresentation in the media has a long history -- in the 18th century, when a British physician developed a smallpox vaccine based on cowpox, newspapers at the time described people turning into cows, causing a national panic. Mistrust of vaccines lingered for decades afterwards. In 1999, anti-vaccine hysteria again surfaced when an extremely poorly designed study managed to be published in Lancet, claiming that 80% of children with autism had received the MMR vaccine. (80% of British children received vaccinations in the first place.) Lancet retracted the article, and years of wasteful research went into re-examining the vaccine theory -- plenty of other locations had rising incidences of autism despite reductions in vaccination rates. There is no controversy among epidemiologists today, but the media continues to describe this as a "controversial theory".
The incidence of autism has since leveled off, suggesting that the observed increase was just based on changes in diagnostic criteria and public awareness; the true prevalence has likely never changed.
The bee disorder in question is probably caused by viruses such as black queen cell virus or bee paralysis virus. Also, South African apiaries have had a problem with transposons (jumping genes), possibly viral in origin, that cause drone workers to produce children, disrupting the hive. Despite what you may have learned in high school, honeybees are a domesticated species with an unnatural pattern of reproduction in the first place. Wild bees do not always have strict hierarchies.
Nah, its all the result of Global Warming. Just like everything else.
This biggest problem with this theory is that it does not explain why hive death has started now. We have had more than a critical mass of cell phones for years now, especially in Europe. It also fails to explain this rather telling quote from TFA itself: "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."
This makes it sound like a new disease to me.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
Well, since USA is the country that uses most GMO - genetically modified organisms aka transgenic crops, maybe that could also be the problem for the bees...
"It's not new this year," Williams said. "If you know what I mean."
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."
There have been a few good theories as to why they're dying off in certain places: 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. Some people blame the high-fructose corn syrup that beekeepers feed the bees in the large-scale operations.
"People think that's not the best thing to feed them. There's a lot of argument about that," Scher said. At this point, bringing cell phones into the mix is just plain silly.
The signal from cell phones, both the mobiles and the cells themselves is relatively weak. There are lots of stronger signals floating around out there. So, if it isn't the strength of the signal, maybe it's the frequency. We've had relatively strong signals at microwave frequencies for the last sixty years. One such system would be DME. It is a navigation system for aircraft and operates at around 1 GHz and it puts out lots of watts. So we have a strong signal at microwave frequencies. Such equipment is often sited in the middle of farmers' fields. The crops in the vicinity of such equipment seem to have no trouble getting pollinated.
We also have radar operating at various frequencies but almost always with quite high powers. I have never seen any evidence that crops in the vicinity of radar have any trouble with pollination.
I really doubt that the bees are having trouble with the RF from cell phones.
On the other hand, cell phone handsets often have displays that need high voltages and those voltages are produced by inverters that operate at ultrasonic frequencies. It is possible that bees will avoid anything that is producing such a high pitched sound. That would be quite a localized phenomenon though and would only occur as long as the phone was actually present.
"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."
Let's not forget that cell phones put out an extremely low power signal. The energy in that signal that would hit any particular point (think of the intersection of a bee and a sphere of signal expanding from the cell phone) decreases with the square of the distance from the phone (inverse square law) If the bee is more than an tiny distance from the phone, the bee would never notice anything, because the energy levels would be so low.
On the other hand, that big shiny ball in the sky that emits huge amounts of radiation on many different wavelengths hits the bee with much more energy.
This simply doesn't make sense.
Please, it's just Homer.
In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.
Won't bring back your goddamn honey!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6i2WRreARo
Ahhh! No not the bees! Not the bees! Ahhhhh!!!! Oh no my eyes! My eyes!!! Ahhhh!!!!
Can't forget them!
While it can be possible that certain frequiencies, like 3G (explains why only few years before) or new radar systems, can interfere with bee navigation, it still does not explain why other bees or parasites avoid opportunity to raid abandoned honey. Obviously, it is something in the honey.
;-)
Most likely, virus, or, less likely, pollen from GMO plants that has/has not certain biochemical properties.
I acknowledge that GMO has great potential, and that genetic engineering is vital to our survival and evolution as sepcies, but I would like government to force greedy corporations that invests money into it to have longer testing phases in safe environments.
Perhaps they should look to Debian lifecycle
A. Yes
B. Yes
C. Yes
D. Yes
More than one answer may be chosen.
A lot of the die-offs have been near corn fields, and a pesticide that coats some of the GM corn is a neurotoxin that causes disorientation in bees, even at low doses. There was a similar issue in France a number of years ago, apparently. Honey production was cut in half for several years. The Star-Ledger here in NJ ran an article about it today. Some are speculating that this might be a factor.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news -11/1176611470205100.xml&coll=1
PHWND!
Der Spiegel, a German newspaper, had an article in March where the phenomenon CCD might have to do with GMO's:
According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have "altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry -- or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know."
babelfish translation of the article or the original in German
this is pure bullshit. i can't even dignify this with a rebuttal. move along.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
There is now a non-poisonous method to get rid of bees.
Suppose you have a bees nest in the ground next to your house.
To get rid of the bees, simply gab away on your cellphone.
Make sure your children have cellphones, and ensure they are in constant communication with all of their friends.
Ask your cellular service provider to install a communications tower/link (whaterver it's called) on your property.
One final word of advice: I suggest acting immediatley.
With many of the world's bees in peril, it won't be long before laws are passed to protect your pest bees.
Other studies have pointed to white guilt, neighbourhood paedophiles and industrialised society as possible causes for this and many other aspects of the ongoing apocalypse. Won't somebody please think of the children?!
1) US and European phone systems operate on different frequencies
2) Europe has been using these frequencies far longer than in the US. Thus if there was any sort of "deployment pattern", it would start there.
3) Europe has higher cell use per capita and higher population density than the US. See (2)
4) Some of these frequencies have been heavily used in the past by high-channel UHF television stations with MUCH greater power (like 10,000 times). Ever wonder where channels above 70 went when cell phones started showing up? If it was something to do with these frequencies, all bees would have been gone back in the 70's.
and the most important one
5) these die-offs have been happening since people have been watching, long before there was any RF except for lightening
Maury
my nutsack is horribly smelly. I haven't washed it in YEARS.
From The Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group:
Reports of similar die offs are documented in beekeeping literature, with outbreaks possibly occurring as long ago as 1896. The current phenomenon, without a recognizable underlying cause, has been tentatively termed "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD).Clearly, this shows that it was the devious Austrians, led by Wilhelm Roentgen, who (as a preliminary attack to weaken their honey-loving victims during the Great War) unleashed the Roentgen or "X" ray upon the world's bees. We must not tolerate these unnatural attacks on the purity of our bees' essence. Let us rise up and destroy all "X" ray machines!
The cell phone theory is a little weak. From TFA, researchers found that "bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby"?? How nearby? Inside the homes of honeybee keepers? If that were the case we'd have seen the issue spring up much sooner.
