Study Claims Cellphones Implicated In Bee Loss

krou passes along word from Telegraph.co.uk that researchers from Chandigarh's Punjab University claim that they have proven mobile phones could explain Colony Collapse Disorder. "They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behavior and productivity of bees in two hives — one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two 15-minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed. After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phone, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey. The queen bee in the 'mobile' hive produced fewer than half of those created by her counterpart in the normal hive. They also found a dramatic decline in the number of worker bees returning to the hive after collecting pollen." We've talked about the honeybee problem before. Today's article quotes a British bee specialist who dismisses talk of cellphone radiation having anything to do with the problem.

Comments

Wait, what?

[Karganeth]

They only had 2 hives in their experiment?

Re:Wait, what?

[Sycraft-fu]

There's also the whole "inverse square law" thing. Power drops off with the square of distance. So if something is outputting 3 watts right at the transmitter, you are not receiving 3 watts when you are 100 feet away. Even if the energy from mobile devices is what has an impact, you need to test it in the levels yo actually see in the real world. As an example: My phone currently shows 4 bars, which is the max for the model (Curve 8330). When I ask it how powerful the signal it is getting, it says -80dBm. That is 10 picowatts, or 0.00000000001 watts. The maximum output for a class 1 mobile phone is 33dBm, which is 2 watts. I should note this is a strong signal. The phone works fine with signals less than -90dBm.

So, when you are talking about being right next to the transmitter, as opposed to a normal distance away, you are talking many MANY orders of magnitude of signal difference. The signal of cell towers is extremely weak at the average location in the city (and weaker still in the country). They work with low signal strength and low SNR. That's the reason they work with low power devices.

Even if the physical presence of the phone doesn't fuck with the results, the power very well could. If they want to test this properly it would require multiple hives, and transmitters that bathed the area in the kind of energy you'd see from the actual network.

two hives

[mkavanagh2]

that's a sample size that even andrew wakefield would have considered ridiculous

This is actually a very serieus problem.

[santax]

The grandparent from ms. Santax is a bee-keeper. He told me about the many losses of complete hyves in recent years, not only at his place, but with the 'competition' also. If this is truly the reason or of an influence of this magnitude as suggested by the article, then we really really really need to shut down those GSM-freqencies and fix it or find a better alternative. Cause else there won't be anybody left to call in about 40 years.

Re:This is actually a very serieus problem.

[Stormy Dragon]

Funny the bees had no problems back in the 70s when the GSM band was UHF television channels 70-83. Because you'd think that if little 3-5 watt transmitters are killing the bees, then high power broadcast antennas would have had some noticeable effect.

Re:Independent studies warranted

[Pharmboy]

One study involving two hives doesn't even prove correlation, as it could be just random chance, as one hive will always do better than another hive. It is interesting and maybe worth doing some real studies.

But are we going to all give up our cell phones if it turns out that they cause problems with bees?

This crap gives science a bad reputation

[Colin Smith]

I mean, seriously.

And the bloody media come up with crap like "Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee" based on it.

"Study says", "scientists say". It's tealeaf reading. Crystal ball gazing. Science is nothing more than a marketing term to convince people to buy whatever they're selling.

We need a term to describe things which appear to be science but in fact which are not.

 

Re:Independent studies warranted

[spazdor]

I got three words for you: inverse square law.

If it takes putting a phone into the hive, then we're not really testing the effects of cellphones(as they are used IRL) on bees anymore.

Re:Independent studies warranted

[gstoddart]

But are we going to all give up our cell phones if it turns out that they cause problems with bees?

No, but here's some food for thought:

If commercial agriculture relies on bees to pollinate commercial crops ... and if the cell phones are killing the bees ... what happens when there's no bees left?

We stand to lose a lot if we lose bees. Research into their health is important to our ability to grow food.

I wouldn't mind...

[sycodon]

... if they banned cell phones. I made it through the first 35 years of life without one and I can make the rest of the way without one.

Re:Independent studies warranted

[grcumb]

Let's empty our prison cells, our ghetto projects, and everyplace else we are warehousing deadbeat do-nothing bums, and put them to work.

Either this modest little proposal of yours is a case of an epically poor sense of the mechanics of satire, or you're actually serious about this. Forgive me if I assume that it's the latter.

Before you embark on the journey towards that lofty goal, you might want to do a bit of research into this historical social phenomenon called Indentured Servitude and workhouses. They were, after all, some of the means by which the US economy operated in its early days. (The other was slavery, but that meddler Lincoln made sure we'd never get that back.)

You know, Charles Dickens, the Methodist movement and entire generations of the best and brightest in England, Europe and North America devoted their lives to ending this practice. If they knew you were proposing it again, they'd no doubt be rolling in their graves.

Shame on you for even considering this. Shame too on the moderator(s) who thought this was in any way insightful.