Study Claims Cellphones Implicated In Bee Loss 542
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.
Inverse-square law of radiation says no (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but if you have to place the cell phone right in the hive there's no way a hive more than five feet away from a cell phone 24x7 is going to be impacted by this.
Perhaps the bees just got really into texting to the exclusion of pollen gathering.
CCD Overblown (Score:2, Interesting)
Waitaminute... I thought I read in Scientific American or somesuch that the recent CCD scare was actually just a surge in reporting in the media, not an actual dramatic increase in rates. Furthermore, most of the real cases were attributed to more mundane causes pesticides or the stress of a colony being moved...
Someone back this poor AC up with a link.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:1, Interesting)
Four fields of bee hives, one with Faraday cages installed on each hive, one with nothing (control), one with cell phones on/in the box, and another with the phone 2m away. That'd generate the kind of data we're actually looking for wouldn't it?
Re:This is actually a very serieus problem. (Score:3, Interesting)
Disregarding poor methodology... (Score:1, Interesting)
Bees do find their way back to the hive by observing polarized light from the sun's rays scattering in the atmosphere, the frequencies involved are far, far different than the ~1GHz used in cell phone bands.
Re:Disregarding poor methodology... (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't explain losses at remote apiaries... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was talking to a fellow beekeeper on Quadra Island [wikipedia.org], which is in a very rural part of the province, with a population of about 2000 people. This beekeeper lost 470 hives out of 500 this year.
There aren't many people, and cellphone service is poor... I doubt there are many phones there.
I'm skeptical until a lot more research is done.
Re:Sample size (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering all the jack-assery that I've seen associated with cell phones, there's a part of me that would love to see then banned.
I'm posting as AC because I already modded in this thread. I'm also feeling cranky because I have to go to work tomorrow so I'll take this to the ridiculous extreme.
I see comments like this from time to time and I'm not going to jump on DOD but instead depersonalize it. Whenever someone makes a comment about cell phones being banned, I would ask them to lead by example. Get rid of their phone and ask everyone you're with to turn theirs off or leave them at home (wife/husband/sig other/kids/parents/friends/whatever). I don't miss the days of staying home while on-call or using a two way pager and then having to find a phone. I laugh at the "old" movies where the chase is on but they stop to make a call to get backup or alert the victim to their impending doom. Or the cliche of waving down a passing car on a dark rainy to get assistance with (insert what you can't fix here). Or the time I walked to a farmhouse and instead of Frank N. Furter doing the Time Warp I was met by a pack of dogs. And the other things... GPS/maps/Internet/email/etc. I could go on but I'm not that clever. You get the idea. I'm not willing to give all that up because someone on the bus thinks they are important and they want me to think that too.
Oh, and for all the vaccine haters out there, I also don't miss polio.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not really. Both hives had phones in them. In one of the hives, the phones were powered on for two, 15 minutes periods per day. In the hive with the active phone, the bees stopped producing honey and there was a "dramatic" decline in the bee population for that hive. That seems like something, not nothing and seems like it'd be worth further study. This is the first step. If nothing had happened, they could dicard the thesis, but something did happen. Maybe the next step is hive near cell towers and hives not near cell towers.
Temperature Alone could be the problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:5, Interesting)
Several countries (most notably China) already use armies of human workers wandering around with pollination brushes in order to pollinate crops that used to be taken care of (for free) by bees.
This sort of thing falls squarely in the realm of "ecological services" provided by the various natural systems we humans are busily degrading or outright destroying.