Anyway, bee population scares have come up before. From this article:
So how did the bees make a recovery 11 years ago? Had they even recovered before this current problem? Can anyone find a bee population trend from the past 50 years?
Another thought: could this have anything to do with the fear of Africanized honeybees spreading into North America? Sorry for spouting conspiracy theory, but what if the government tried to use GM to stop the killer bees and it backfired? (same level of plausibility as the cell phone theory).
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered bee community when IDC confirmed that bee market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all insects. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that bees have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The bee population is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Garden Admin comprehensive pollination test.
You don't need to be a Darwin to predict the bees' future. The hand writing is on the wall: The bees face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for bees because the bees are dying. Things are looking very bad for bees. As many of us are already aware, the bees continue to lose market share. Royal jelly flows like a river of nectar.
The honey bee is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core queens. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time honey bee celebrities Maya and Willy only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: The honey bee is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Soul bee leader Q-Bee states that there are 7000 soul bees. How many bumblebees are there? Let's see. The number of soul bee versus bumblebee posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 bumblebees. Stingless bee posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of bumblebee posts. Therefore there are about 700 stingless bees. A recent article put africanized bees at about 80 percent of the bee market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 africanized bees. This is consistent with the number of africanized bee Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Pitcairn Island, abysmal sales and so on, the africanized bees went out of business and were taken over by the hornets who sell another troubled species. Now the hornets are also dead, their corpses turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that bees have steadily declined in market share. The bees are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If bee are to survive at all it will be among insect dilettante dabblers. The bees continue to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save the bees from their fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the bees are dead.
Fact: The bees are dying.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
No bees?
So, let's see them transfer the black oil now!
Have you read my journal today?
Maybe we shouldn't link to stories that require you to setup a fucking account to read.
-
They are however, several miles away from other bees making the transmission of disease and parasites less likely.
- Both corn and soybeans are planted directly adjacent to them. So current pesticides and herbicides are not affecting them.
- Productivity of honey is down considerably from a decade ago when I had 13 hives in a different location. However those hives were much closer to other bees and I am sure got the parasites that killed so many bees in the last decade. All 13 of those hives died.
- Honey production is down primarily because no one is planting clover for hay anymore. It is all corn and soybeans. It is a struggle I'm sure for the bees to find enough to store away for the winter.
- Commercial bees are transported from site to site for pollination. That is stressful to the hive and subjects them too other bees that are possibly infected with whatever.
I just don't accept the theory that it is radio waves. The study sample is probably so small it means nothing anyway.What's called "millimeter" waves have a wavelength around one millimeter. Most cell phones operate around 300 millimeter wavelength, with the 2.45 GHz band used for some phones and other wireless equipment being around 120 millimeters. Not similar at all.
military aircraft electronic warfare systems have triggered widespread issues like garage doors opening and closing by themselves and TV signals being jammed
Again, not even close to millimeter waves. Garage openers work at 49 MHz, around 6000 millimeters, TV broadcasts range from 54 MHz in channel 2 up to around 800 MHz, which means it more or less uses the frequencies between garage openers and cell phones.
I could believe that millimeter waves, if strong enough, could kill bees. But lower frequencies, i.e. longer wavelengths, are very unlikely to affect bees. For the same reason as ants survive in a microwave oven, the wavelengths are much bigger than the insects bodies.
I would say the most probable reason for the disappearing bees is some epidemy. Viruses and bacteria can spread rapidly through a population, which would account for the problem apparently having started in the USA and now spreading also through Europe. If it were a technological cause, the problem would be restricted by area, appearing more or less at the same time where that technology is used.
My German is not what it was. But if this is the right article, then it wasn't mobile phones, it was DECT base stations. And, either way, I'm not very convinced. It seems to me that they didn't control for the smell of these things.
That may not seem important, but smell is important to bees and if a dog can be trained to sniff out a cellphone (which the UK prison service claim to have done), a DECT base-station is probably detectable by a bee. If any of that smell mimics or masks the signals bees would normally pick up, it might change their behaviour. Besides, changes in magnetic fields supposedly confuse bees, and maybe these base-stations have transformers in them.
I'd be grateful for any further (or better) information on this. As a UK beekeeper, I've been fielding calls about this all day (and about sunspots, GM crops and ley lines. The more I talk to people, the more I think the creationists have a point), and I've not been coping very well. Personally, I reckon it's probably a virus carried about by the varroa mite, which is now fairly resistant to most of the treatments used, but I'm used to being wrong.
See the AC post immediately above the grandparent. We've had high power microwave radiation colocated with farmers' fields for more than 60 years. There's no evidence that it affects bees.
Homer: "Oh, yeah, what are you gonna do? Release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark, they shoot bees at you?"
If you had ever seen The Visitors, you'd know that the disappearance of the bees is the result of a time travel accident, and that pollination in the future will be done by loud and stinking pollination machines.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Sure, man being the foremost of these creatures. If done in a country with very low wages one can sometimes offer a very expensive exotic product. You see, vanilla is a plant that can be pollinated only by bees, and only one very special kind of bee, that's found only in its native Mexico. This is because its flower has a peculiar shape that only fits the body of that bee.
So, well, yes, natural evolution may take care of that. If bees disappear, then plants that depend exclusively on it will be replaced by some more flexible plants that aren't as picky regarding their sexual helpers. However, along with those plants all other species that depend on them may also disappear, most of mankind along them.
I am (was) an amateur apiculturist, that is, I used to have my own hive of pet bees.
My grandfather was a semi-hobbiest beekeeper who made a decent living after retirement selling beekeeping equipment, and taught me all about the wonder of the bees. I don't claim to be the worlds leading authority on bees, but I find them pretty fascinating, and know a bunch about 'em.
Anyways, I don't see Occam's razor being applied here. Here is what devastates bees:
1) Foulbrood.. Comes in two varieties, American and European.. Makes the larva basically rot in their pupas. It can be prevented with teramiacin (sp?! its a horse medicine), but the only cure for an infected colony is fire, and lots of it - mandated by the authorities. It's been somewhat of an epidemic since the 80s. There is lots of talk about it spreading because of commercially sold queens, and or colonies. Ie; The industry developed a bee that makes lots of honey, but is succeptible to this. This accounts for a *lot* of missing bees.
2) Africanized bees? A lot gets made of "killer bees", but once they move into a colony, that colony doesn't collect as much honey - and you don't see as many bees.
3) Climate or other environmental problems. Bees will abandon a location if it isn't suitable. It's common to have a swarm (too little food or too much space, so half the bees pack up a new queen and leave) that leaves the original colony to die - too few bees left to tend to the queen, or an incapable queen is a death sentence to a hive.
I can't believe the "scientists" would skip past an obvious sign of climate change and jump straight to cell phones. I've never heard this before, and frankly, it sounds like a bunch of horse-shit.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If it was determined that "using the internet" somehow caused damage to the planet, would you stop using it?
