Cell phones and bees

[goatkid]

I was just talking with a couple this mornring who have heard that the reason the bee population is declining is due to all the cell phone usage. The signals cause the bees to lose their way back to the hives. I have become pretty annoyed by the blatantly rude use of cell phones in public, but this goes beyond that. We need the bees to maintain life on this planet. Cell phones have their purpose and, like other elements of technology can benefit people. Overused, however, they are a nuisance and even dangerous.

[Trixie]

If it's true ----------I agree -

[TxGypsy]

Guess I'm lucky cell phones don't work here......at all(no I'm not kidding...yes I'm in the USA). Plenty of bees here going insane over all the flowers due to the abundance of rain. I'm not convinced that is the reason for the hive abandonment but it's as good a theory as any until it can proved or dis-proved. I kind of hope it is and I hope it isn't....folks won't give up their cell phones but you can always hope they might. Yep I'm deluding myself again....sigh.

[paintlady]

That's an interesting topic. We have some Amish friends who don't have cell phones or any phones for that matter. They live in a very isolated area with no one else around but other Amish. They had bees last year-- and lost them. They told us that they just disappeared.
I am thinking it is more of a gmo/pesticide answer. There are gmo corn and soybeans all over the place and also too many people spraying their fields. The potato guys spray the pototoes in the fall to kill the plants overnight so they can harvest and I am sure this is being done in other parts of the country with other crops. As many bees are moved around the country to pollinate various crops maybe they are coming in contact with this stuff and it is effecting their navigation devices. There seems to be an increase in mutated frogs, possibly from contaminated water.. I guess there could be many answers.

[sammyd]

The cell phone thing was debunked almost after it came out.

[blufford]

Our bees don't use cell phones here. Still to heavy to carry.

[Dave S.]

sammyd, could you link us to some articles regarding this? I am just hearing about the cell phone link, and it would be great to hear that they are not the cuase. Not becuase I hold cell phones in such high regard, but becuase I know we will never make any progress against them.

Dave

[Alice In TX/MO]

I talked to a bee guy here, and he said it was mites. I also found a website saying the mites are a problem because most bee keepers are using overside cell combs, and it takes the bees longer to get them closed up, which allows the mites longer to attack the brood.

http://bushfarms.com/bees.htm

From CBS news website:
(AP) The answer to what happened to America's vanishing honeybees is simple, a caller told entomologist May Berenbaum: Bee rapture. They were called away to heaven.

No, wait, it is Earth's magnetic field, another caller told the University of Illinois professor.

And when Berenbaum went on the Internet, she found a parody news site that quoted her as blaming rapper Kevin Federline, Britney Spears' ex-husband, and his concerts for the disappearance of the bees. Berenbaum loved it.

The sudden disappearance of one-quarter of America's honeybees has brought out some strange ideas and downright myths.

“I just can't get any work done,” Berenbaum said. “I'm overwhelmed by e-mails. I can't keep up.”

A couple of bee myths are big on the Internet.

A small German scientific study looking at a specific type of cordless phones and the homing systems of bees exploded over the Internet and late night television shows. It morphed into erroneous reports blaming cell phones for the honeybee die-off, which scientists are calling Colony Collapse Disorder.

The scientist who wrote the paper, Stefan Kimmel, e-mailed The Associated Press to say that there is “no link between our tiny little study and the CCD-phenomenon ... anything else said or written is a lie.” And U.S. Department of Agriculture top bee researcher Jeff Pettis laughs at the idea, because whenever he goes out to investigate dead bees, he cannot get a signal on his cell phone because the hives are in such remote areas.

Also on the Internet is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein on how humans would die off in four years if not for honeybees. It is wrong on two counts.

First, Einstein probably never said it, according to Alice Calaprice, author of “The Quotable Einstein” and five other books on the physicist.

“I've never come across it in anything Einstein has written,” Calaprice said. “It could be that someone had made it up and put Einstein's name on it.”

Second, it is incorrect scientifically, Pettis said. There would be food left for humans because some food is wind-pollinated.

For his part, Pettis jokes that the bees are out creating crop circles “and it's working them to death.”

[sammyd]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/sc...prod=permalink

http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/FAQ/FAQCCD.pdf

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-sci-b...wed-storylevel

http://arstechnica.com/journals/scie...nked-to-fungus

[ET1 SS]

mite load, plus pesticides, plus [possibly] micro-wave transmissions [which has nothing to do with the farmer's cellphone rather the existence of the cell-phone towers.

All add up to Colony Collapse.

It is being studied.

So far, only the big beekeepers who truck their hives a thousands miles are not seeing any loses.

[dcross]

Originally Posted by ET1 SS

So far, only the big beekeepers who truck their hives a thousands miles are not seeing any loses.

This whole thing got started in large migratory operations.

[rmaster14145]

the newest thing now linking all the bees is the feed ppl give them. the CCD has been linked to large honey producers that feed their bees. i have yet to hear of a small time person to loose a hive. it is not in NC yet. ok well get this...something they mix to feed the bees comes from.....CHINA! well i would beleive that look at all the other tanted crap they are selling us. it would not suprise me if it was done on purpose. they could use the high food prices and lack of food as a precurser for their upcomming attack on us. YEA YEA i know im a loon for thinking so. i keep up with china a pretty good bit. i seen a thing a few months ago about how all their resorses are used up and are building a STRONG nave to help with their invasion. sounds logical to me. where is our tin foil hat icon ?

rm

[ET1 SS]

I only have two hives. I have lost both colonies twice.