Actual Apiarist/beekeeper here. Blame GMO'd pollen (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey guys. Here's the skinny of it all. Posting ANONYMOUS because it isn't worth the libel and slander of any effort against me to waste my time any more of whom I've to blame
I am an active part-time Apiarist. Been that way ever since a kid, because I'm poor and insects are cheap fun that give me a God-complex of love over helping the little stingy creatures in my hands. From prior ventures in Construction I've accumulated enough window-screen and plastic-polymer sun-screen that I was able to cover my entire backyard into three cube sections each with two colonies in them. In the section with the plastic-polymer sun-screen that gives absolutely no breeze and complete isolation from the environment, I reared two colonies of bees on natural heirloom flowering plants and used air-conditioners to keep the moisture levels steady and supplemented artificial lighting to keep the nectar flowing through more seasons. In the other window-screen enclosure, I planted your Home Depot variety of GMO'd flowers and such that produced plenty of nectar just they are written GMO'd on them. If you ever visit a garden Nursery to buy your flowers, much of the plants being sold today no longer have butterflies and bees swarming them because they've been GMO'd to the point that their odor and nectar is unappealing or poisonous. In the 3rd enclosure, it is completely cut-off from all flowering plants of any kind and the colony is reared on a sugar-cane solution I've developed myself and all the time while aerial-spraying the bees with a Titanium Oxide solution that is apparent as an atmosphere conditioner that I encountered in Los Angeles County.
You wouldn't believe what the results are.
The results of my Bees under House-arrest is that the bees that consume Homo Depot potted-plants' pollen and nectar in the open-atmosphere window-screen enclosure proved that the bees are dying from diseases encountered through seriously week Immune Systems all because the GMO'd pollen and nectar physically hurts them; what kills them most is Fungal Infections, no mites in any of my bees because they are under House Arrest in each of their caged cubicles. The next enclosure that is closed-circulation in a Sun-screen plastic-polymer tent is they are thriving like any colony should, rougly 40k bees in the towers. The last enclosure, the one where the bees were again closed-off from the atmosphere like the other ones and fed on a reliable solution of my own making, yet aerial-sprayed with Titanium Oxide, they all encountered almost the same kinds of Fungal Infections as the open-atmosphere bees that were only allowed Homo Depot GMO'd plants.
That's all there was to it, fellas. The contracts to the Aerial Spraying over Los Angeles is similarly available here as cloud_seeding_draft_mnd_final.pdf [anonymouse.org].
It's bad enough that all the CORN Pollen of GMO's plants has killed all the Monarch Butterflies. You'ld think you all would take a hint that Bees aren't the only insects dying.
It's costed me 4 dead colonies, over $2k of actual materials and 5 months of electricity for the test sites not including rent if were done on another premise, and all I got were obvious results that didn't have any tests to do with cell phone radiation. I would be more concerned with Cell-phone TOWERS and what effects they could have because those frequencies are resonating at frequencies of water that all life forms around them might be affected by. I've heard stories about Army communications officers and technicians, as well as ARRL HAM-licensees, getting all kinds of diminished Immune Systems and cancers from working over 5 hours a day in constant contact with these energy fields.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Interesting)
No doubt. That was my first response. Please, someone do this same experiment in different parts of the US and around the world.
A sad reality is that even if we proved the mobile phones are the cause, we would sooner die than give up our phones. On the other hand, if someone came up with a nice short-range, low-power strategy that utilized our old copper lines and power polls everywhere, we could reduce the amount of radiation quite a bit. The remaining problem would be service in the country areas, which I am sad to say would likely need to be managed through things like mobile satellite repeaters or some such thing... city coverage wouldn't bee as much of a challenge.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:4, Interesting)
Study, yes. Jumping to conclusion, no.
Somehow, I find it terribly hard to believe that cell phones are responsible for the GLOBAL decline in bee populations and bee productivity. The same problems are being witnessed in developed countries, as well as undeveloped.
If you were to do a search on my posts about cell phones, you would quickly learn that I don't much like them, and I am also suspicious of health hazards that are little understood at this time. But, anyone who is even trying to be rational will recognize that bees dying off in backwoods areas with little or no cell phone service can't be blamed on cell phones.
If cell phones were to blame, we would be seeing huge dye-offs in Florida, New Jersey, California -but states like Montana and Idaho would be virtually unaffected.
As far as I can determine, that is not the case at all.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
4 WHOLE hives you say? Wow.. just wow.
I'm a beekeeper. Any beekeeper knows that hive productivity and queen laying varies quite a bit. Why? Queens aren't all the same, and the genetics obviously varies. Some queens lay more than other queens. As queens get older, they start to lay less eggs (and eventually the workers give her the boot and make a new queen). The queen will produce all the workers, and her genetics combined with the genetics of the drones she mated with will determine the behavior of the workers produced. There's probably a dozen other factors at work as well.