It's a short list so far, I know, but there's this theme over the past few years that seems to be growing in popularity. That would be "things you depend on every day are destroying the planet!!!" Gas, oil and coal for burning to make electricity are killing the planet. The car I drive to work every day is killing the planet. Now my BlackBerry is killing the planet too?
You know, my first reaction to dying bees was "good, now those GM foods people can shut up about suing mom and pop farmer for having bees cross polinate their crops." Okay, that's a pretty short-sighted reaction but reactions are typically just that. You tend to focus on the closest and most direct thing on your mind which isn't always the most important or significant.
Yes, we're killing the planet... or at least the aspects of it that we need to survive. Are we willing to actually do anything about it? Nope! Not really. Like most of the people, I'm not in any position to do anything except kill myself and even that wouldn't make a difference... or might make it worse since I have selected cremation and that would probably push the carbon emotions just over the edge enough to kill the planet somehow.
The reality as I see it is there are a select small percentage of the people who actually CAN do something about it but will not for "pick your favorite reason." My favorite is "corporate responsibility." You know what I'm talking about right? No? How does "they have to act this way by law because they are beholden to shareholders! So they HAVE to continue making a profit!" There are options like quitting, standing up and doing what best for the planet anyway [and being a martyr] or even changing one's business model to continue making a profit while making a positive impact. There are WAYS to make the things happen they just don't want to.
And I was about to use WalMart's CFB (compact flourescent bulb) initiative as an example, but last time I went to one of their stores, I was really disappointed to see the shelves containing 90% incandescent, but just about everyone buying bulbs were eying the incandescents as well... most likely because they are cheaper on the shelf... cheaper, more plentiful incandescent. When was this WalMart intiative supposed to begin? Doesn't look like it has...
I think we are looking at this all wrong. The sudden, bizarre disappearance of bees can only be explained by one possibility.
The "waggle dance", which has long been interpreted as a dance that reveals information to other bees, is actually a message to humans which goes something like this-
"So Long and Thanks for All the Nectar." (the last word may also be pollen, we are still analyzing the message.)
It was a terrible article (the quote from Einstein is absolutly ludicrous ... why 4 years? And what did he know about bees anyway? I wouldn't ask the greatest bee specialist in the work about what he thought about the cosmological constant...).
I guess one should take it a serious look though. Best would be without braindead journalists eager to kick up a fuss.
Wireless phones use electromagnetic waves to transmit information
...We're through the looking glass, people.
Magnets cured my carpel tunnel/bercitus/sore back (even though there's no scientific evidence)
Cell phone users annoy me, and are controlled by evil corporations.
Therefore, magnetic fields (a side effect of the electro- part of the wave), are killing honeybees.
Also, honey is used for many holistic and "natural" cures, so the evil drug companies are in on it as well.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
On coast to coast am
.. it was super weird
.. suggesting that the honey is probably toxic.. who knows .. I sure hope someone figures this out!
where the story originaly broke (largest radio show in the world a late nite 4hour show)
coasttocoastam.com
http://www.earthfiles.com/ www.earthfiles.com
yesterdays show and the day before they mentioned it could possibly be the nicotean (spelling not sure) new pesticide use or possibly the increase of wifi signals
No one really knows at this point (earthfiles.com are sure to have the more current updates!)
I think italy reported that nothing looks unusual and they banned pesdicied use and some othere place I can not think of so it looks interesting.. not to mention I live in Canada Ontario and have a huge wild natural garden and rember a huge amount of bees last year in it
If the bees go so does our food supply
they been having difficulty finding dead bees and the honey normally eaten up by other insects is untouched
If you know something or have a theory frig email earthfiles@earthfiles.com the biggest place around on top of this story!
This whole article is based on rumour and popular belief more than it is any scientific evidence. Note how the article is half over before any advocates of this theory (other than "some scientists"), are mentioned.
If the effect was firmly discovered by (new) scientific testing then the description of that experiment, it's result, and the group that conducted it would be in the first or second paragraph. If it was hard science, a detailed description of the experiment and the methodology would also be in order.
Instead, after a lot of talk that amounts to "some scientists say..." we get news of a "limited" experiment (in the second to *last* paragraph no less!), where a single cell phone was placed near a hive by (apparently) a single scientist (Dr Jochen Kuhn), on which we are given no background on at all. There is no date given for this test, no details, and no indication why a cell phone was suspected in the first place. We are not even sure if this experiment was in reaction to the disappearing bees phenomenon or if it was merely something that someone did once.
The last paragraph (a single sentence), is a quote from an American scientist who was deeply involved in the whole "cell phones give you brain cancer" debacle from the early to mid 90's about how he thinks this could be possible. Then they paste a chunk of stuff on the end from the files about previous wacky theories of the evils of cell phones.
Gee, do you think that any of these people quoted have an axe to grind vis a vis the evils of cell phones? Do you think the reporter has any real facts to base this article on? Or is it likely it's just another science writer with a deadline to meet that is going through his old files for something to write about?
I'd bet that "cell phone by a hive" experiment turns out to have also been done in the 90's when panic about cell phone radiation was at it's peak.
When Slashdotters think that a story is fraudulent, they don't say it is fraud, they just make lots of jokes. If the first 50 comments are mostly jokes, then you know the story must have some fake element.
It could happen to you: If you spend your time playing video games instead of learning about the world, you too can be so ignorant that you fall for every foolish, easily disproved theory.
--
Remarkable Occurrences Involving the Bush Family
Media Hysteria
No one likes it. It's been spreading. It makes everyone unhappy. And bees are a lot smaller than people, so it probably kills them outright.
1. The penguins have to swim further out to reach the cold water where the fish are.
2. The penquins exert more energy (heat), which warms the water making them swim even further.
3. The warmer water is causing global warming
4. Global warming is causing the bees to die off.
5. Linux is loosely associated with penguins somehow.
6. More Linux=more penguins=less bees
7. F.M. (F'ngi Magic) happens.
8. Profit$
1011 1010 1101 1100 0000 1111 1111 1110 1110
I'm posting from a public terminal, wearing gloves, on a proxy server but that probably isn't enough.
This has to get out NOW before it is too late. I have discovered a horrible secret and it is more than just the bees.
While you sheeple are enjoying the most robust and vibrant economy in the history of money, taking pride in our success against fanatical Mohammedans in the War On Terror,all while enjoying the freeset and most egalitarian society in the History of Civilization- there is a sinister force underlying our near-utopia.
I don't have much time and I hope this gets out.......
one word...... Halliburton
OK its all over for me but you people need to check this out
Halliburton is a company with ties to Dick Cheney
Google them and you will think they just make sure our homes are warm and our cars have limitless cheap fuel and our soldiers are well fed and equipped with the latest safety gear and weapons BUT
THEY ARE WIPING OUT THE BEES!
apparently their oil interests are threatened by food crop ethanol production and they are going to kill Billions through famine to insure the primacy of oil as fuel.
One last clue.....Bush/Saud
There I've said too much I have to run.....
Some argument that might seem "obvious" (to you) isn't necessarily a "correct" argument.
