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
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..."
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.
THE BEEEES
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
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.
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
"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.
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
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
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)
-
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.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!!!!
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
Anyone checked lately for a Vogon Constructor Fleet?
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.
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.
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