Would you give up your cell phone?

[abracax]

Mobile Phones Killing Off Bees?

Without bees, we lose much of our food production. More than a million bee colonies are believed to have died out in the United States in the past year alone. While the bizarre phenomenon of dying bees is mostly contained to the US and Europe, not knowing what is responsible means it will be to stop it from spreading.

The UK Independent asks if mobile phones are somehow responsible :

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But 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. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers...,The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. 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.

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.

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

[Merdeux]

Bees with cell phones? I doubt it. I don't think they make them that small...

[chinothepony]

I would totally give up my cell phone. I hate it as it is.

But I'm afraid I am but one person against the millions of texting girls and guys out there, and corporations that have them so integrated.

I guess it was just a matter of time. Time before our signals clock up the airwaves so much that its interfering with nature.

[abracax]

I have always thought that with everything becoming "wireless" that we would be screwing up something, our health, migration patterns, just nature in general.

RF alone interferes with quite a few things in nature, and I wonder if anyone in the world has begun to think of alternate forms of wireless that doesn't cause so many problems.

[TWT]

I am somewhat sceptical of this, we have been using cell phones for a decade, TV's for five, and radios for nearly a century, and only in the last year the colonies started to claopse. Also if nothing will go near the hive, like the parasits and preditors, this would indicate somthing other than cell phones, unless that is this study implys that bears and fox are also sensitive to cell phone signals.

[abracax]

I am somewhat sceptical of this, we have been using cell phones for a decade, TV's for five, and radios for nearly a century, and only in the last year the colonies started to claopse. Also if nothing will go near the hive, like the parasits and preditors, this would indicate somthing other than cell phones, unless that is this study implys that bears and fox are also sensitive to cell phone signals.

It says predators, as in the other wasps and bee's that prey on the honey and honey bees themselves.

Bears and foxes really aren't considered predators of honey bees because they occasionally grab some in the wild, the article itself is about bee farms, which these days constitutes the majority of honey bees in this world.

[TWT]

Ok, still to have major cross species effect from somthing that we have been using for 10+ years only start showing up in the last 24 monthes seems strange

[Merdeux]

This is old and has been debunked. Don't fall for media hype.

Try: Israeli acute paralysis virus

Because when fear is the opponent, science doesn't stand a chance.

[abracax]

At the bottom of the article it says "if a mobile phone is place nearby", I assume it means close to the hive. That part I can believe, I can also believe that with science admittedly not having the answer for everything, and we as humans still know very little about our own world, it is possible that "wireless" can have an impact.

Whether this article is real or not, if it did have such an impact, would you be willing to give up your cell phone?

[TWT]

Assuming this artical is true, and there was no way to change/fix whatever it was that caused this phenominon, than yes.