Sorry. You're not all-knowing, nor are you the center of the universe.
A long time ago, is was "obvious" what was causing the problems in a certain northeastern town. So they burned those witches and everyone felt better.
I'm ashamed of the way the press covered this story. Journalists are known for putting horrible puns in their headlines, and they have a certain standard to live up to with that. By titling TFA "Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?", they have missed an obvious opportunity to do that: it should have been called "Plight of the Bumblebee".
Oh wait, I take it back. I just checked Google News, and actually there is an article with exactly that title. So, balance is restored and the press is behaving normally, although I'm still ashamed of them.
When I was four years old among the quonset huts along Hilltop Road in Manhattan, Kansas (KSU's G.I. Bill housing), we had grass between the buildings, shared garden lots where the quonset huts skipped a hump, lots of clover and lots of honeybees in the clover. Along with dime-sized blue butterflies, nickle-sized sulfurs and white jobbies with black spots on their wings. That was 1948, give or take a couple. These days, clover is a weed, the butterflies are gone and the groundwater contains progesterone. When I worked a staff job for a U.S. Congressman in 1975, the air was so thick with sulfuric acid that you couldn't walk from the Cannon H.O.B. to the international bookshop on Pennsylvania Avenue, just south of the White House, without choking on your own acid tears -- the true origin of the Clean Air Act, by the way; nobody needs to lobby a Congressperson who can't breathe. Plenty of flowers along the Mall in D.C., dug up and replanted by the numbers -- number of honeybees I can remember seeing: Zero. Number of fungal species I counted that same year, including Agrocybe and a number of frail Marasmids -- well over 20, so the bees were definitely missing from my vaguely observant ken. Today, along the thirty rural miles I commute daily on Iowa Highway 1 between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, I can count about two dozen beehives in two (possibly three) colonies. Number of honeybees in my yard after about April 15th, the day the redbuds bloom in a good year, about one or two per clump of flowers. By August, most of what I see are bumblebees (the big buzzy ones) and small solitary bees that look like scaled-down bumblebees -- some of these are green. The honeybees are vastly outnumbered by native solitary, mostly ground-dwelling bees. Exactly once in my 62 years, I followed a semitrailer truck along Interstate 80 which was crammed with beehives and shrouded in netting -- a big commercial apiarist on the move, like itinerant labor, from crop to crop. That was at least fifteen years ago, and the point is that even then if you need bees, you have to truck them in. What crops? Soybeans. Alfalfa. Fruit trees. Nut trees. Any and all flowering vegetables (squash, tomatoes, snap peas and pole beans, etc.) except wind-pollinated stuff like maize (corn, to you city rubes). If you lose the bees, you get a situation that makes the Irish Potato Famine(s) look like ... ahem ... small potatoes. My guess is, we killed the bees, and we're killing what's left, with massive environmental pollution in places we can't afford to examine: Farm chemicals applied, directly or indirectly, to plants bees pollinate.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
...isn't everything the fault of global warming?
Who let this FUD out before it was approved by the global warming mafia?
Lets see now, it 46 degrees F. today in Atlanta Georgia and its April 15.
Maybe the Bees just think its still winter, nothing to pollinate...
What I have noticed is the common application of saying one thing but the opposite actually being true.
Maybe we just need to engineer a super bee.... we have the technology...
BTW anyone know how the fire ants are doing? Are they still migrating through the US?
What about Frogs and the many species of them, they still dying off, becoming extinct, too?
What about tomorrow, whats going to die off tomorrow?
Anyone checked lately for a Vogon Constructor Fleet?
No, you'd just talk to it...
> Bender: (Speaking in Bee) Hello, fellow bees!
> How's the abdomen? Swollen with nectar I trust?
>
> Bee: Duh.
Obviously, the decline in bees corresponds directly with the global decline in pirate populations.
Cell phones? That's silly. All pastafarians know that "global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s." It's all in The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
As long as lazy beekeepers insist on placing hives next to highways, I have no sympathy for them. Bees are needed for agriculture, and often stored in Sierra foothills between paid placements in orchards. In one case they put 300 hives 15 feet from the state highway. Lots of fun for motorcyclists in a county that plans on making tourism it's main income source. Caltrans and the CHP were unable to do anything, but letter to the county AG commissioner was successful.
More popular "scientific" hysteria on parade. Another reason why I hate the press.
A more plausible explanation might be related to the Earth's magnetic poles changing, something that happens infrequently on human time scales, but could affect bees if birds and bees really are capable of getting their bearings by way of the earth's magnetic field instead of something rather obvious like the angle of the sun in the sky, the position of a tree relative to another, etc.
I mean, really. As if the things weren't annoying enough ten years ago when only business suit wearing, Star Bucks drinking, wanna-be executives were using them. Now every stupid little teenager (and probably pre-teen) has them, and they all have them "pimped out" with colored faceplates and custom ring tones. I can't go anywhere nowadays without hearing a cell phone ring, hearing someone idly walking around the store talking about nothing on one or taking photos with them. They're stupid and annoying. Very, VERY few people need to be connected like that 24/7. And driving?! Everyone drives with them as well, as if they weren't already horribly reckless morons behind the wheel. In the least, could we pass national laws to completely forbid driving and talking (and actually enforce it) as well as stop anyone under the age of eighteen (twenty-one?) from owning or operating a cell phone? Then, of course, the next step would be to start lining buildings with lead as they're constructed, so as to block out the signals...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".
That's a quote from the article, and demonstrates it is simply the usual ignorant journalist just making stuff up.
Einstein was a theoretical physicist who dabbled in refrigeration technology. Introducing him into a discussion of the biology and epidemiology of domestic bees makes as much sense as quoting Dick Cheney on how to run a socialized healthcare system.
Anyone who is reduced to introducing supporting quotes purely on the basis of name recognition of the person being quoted clearly has no story and no facts.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Every scientific theory must be tested. Apparently, this theory was not, as it would be quite simple to do: just correlate bee death statistics with mobile network coverage. I read an article which claimed the same, among 5 other as far fetched possibilities. They even quote Einstein saying mankind will start dying 5 days after the bees. Apparently, somebody was just guessing and the media picked it up, because this kind of 'news' makes it easy to sell the paper And it is always cool to quote Einstein, makes you look more educated. They should also remember this other famous word of Einstein: "Simplify as much as you can, but not more!" Bees are not more fragile than other insects, why do we then get lots of wasps (only one of the many kinds) and only few honeybees this year? Why should only the bees react to mobile phone radiation? There is clearly a problem, but switching off mobile phones doesn't solve it.
As someone with a life threatening allergy... keep up the good work, everyone! Less instruments of death out there.
Bees are the main pollinator for many crops but I doubt that humanity can't survive without bees. Bees were brought to America by the European settlers. Therefore I would expect that there is an efficient natural mechanism for beeless pollination of corn, potato, and red kidney bean, among others. Native Americans had decent agriculture without bees and we showed that their main crops can be cultivated on an industrial scale. Sure, live without honey would be insipid but please keep the apocalyptic scenario for asteroid impacts and the second coming of Black Death.