The idea that you can take only 4 hives, average the results, and expect any kind of meaningful answer out of that is ridiculous. If they did this with 40 hives I might start listening. But 4? Beyond stupid.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:2, Interesting)
True. But cell phone towers have much higher signal strength than mobile phones. IANAPhysicist, but might a close-range phone be used as an analogue for a longer-range tower?
A more interesting alternative experiment taking into account the inverse square law would be:
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope. All the bees in a single field could be impacted by a nearby external uncontrolled stimulus: anything from an early frost, drought, pesticide applications, diseases, mites, fungi, competing colonies of nearby bees, or even dirt on the shoes of the guy changing the cell phone batteries. You'd need a really large set of samples to figure out if there was even a measurable impact by using a Faraday cage. I seriously doubt that a hundred fields would provide enough samples.
Four samples would yield nothing more significant that the current article, which is another way of saying "worthless".
Different conclusion (Score:2, Interesting)
The experiment tries (with a tiny sample size) to shows something else:
In the experiment, the phone was as close as it could get to the hive, and was only active for 15 mins/day. This resembles more of somebody talking on a mobile phone for 15 mins/day. And if that could adversely affect bees, then it could also adversely affect humans, right?
After all, we're all living beeings. (I had to put that pun in somewhere. I just had to.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. All the bees in a single field could be impacted by a nearby external uncontrolled stimulus.
Now that was my first thought in regard to his experimental design. Why have the four conditions separated into four fields, much better to mix them up. But that's not what I was responding to. I was responding to someone talking about "individual hives" who concluded by telling us that "[f]our samples would yield nothing more significant that the current article."
I seriously doubt that a hundred fields would provide enough samples.
You're just pulling that figure out of a hat. How many hives per field for a start? Beyond that we'd need some measure of variance in the data before we could go about calculating the required sample size. It seems unlikely to require thousands of hives (assuming >10 hives per field) for each condition though.
Even as late as the 70s they made us read this [amazon.com] the bastards. I just wish I could remember more so I could cut you down with my astounding knowledge of experimental design. ;)
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:2, Interesting)
You need to read your own link! What the GP is talking about is not indentured servitude. There is no forced period of employment.
He's saying that people should have to work for their welfare checks. Is that really so onerous? I don't think so. I don't even think it is that new a concept...
Most of us call it a job.
No, it's called forced labour and it always ends in abuse. Read your history before recreating its worst excesses, please.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Interesting)
>>We got really lucky - we didn't have a civil war (though it was close) - YET
>Fixed that for you
On a long enough timeframe the probability of any possible event occuring approaches one. In other words, yeah it's possible, and it WILL come - if you are prepared to wait long enough. Right now there is exactly ZERO evidence suggesting one in our lifetime.
>>, and we got one of the most wonderful and forgiving leaders in world history so we didn't get a destructive, vengeful time >>afterwards...
>Wait wait, when did that "afterwards" of yours end??? Because where I live, people still get killed just for being white. You >probably also haven't heard Mal Ema recently. I suggest you wake out of your 1994-induced euphoria.
It hasn't ended. It's true that we got a less adequate government now -actually we're TWO less wonderful governments later. So ?
Did you expect to get somebody of the calibre of De Klerk and Mandela every time ? Nations are rarely lucky enough to get ONE such leader, we had two. STFU and count your blessings.
So there's a loudmouth youngster who says horrible things and get in the news... nothing new there. Peter Mokaba used to do everything Malema does... where is he now ? What did it ever lead to ?
The loudmouths get enough youth support to cement themselves some money, they never have any real power because the big bosses prefer not to shoot themselves in the foot (or should I say wallet).
Yes there is racial violence sometimes... nowhere in the world is THAT not true, and it's not particularly worse here. Statistically black people are STILL the victims of crime 5 times more often than white people... now seeing as they outnumber us 5 to 1... that suggests that the very large majority of crimes choose their victims for convenience, not skincolour.