I have attended Beekeeping workshops locally, and I know 'organic' beekeepers. So far from what I have seen; the loses are primarily small beekeepers who can not afford to truck their hives.

The big guys [Dadant, Better Bee, etc] who can afford to truck their bees are not experiencing loses. Their hives divide and they sale their spare nucs to us small beekeepers.

Around here [I did hives in Connecticut for a few years, and now in Maine] small beekeepers are losing from 50% to 100% of their hives each year. We have to replace those lost colonies with nucs each year. Where the big guys supply new nucs each spring.

[americanbulldog]

If this is true it is really horrible. So bees use microwaves to guide themselves? How does this theory work?

[ET1 SS]

I have read that some birds have molecules of iron in their ears that give them a sense of direction [acting as magnetic compasses], however I have also read books by Philip S. Callahan Phd, and Arden R. Anderson Phd two entomologists. They studied insects who use 'black-body' radiation to detect healthy plants from un-healthy, as well as their ability to detect one species of flower from another. Some of those radiations are in the micro-wave bandwidths. Did you know that electron microscopes have determined that insect antenna are actually microwave feed horns? The antenna on a moth are not for smell, rather they detect bands of energy radiation.

[Severian]

This is my second year beekeeping. I have 1 hive. I also have at least 6 cell towers within a 1 mile radius of my house. My bees are thriving, despite the mites & the towers & the weather. I know a couple of people who lost 1 or 2 of their hives, but it was due to starvation & not treating for mites.

[ArkansasLady]

Originally Posted by blufford

Our bees don't use cell phones here. Still to heavy to carry.

ROFL

tooo too funny

~C~

[ET1 SS]

I am not entirely sure why my colonies have died.

I will be very interested if one day we finally do figure it out.

Each of my attempts with colonies has died, each has had some mites. And they have also still had some honey still in them [so I do not think that the bees starved].

No sign of Foulbrood.

So I have been reading, and I have attended some workshops. I have spoken with other small beekeepers, and I have spoken to one 'big-time' beekeeper.

The big guys can afford to be big, and each spring as the small guys lose so many colonies, the big guys supply each with new nucs.

If the big guys had huge loses, the supply of nucs would stop.

???

[JBourne76]

First and most important: There are some 20,000 species of bees in the world, and many thousands more types of pollinating insects. What you're hearing about, "colony collapse disorder," affects one species of bee – the European honey bee. That species happens to be the one global agriculture relies upon for about 30% of its pollination requirements. So while we're not talking about losing all the world's pollinators, we are talking about losing a significant fraction of them. That's the worst-case scenario, with the species wiped out completely.

Second, there's no reason at this point to think European honey bees are going to be wiped out, now or ever. The die-offs so far appear to affect some beekeepers more than others, sometimes in the same area. That's one reason scientists are so puzzled, but it strongly suggests the losses may have something to do with how individual beekeepers are managing their bees. The "significant percentage" of failing hives is still a drop in the bucket when viewed against the global population of honey bees, and there are lots of beekeepers (even in the U.S., which appears hardest hit) who have not had, and may never have, significant losses of colonies. Plenty of honey bees remain to replace the ones that have died. It's not yet time to scream that the sky is falling.

Third, it's almost impossible to get hard numbers on how many colonies have died recently, and how much of the current uproar is media hype based on guesses, estimates and anecdotal accounts from the handful of beekeepers who have had the most colony losses. If you talk to other beekeepers, most admit they have colonies die off every winter, but they don't always keep records on how many. A lot of the reports we're hearing are based on personal recollection rather than careful documentation. In other words, the scary figures you're hearing could be exaggerated.

Fourth, even the original report describing and naming the phenomenon explicitly says it's something that has been seen before (repeatedly), named before, and studied before – in all cases without coming to any conclusion about the cause. The researchers didn't like the older names for the syndrome (which usually included the word "disease," which has connotations about infectiousness that don't seem applicable here), so they renamed it colony collapse disorder. That point has largely eluded the press, with the result that most people think this is a new phenomenon, when in fact the researchers who described it note reports of similar die-offs dating back to the 1890s.


Link to the rest of the article

The article is kind of odd. He seems to be saying don't panic even though lots and lots of bees aren't making it. Weird.

[WisJim]

Originally Posted by ET1 SS

I only have two hives. I have lost both colonies twice.

I have attended Beekeeping workshops locally, and I know 'organic' beekeepers. So far from what I have seen; the loses are primarily small beekeepers who can not afford to truck their hives.

Very interesting. I no longer have bees (used to have 30 or so hives) but I have been attending some of the meetings of the local and regional beekeepers' groups, and what I am hearing is that in Minn and Wisc, it is the beekeepers that truck their hives around the country for pollination services that are losing lots of bees, and the smaller beekeepers are doing okay. BUT I haven't seen any signs of life this year in the "wild" colonies on our place.

No wonder this problem is hard to figure out. Minnesota has a research team that is working hard on it, though. Through the Univ of Minn I think.