Hmm, since bees are flying, call Homeland Security and the FAA to ban something and get all bees to remove their shoes at the entrance to the hives. That'll fix it..
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It is already tomorrow in Australia.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Ok, the haunted apiary was cool, but this time Bungie has gone to far!
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
Hmmmm...if this were true wouldn't the price of Honey be going through the roof?
The price of honey has not been rising consistently as far as I can tell.
This is simple, really. The bees are picking up pollen from nearby corn fields -- pollen which contains plant DNA, by definition.. and lots of it. "So what?", you may be asking yourself.
MONSANTO -- Monsanto corporation makes Round-Up resistant corn so that you can spray Round-Up everywhere, and kill everything but your corn. Monsanto is also notoriously IP-litigious, surpassing perhaps even the mob and the RIAA in terms of enforcement ferocity (see: http://www.percyschmeiser.com/ ).
It is quite clear to me, then, that Monsanto corporation has done something to their corn, to make impossible for the bees to steal their IP and bring it to other crops. This "sometime" is almost certainly the introduction of a neurotoxin, designed to give the bees amnesia, so they can't remember where they live, and just flit about stupidly and die, allowing their rotting little corpses to decompose and fertilize the corn fields.
I won't be surprised if in a couple of years, all the bees are dead.. except for the new super-bees you can get from Monsanto. Which, by the way, have sterile queens...
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
So are we still calling the mobile phone a "mo-pho", or is that too old a joke?
The bees here on the gulf coast are dieing off.
There are less bees this year than last year.
I blame part of it on the weather, it's still cool here
I blame part of it on the developers, less crops here to their job on.
I blame the public, every time a good size hive is found in the wild
its killed in the "public's interest"
I blame cars, I pulled 2 dead ones off my grill this morning
I don't blame my cell phone or my WYPOP tower, I actually keep bee's at the base of my tower
so I know the microwaves are not killing them.
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
It sounds like most people here are against this theory, and they seem to be against it for various, thought out reasons. I'd definitely want more studies done before saying this may be the case, and in the end, I'm betting it's more likely a combination of factors that have combined to be lethal to bees, making it incredibly difficult to discover. However (I don't mean this to be flamebait), if there was something to this cell phone theory (or some other, newer radiation-emitting wireless technology), would the posters at a "news for nerds" site that covers technology be objective enough to see it? Or would it be like global warming, which is such a polarizing issue that seemingly otherwise intelligent people turn into conspiracy theorists or Al Gore bashers? It would be seismic news in the IT industries around the world if there was something to this...
I reviewd the reference in this article http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife /article2449968.ece
to find that the 'Independent' is nothing more than a collection of unreferenced
and unsupported 'guess-work pseudo-science' of no value whatsoever other than to
laboriously try to chase down what sources the publication might be able to conjure up to support its many allegations.
See for yourself!
tkjtkj@gmail.com
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
I mean, natural selection and all.
If 70% of hives collapse- that's not 100%.
The 30% that is resistant or immune to this effect becomes the new breeding stock.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Woman allergic to EM waves
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/ne
For most people talking on a mobile phone, cooking dinner in the microwave or driving in a car is simply part of modern living in 21st century Britain.
But completing any such tasks is impossible for Debbie Bird - because she is allergic to modern technology.
P.S. That is one shoddy looking woman
It's funny how we always blame man, I think you will find out in the
/ 29/the-bees-who-flew-too-high/ [synchronizm.com]
...
end it is more to do with the soon to occur Geomagnetic Reversal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal [wikipedia.org]
http://www.synchronizm.com/blog/index.php/2007/03
http://www.setiai.com/archives/000063.html [setiai.com]
Excerpt: (paragraph 10)
Perhaps the most enigmatic of the bee's senses is their ability to read the Earth's magnetic field. Magnetism is used by many animals, including dolphins and pigeons. The honeybee, however, is more sensitive than any other creature known.
This is a signpost of nature, if we watch we can learn...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
They don't use them in Europe, right?
The OP sounds like the plot to a Michael Chriten book.
No one knows why they are disappearing, so you can't breed for resistance.
Not all thing can be breed for resistance
What is known is that the decline of bees will be a catastrophe to US food crops.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
From SwissInfo comes a similar story.
I guess the prime challenge would be to find a non-radiated spot and see if bees there thrive. The problem is, we all wanted 100% coverage so it's going to be hard to find such a place that also appeals to bees..
Having said that, the theory isn't that alien IMHO. A bee doesn't exactly have a large body to dissipate radiation with - as it's smaller it has a larger surface to volume ratio..
So, will there be(e) a market in Faraday hives?
Insert
188 comments and no X-files moddings in sight?
I guess Chris Carter's shark has been truly jumped.
It was irresponsible for the Independent to run the title as " Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?"
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) of bees could have a major national and worldwide impact this year on crop yields.
But is said right in the article: "No one knows why it is happening."
It also says:
Right now that is just speculation. Decades ago a study conducted in Denver suggested taht inner city children were more prone to cancer in areas of the city where there were higher densities of electrical transformers.
The next thing people knew, there were articles everywhere that high voltage power lines could cause cancer in children. (even though the original study had nothing to do with power lines). People became afraid to live near high voltage lines and property values dropped.
Eventually the original study was proven to be faulty. Decades of anguish by many thousands of people were caused by the faulty extrapolation of conclusions from the original faulty study (see link).
Stephen Nodvin
Interesting theory... but I would guess the untested Nano products reaction with the environment or GMO competition wanting to eliminate seeds entirely would be a better theory. Soon nobody would want to go outside anyway right? Its scary out there...
Cellphones have been around since the 70s but they've just recently started to kill off bees.
Blaming it on cellphones is a bit of a stretch though. There seem to be far more likely causes:
Pesticides/herbicides/fertilisers, particularly modern hormonal ones, could be disrupting the hives.
Cross breeding of bees (eg. Africanised killer bees) could disrupt bee/hive behaviour.
Monoculture farming cuts down of plant food diversity, leading to a less balanced diet. GM crops alter the composition of pollen & nectar.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Sounds like an attempted return of the Luddites to me.
FWIW, the scientists are merely proposing it as a theory. They aren't claiming more than that it is consistent with a few minor tests. It probably is.
This isn't to say that this is the correct answer, just that it's consistent with the evidence against which it has been tested. (Probably that evidence forms the background against which it was formulated.) They are suggesting that it might be worth testing further. This seems reasonable. Since the cause of Colony Collapse Disease isn't known, examining new ideas is an appropriate next step.
There are several proposed reasons (in Slashdot, above) why this theory shouldn't be accepted. If it is to be accepted it would need to be able to answer those objections. To require that it answer them at this point, however, is unreasonable. The mechanisms behind theories are often reformulated several times during the early period of their development. E.g., it could turn out that cell phones use a pulse code that heterodynes to a frequency that matches the length of one of a bees neurons. Since any neural circuit has lots of neurons, lots of frequencies in a particular range would work. It might need to match a particular pulsation pattern, which just happens to match some popular ring-tone...and all that would need being done is abolishing that ring-tone. Were this to be the mechanism, it wouldn't be found without investigating cell-phone/bee interactions. (This is a REALLY silly hypothesis...but I don't know of anything that rules it out.)
