Slashdot Mirror
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
Bees should wear those
The UK had 3G long before the US. But 3G mainly covers metropolitan areas. I believe bees are more rural and they don't currently benefit from 3G connections.
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
Gees. Another free market Darwinist; "bees are just not being competitive enough in the marketplace of pollination and are being pushed aside. So what if the bees are wiped out, the free market of nature will fill up the gap with many other providers of pollination services".
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)