I despise the current government. But I am sufficiently liberated to see it as a government that is incompetent and corrupt, nothing more. Race doesn't exist- it's a scientific fact (the genetics have proven it beyond all doubt) the differences between "races" are as minor as that between two dogs of the SAME breed, where one happens to be a different color. Dog breeds are MORE different than human races...
So stop thinking in terms of race. I was MARRIED outside my race (and the fact that I'm not married anymore was because of other unrelated issues - race and culture was never a problem - if anything it added spice to our sexlife).
Cut out the irrational white fear bullshit you get fed by the papers. The papers write what sells, there is NO truth to it. You are NOT being targetted or victimized. In a country with a 40% unemployment rate DESPITE the (racist) affirmative action laws white people STILL have only 5% unemployment, still fill the top 20% of salaried jobs, still make up 60% of business owners (and the next 30% are Indians - not Blacks).
The only victimization you're experiencing is in your head. This country is doing just great. It has problems and we need to recognize them, be aware of them and fix them - but your kind of bullshit white-complaining is not only blatantly untrue, it makes things worse. The rest of us are trying to make this country better and crap like the shit you talk makes that harder to do.
You wanna complain ? Complain about the amount of street children starving tonight. NOT about the fact that the cops don't beat them up so they may steal your wallet to survive. Complain about the 40% of people here who have no skills, cannot read or write and have no jobs and are on the verge of starvation every day. Complain about the fact that we pay massive taxes to try and save those lives - and corrupt politicians stick that money in their backpockets.
But don't come to me with fucked up bullshit about "evil black guys wanna kill me".
It's funny - a helluva lot of white AMERICAN's say the exact same thing ... and THEY outnumber their black counterparts more than 9 to 1... it's irrational racist fear and it's just
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:1, Interesting)
Are you aware that cell phone towers have directional capability? By placing a phone in a hive, it may cause a tower to increase its signal in that area.
Re:Temperature Alone could be the problem. (Score:3, Interesting)
How much additional heat would the 15-minute per day cell phone sessions plus the phone being in "Stand-By" 24/7 produce in the hive? My guess is it might increase the temperature a couple of degrees.
Bugger all.
Does talking on the phone for 15mins heat your head up by a couple of degrees?
No.
How often do you stick your phone inside your head while you talk? Have you never used your phone as a hand-warmer in winter? I have. If I can feel the warmth, it must be more than a couple of degrees F (enough to screw with the very temperature sensitive bees).
LoL at article... (Score:5, Interesting)
The latest one that he lost was in March. In a matter of days, all the bees died within the hive as if they had been gassed or poisoned. None of the bees attempted to remove the old bees as normally happens. The "full complement" of workers was there in a pile at the bottom of the hive--nothing had dispersed. There was no smell of disease. And there was plenty of non-rotted honey left. Few predators or scavengers to be found in the hive eating the honey: no yellow jackets, and all the hive beetles were dead. A few spiders. Very, very odd.
The previous one died in December/January. The previous year, there had been plenty of honey left. This was a very productive hive. We opened it up after noticing the eerie silence near the hive and that the bees were not egressing for cleaning flights. Pushing on the hive, it rocked with ease which normally doesn't happen because these things can weigh well over a hundred pounds when healthy. There was absolutely NOTHING left in this huge hive. No honey, no workers, no brood, nothing. No honey. No dead bees on the outside. A healthy hive had just disappeared during the middle of the winter.
I find a little conflict here. The service out there is kind of sucky, and I don't see how he could have lost three hives in the last year and none in prior years when probably nothing has changed with the cell service out there aside from maybe a beam direction change.
as a scientist I take offense (Score:3, Interesting)
Science is a method for obtaining data, testing hypotheses, and reporting results. The results of science, like virtually anything else, can be misused. The current atmosphere of decreeing that "science is marketing" or "science is biased" degrades the method which is NOT at fault. If we want to improve our understanding of nature and the universe then we need to learn, as a society to decouple objective results from interpretation, rather analogous to how society would be better served by a clearer decoupling of news opinion from news facts.