Certainly this is an important enough problem that plausible theories should be investigated. And the plausibility of a theory is judged partially by comparing against its competitors. Also, there's no reason to just investigate one theory. (Different groups should be choosing different theories to investigate, as long as one isn't overwhelmingly probable...and possibly even then.)
To me the theory being greeted by a number of bad jokes can mean that people think it's an implausible theory, but it can equally well mean that they don't like the possibility that it might be correct. In this case, given this audience, I suspect that the latter is in operation whether the first is in operation or not.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Maybe this would have to do with high fructose corn syrup. At the park, Ive seen them go after pepsi just like sugar water and with all the affects HFCS has on us, I can only imagine what it would do to a little bee.
TIME is the Aether...
...that is all.
Tag proposal: correlationdoesnotimplycausation
Shush.
He got modded up, he must know what he is talking about.
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id =2991
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Some of the studies listed here go back to the 1980's... http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/03/06/mi llions_of_bees_die_are_electromagnetic_signals_to_ blame.htm
"Royal jelly flows like a river of nectar" -- that is pure poetry.
Colony Collapse Disorder and a general decline in pollinators are two separate issues. Colony Collapse Disorder has everything to do with beekeeping and honeybees. The issue of pollinator decline applies to a much more broad spectrum of insects. In other words, honeybees are pollinators but not all pollinators (or pollinating bees for that matter) are honeybees. It is likely that the two issues are not the causes of the same effect.
Interesting theory, but I decided this was unlikely after about three seconds of thought. Mobile phones and similar devices have been in heavy use for far longer than just one year. This fact destroys the theory.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
You would have been a better Slashdotter to have cut the first two paragraphs (where you announce your limited credentials and then launch into a pet peeve about the autism issue).
Your last paragraph -actually about bees- is dense and unsupported.
And the bit 'despite what you learned in high school' is patronizing and probably inaccurate. This isn't a HS forum, and they don't teach about bee hierarchies and transposons there anyway.
I see what you're saying: We have no idea what's killing the bees, so we should just blame the corporations. We already blame everything else on them anyway.
Also, you seem to think Wal-mart's CFL initiative was to remove incandescents from its shelves. I'm pretty sure it was to make the CFL's that are already on the shelves cheeper.
it's that Crazy Frog ringtone
/rant
It's Axel F, goddammit. Axel F, written by Harold Faltermeyer in 1984 for the movie Beverly Hills Cop , the protagonist of which, played by Eddie Murphy, was named Axel Foley.
NOT "the Crazy Frog" song.
Oh, and for the record, that Puff Daddy song, I'll Be Missing You? That was written by this dude called Sting, in a song called Every Breath You Take in 1983.
Goddamned kids these days. They're all "But I hate the 80s!" yet conveniently ignore the fact that three-quarters of their "culture" is ripped off from the 70s and 80s.
From http://www.setiai.com/archives/000064.html.
--
Use unpolarized sunlight: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
First of all, we do not know why the bees die out. And yes, it can become a serious problem for some plants we eat and therefore a problem for us. But till now, I have seen some more promising theories about that.
A) Bees die out because of the changing climate. As they are really sensible to temperature this seems very possible. Also a lot of plants start growing early and the bees wake up too late for them. So they get not enough food or the wrong one.
B) Bees have a problem with some genetic engineered plants and polls. This would at least correlate with the lower impact on Europe.
worker bees can leave even drones can fly away the queen is their slave
Make a few bad jokes on
If you read the FAQ from the Colony Collapse disorder working group you'll find that Genetically Modified Crops and Cell phone Radiation are not likely causes:
"What are examples of topics that the CCD working group is not currently
investigating? GMO crops: Some GMO crops, specifically Bt Corn have been
suggested as a potential cause of CCD. While this possibility has not been ruled out,
CCD symptoms do not fit what would be expected in Bt affected organisms. For this
reason GMO crops are not a "top" priority at the moment.
Radiation transmitted by cell towers: The distribution of both affected and non-affected
CCD apiaries does not make this a likely cause. Also cell phone service is not available
in some areas where affected commercial apiaries are located in the west. For this reason,
it is currently not a top priority.
Causes still under investigation include:
What potential causes of CCD is the Working Group investigating? The current
research priorities under investigation by various members of the CCD working group, as
well as other cooperators include, but is not limited to:
Chemical residue/contamination in the wax, food stores and bees
Known and unknown pathogens in the bees and brood
Parasite load in the bees and brood
Nutritional fitness of the adult bees
Level of stress in adult bees as indicated by stress induced proteins
Lack of genetic diversity and lineage of bees
If you have a Feb 1968 issue of Analog Science Fiction Magazine, or one of the other collections in which it has been reprinted since -- check out a neat little story entitled "If The Sabot Fits" by Walt and Leigh Richmond. The mind is like a steel trap sometimes.
Slashdot cell-aware folks help me here.
Could it be that some network-wide control software change implemented in late 2006, such as the timing of periodic 'location becaons' required by CALEA (law enforcement) in the United States, and in general dial-911 location, that has (suddenly) caused idle phones to go to high power to fix their location, more often.
Or the new, additional requirement of unit triangulation has extended the beacon sequence, where more towers spend more time at high power on all channels while communicating with more units.
Or the timing pattern of the signals has adopted a distinctive pulse whose off-on characteristic has suddenly become 'noticed' by the bees -- where it had been sensed but was not a serious distraction before.
Here's an experiment you can try at home. Take a on-but-idle cell phone and place directly on top of a video computer monitor or TV set. Call the phone. Do you see a movement in the screen a second or so before the ring? If so, you have a reliable means to see easily when the phone unit goes to 'high power' to scan towers and fix location.
With the phone idle, log the times you see the screen wiggle -- I carried a cell in 2000 and noticed it would do a beacon every five minutes or so, whenever it was turned on.
Perhaps the becaons have gotten more frequent in 2006, and/or some higher powered transmitters are being used at the towers. But the 'sudden' appearance of CCD -- would seem to more imply some industry-wide process protocol change, since the industry didn't majorly 're-tool' in late 2006. Perhaps the five-minute cell beacons have become much-more-often beacons, and a borderline CCD situation where bees' navigation might only rarely intersect with an idle cell entering a beacon sequence, has been pushed 'over the edge' by the network.
If phones are going to high power you'd see this happening with cells placed on computer monitors and TVs (sorry plasma/LCD folks you're in the dark!) and would note a decrease in battery life compared to previous.
As to commercial honeybees being 'monocultures' of few species -- okay, insects are the most precisely replicated machines out there. Where mammals and reptiles are rich blends of irregularly built tissue, insects are precise in structure and replication: those of a particular species resemble one another more closely than other living things, even most plants -- because plants are designed to scale.
So if I was asked to speculate -- of all creatures on Earth, which sort of creature would be the first to be affected by radio-frequency 'pollution' of a specific kind -- affected by signals not just the presence of electromagnetic energy -- I'd say insects. And as it happens, honeybees are some of the most complex insects there are. And the most complex part of the bees' makeup? 'The Dance' -- topographical memory -- and navigation.
We know Scripps and US Navy was screwing with the whales...?
Slashdot editors should have listened in Physics class. This is the fourth time in 3 years, if I count correctly, that Slashdot editors have been fooled by the SAME scam.
See my previous comment, posted January 13, 2005: Distinguish between real science and junk science.
Planck's constant is so small that interactions between electromagnetic waves and molecules cannot be chemically specific. The 2,000 MHz radiation from cell phones is felt as heat, a very, very small amount of heat, almost certainly not measurable.
Anyone may have theories. Someone could say, for example, that pigs have started flying and they have been eating the bees. The only real science, however, is based on what is already known through experimentation. That requires an understanding of what is known.
To me the theory being greeted by a number of bad jokes can mean that people think it's an implausible theory, but it can equally well mean that they don't like the possibility that it might be correct. In this case, given this audience, I suspect that the latter is in operation whether the first is in operation or not.
I'd bet the vast majority of those either making jokes or denigating the suggestion cellphones might be causing problems with bees no nothing about bees or beekeeping. Anything that treatens their technology is to be ridiculed whether it deserves it or not.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Seriously...
http://www.allometry.com
Oh, and for the record, that Puff Daddy song, I'll Be Missing You [wikipedia.org]? That was written by this dude called Sting, in a song called Every Breath You Take in 1983.
This reminds me of Madonna's song "lucky Star". Originally it was a Ragtime song from the early 1900's.
FalconShould there be a Law?
A computer with a bullet in it is just a paperweight; A map with a bullet in it is still a map.[Maj K. Hauk,USArmy]
What is an iPod with a bullet in it?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Duh, it's for the children. Don't you know how much bee stings hurt? :)
(And they really hurt me - I'm deathly allergic to the little buggers... But I'm not a children. I'm a fat, lazy, balding old man, so nobody would do anything on my account.)
I was the opposite. Growing up I used to freak out people by catching bees, well really I'd place my hand where bees would crawl on it. I only recall being stung once, when a wasp got trapped in a classroom of mine in high school I tried to get it to go outside when it stung me.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I wonder if the use of GMO in the US has anything to do with it. Why it would I can not say but with changed dna in plants then it certainly would have changed the pollen as well.
Thouhg I don't know if any are on the market now, for human consumption, some crops are engineered to create thier own pestices, specifically Bt. Corn was engineered years ago to produce Bt, it had an adverse effect: Biotech corn toxic to butterflies, study finds. Who knows if this may be effecting bees as well. It might but I doubt GMO crops are grown everywhere where bees are dying off.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Why would this start in the US and then go to Europe? Europe is far denser in population than the typical rural US where farming is comon. With the higher density there will of course be more cell phones. Seems odd to me.
I'd think bees have killed far more people than mobile phones ever have.
I don't know about this, personally I think people talking on their cellphones while driving is a serious risk. While driving I frequently barely avoid accidents because some asshole was talking on their phone and not paying attention to traffic. I have a cellphone, it's the only phone I have, but I use a handless set and pull over when I receive a call. And I never make a call while driving.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That's weird. Maybe I should stand under the current nuisance, I mean, beehive at my shop tomorrow morning and see if they'll fly away. Maybe my roof is shielding the cell tower across the street. Otherwise, I notice no decrease in bee populations I have an entire hive residing an outside hole in the wall at my shop.
Regardless of the merit of the theory (of which I am highly skeptical), it is not scientific. A theory can not be scientific. A theory is essentially an idea. it either precludes scientific work or is the result of it.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
genetic engineering is vital to our survival and evolution as sepcies
I have yet to see any proof or concrete evidence that suggests never mind says that genetic engineering is essential to human survival in the next milia. It's certainly not needed to grow enough food for everyone. Enough food is already grown for everyone however because of politics and other human caused problems many people don't get the food they need. Take Zimbabwe. The country used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. However once Pres. Mugabe forced white farmers off their farms and gave them to his cronies those farms became fallow, uncultivated, so it no longer produces the food it used to.
Or take Mexico. Many in the US are worried about all those "illegal aliens" or immigrants yet they rarely ask why they are here or trying to get to the US. Many of them do because they are Mexican farmers are being driven off their farms. This is due to NAFTA and the massive subsidies the US government gives to agribusinesses. These US companies are then able to export food to Mexico where they can sale it for less than Mexican farmers can grow the food themselves.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"You're not all-knowing, nor are you the center of the universe."
Exactly the reason I prefaced my one line post with the word "perhaps". Perhaps you should look up the meaning of "perhaps" before you accuse me of the self-centered arrogance of an inqusitor.
"So they burned those witches..."
Yes, many people throughout history have jumped to the wrong conclusion and have used their erroneous conclusions to enthusiastically denounced others. Your post demonstrates your willingness to join them.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Meh, the real company name is Vympelkom
Every time you use a cellphone God kills a bee.
Please. Think of the bees.
Yeah, I agree that other species will likely be affected (and perhaps they are, anyone know?) at least to some extent (maybe not so catastrophically), but it sounds like honey bees will be a primary indicator.
The geomagnetic field isn't particularly uniform, however. Check out this animated map (flash), or the others. It declines in spots all over, and we may even see localised temporary reversals in some areas.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
(Odd how one data point can establish a trend arguing against the effects of global warming, but 200 years' worth of data demonstrating its presence are roundly dismissed as insufficient.)
The one thing I always love, the GW adovates exaggerating their facts and injecting that into unrelated conversations. Its the old attempt of "say it enough times"
...is how processes that used to be natural are more and more "hand-held" by human efforts because the natural environments have been wiped out. Trying to replace nature with human effort just isn't entropically feasible, plus we don't know nearly enough about the processes we're trying to make work this way. Having to carry bees around to pollinate trees is just the wrong solution to a much worse problem.
If the bees are wiped out in USA by mobile phone usage then in Europe even the cockroaches should become extinct. But I killed one this morning in the bathroom so this article is proved to be false !
I remember hearing on CNN that cheap Chinese honey imports are killing of the honeybee industry. I thing this is a more plausible theory to explain diminishing bee populations....
"Drawing closer to world domination, keystroke by keystroke."
Gee, you mean to say that we cannot be saved from the killer bees by dialing out on our cellphones?
It's a bummer that bees are dying off just when conditions are starting to get better for vegetation with all the increased co2, warmth and humidity planned for the global warming era. Maybe they'll start to thrive more if we are headed for a new ice age instead. Or, is it possible the worker bees are getting tired of socialism and are opting for potentially more rewarding entrepreneurial lifestyles?
An interesting comparison for this and other explanations would be are the bees being killed off in pockets like our valley. We have no cell phone reception, no radio, no TV due to the shielding of the mountains. There is no pesticide or herbicide spraying. I kept bees for 25 years but am not doing so right now so I can't provide data but it would be interesting to know if isolated areas have the colony collapse problem or not. Different types of isolations would add up to good info. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/
Now grandma can choose between the TV preacher and the research scientist.
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
The bee disappearance suddenly began in America this year. It spread to Europe. But America and Eupope have both had cell phones for many years. If it was cell phones then wouldn't we have seen this effect progressively over time, instead of all of a sudden?
That, in combination with the Varroa and the Tracheal mites, (which still infest colonies today), and various other problems which can cripple colonies seems to make more sense to me. There may indeed be some new factor involved, but cell phones. . ?
I distrust the telecom corps far more than most people on Slashdot, but blaming CCD on EM radiation doesn't make much sense to me.
--While there may indeed be some truth to the idea that EM radiation might cause problems in a Honey Bee's navigation system, (EM causes chaotic synaptic firings in brain tissue), I have to wonder just how good the cell phone coverage is out in America's Bread Basket. --And among the almond groves of California State.
-FL
And bussing bees around the country likely contributes by stressing them out. You imagine that this just keeps the CCD rate higher but still constant; however, it might also spready diseases faster.
So what if al the above factors are stacking up to keep the CCD rate dangerously high. And then a particularly bad seasonal "bee cold" goes around?
Europe amy be seeing "delayed onset" because (a) they treat their bees better and/or (b) the cold took longer ot get there.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The problem is they test it for human consumption, in levels a normal person might eat.
But it is possible it creates trace pesticides that bring a new "Silent Spring" to the bees instead.
This would also explain, in addition to mites, the spread pattern.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In the future, if you choose to post, try to do it in a language that the people reading it understand.
Now that I mention it, don't ever post again.
And kill yourself, you're too fucking stupid to live.
The most likely reason that I have run across is due to genetically modified crops. Their pollen is filled with the same herbicides and pesticides that the plants themselves are(the wheat/corn/etc less so) and it's poisoning them in great numbers.
The GM corn in question was only planted 6 years ago and now accounts for more than half of the U.S. crop. This coincides with the problem almost exactly.
Moral: Don't try this in Europe. Oh, wait, they don't and the bees are just fine...
If you read the "explorative study" in detail, it says that bees are so small, that their resonant frequencies (fs) are much higher than cell phones (375 GHz). http://www.bienenarchiv.de/forschung/2004_lernproz esse/Electromagnetic%20Exposure_Learning%20Process es.doc.pdf
Essentially, they don't have body part large enough to receive anything at 850 MHz where US cell phones operate and 1.9 GHz where US PCS phones operate.
Flaws in Harts, Kuhn, Stever (2006) experiment (the German study that all the papers are referring to) http://agbi.uni-landau.de/material_download/IAAS_2 006.pdf
The Harts, Kuhn, Stever (2006) experiment is flawed in several ways. It's not a double-blind, randomized study and the controls are not identical to the test unit. I understand it's a preliminary investigation and not a complete study. But even a good science fair project does some things to remove as much bias as possible from its experiment. I'm sorry this is JUNK SCIENCE.
The researchers know which hives are control and which hives have the DECT cordless base unit in it. And, the bees should not be able to detect whether their hive is control or one with a DECT base in it. The problem with this is that the researchers may inadvertently record data wanting a certain result.
Note that the eight control hives had no DECT base unit in them. The bees may not have liked the smell of the DECT base unit or its additional warmth. Perhaps if the hive is warmer, maybe the bees insctinctively know not to collect as much pollen/honey.
In a well designed experiment, both the control and the active bee hives would have antennas mounted in them. The RF source would have been located in a separate enclosure, far away from the bee hive so that it's heat did not change conditions in the hive and connected to the antenna via low-loss transmission line.
The experiment was not re-run so that the bees used as controls in one experiment were then exposed to RF in a subsequent experiment and vise-versa. The bees that got the DECT base station installed into their hive may have been contaminated in one way or another. The bee hives that contained the DECT base units may have been made sick due to the installation of the base units. Perhaps the test hives were at one end of the row of hives and the controls were at the other end. The test hives could have gotten more or less sun exposure than the control hives. The experiment should have removed that variable completely by randomizing which hives were test and which were controls.
The hives could also have been run as self-controls. I.e. the behavior of the hive should have been recorded before and after the experiment with a control period. This would have ensured that the RF was the only variable applied.
The article does not explain the technical flaws they encountered in detail nor do they adequately explain the gaps in the weather data.
They claimed they were looking for "Non-thermal effects of RF" nut did not adequately record temperatures inside of the control and the test hives. They needed to adequately prove that their experiment was not heating the test hive. I also did not see the data on how much the bees had actually eaten when they were fed. They should have taken a much closer look at metabolic changes such as the level of activity in the hive.
The article was not peer reviewed to uncover the above flaws in the experiment. ==> Junk Science
Beekeepers earn much more renting their bees out to pollinate crops than in producing honey, and researchers are concerned that trucking colonies around country to pollinate crops could add to bees' stress and help spread viruses and mites of crops that rely on pollination. (see http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F1 0B1FF8355A0C748EDDAB0894DF404482)
the key point it seems is ..."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."
This would suggest that whatever is causing the colony collapse also scares the bejeesus out of the parasites, wildlife and other bees. Given the endemic nature of cell phone transmissions, and the fact that bee hives aren't typically the most preferred location for cell transmission stations, there would be no more reason for the parasites, wildlife, and other bees to avoid the abandoned hive than the empty field next to it, a nearby apple orchard, my backyard, or any other location.
Unless of course cell phone usage by the Queen and her entourage has reached a critical peak point and continues after the other bees have abandoned the hive - like if the Queen was continually texting them to find out where they were.
Thanks bongk. You are quoting http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/FAQ/FAQCCD.pdf (insightful deserves a source link!) -- so far, has anyone managed to actually produce MAPS with REAL DOTS on them, aside from those silly "affected states" maps? The http://beealert.blackfoot.net/~beealert/index.php people are taking surveys -- not even asking people to volunteer zip codes by incident (I've emailed them about that) so what kind of GIS treatment is there, could there be?
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;-)
The other notable aspect is the 'sudden' onset of this problem. And unlike the genetics of monoculture bees, dissemination of crops, introduction (and use!) of pesticides... if the cell network had changes to its signalling patterns, there is the possibility to fit the suddenness aspect.
My offering in the bees/cellphone intersection set,
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23089
is a theory where phones themselves -- through routine queries to go to high power and ID their location, could have been asked to step up their activity in 2006. Or some 3G rollout. Still hoping for some cell aware slashdotter to weigh in on this. And no, for the record I'm not the guy claiming there's some cell-tower based shadow mind control network out there. With all due respect -- I'm starting to lose mine.