Cellphones killing bees?

Just goes to show that some people are full of shit, eh?
Anyone with a ready answer to this problem is basically talking out of his ass.
It's an unknown at the moment.
However, what is known is that bees navigate by visual processes, not electromagnetic.

 

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So how bout what we do is not to make a whole crapload of accusations and claims before we have more substantial evidence!

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Bees hate the advertisement billboards that are so predominant in modern society. fact.

 

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they have not confirmed that any bees have died.......

only that they have choosen to leave the man-made homes....

or have gotten lost...

supposively they just dont know.

-MT

 

But humans and birds are affected by electromagnetic radiation. Bird migration patterns too, no? We need more information on this. Does anyone have access to that German report?

 

Well, the press release is in fact more about if radiation affects the brains of bees.
http://www.idw-online.de/pages/de/news119580

Does cell phone radiation make you dumb? Well, just look at who is using cell phones and you can't deny that report!

 

Only part correct is the recognition that this is "some shit."

There is much too much ignorance on display in this thread now. Here are some earlier posted facts again.

From post 3:

“When one bee finds a new good source, it returns to the hive and does a vigorous "dance." The length of the line dance between the turning points tells how far away the source is. The angle of the dance line wrt gravity vertical (in the dark hive) tells the angle to fly wrt to the sun. On a fully cloudy day, when no sun can be seen, that is no problem for the bee. - Light coming only from the sun thru the clouds directly to the bee without scattering is the only light with zero polarization, so the bee knows where the sun is, despite the clouds.”

From post 11:

“While the angle to the sun is their many reference for most of their flight, the final approach {to hive entrance} is by vision, but their vision is very differ from creatures with image forming lenses. …If you move the hive only two feet sideways in summer, when many bees are out, you will soon have a swarm of confused, nectar-laden, returning bees in front of the old location! - They can not see the hive only a foot away and nothing matches the memorized pattern of light intensity vs angles. Most wander around confused and by chance get in front of the hive and close enough to it for it to dominate the solid angle "forward" visual pattern and then they fly straight in, no longer confused.

…If they {the researchers} did not compare the cell phone with NO battery case to the cell phone with battery case (and I doubt they did) then their results may be nonsense- due to little understanding of how bees find the hive entrance.*

Bees will try to steal honey from other hives and those that do get past the guard bees carry the infection into the other hive. I bet this is the reason many hives are dying {in some local areas, not everywhere cell phones are in use.}.
------------------------------
*Even changing the visual field by only adding a brick at still open entrance, nearly killed one of my hives - more details in post 11.

 

This is very true. It has long been a saying here in the UK that without the bee there is no man. Many hive owners here, this spring, opened up empty hives.

 

we, the race may not die off.... but food will get alot more expensive..

and many will die.

-MT

 

an update
this is a N ew York Times article on the subject

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/science/24bees.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

 

Well, more or less. The thing is it takes a fairly unique kind of person to be a beekeeper and not just anyone can/will do it. Think of ALL the people you know - chances are there's someone in that crowd that's involved in almost any business you can name. But how many of them are beekeepers?

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If you're doing it commercially, there's actually quite a bit of work involved. Some of it's pretty heavy and it can get really hot in bee suit in the summer. But the biggest factor of all that it requires someone with a tremendous amount of patience - something you don't find in very many people today.

 

I agree completely! But the trouble is that for most people, it's not really a problem. Just look back over this thread and the other one - what do you see? Several saying that it doesn't matter because there are plenty of natural pollinators (yeah, right!) and that it's "part of evolution" (yeah, right again!).

Basically, it's largely a situation of ignorance and apathy. Those of us who were in the business back then have been trying to get attention all along - but no one was listening. But perhaps that might change when tomatoes are selling for $20 a pound and there's NO fruit to be found on the market.

Not that I want that to happen - heaven forbid! But it may take something like that to overcome the ignorance and apathy. It seems that the majority of the people are too far removed to even be bothered. After all, food just comes from the store, right?

 

I think you mistake a different take on the problem for a belief that there is none.

Most plants have pollinators other than honeybees. The kind of dependence on domesticated honeybees that has created our current vulnerability is not necessary. Agriculture with such a vulnerability is vulnerable. Agriculture should not be so vulnerable.

And honeybees, as feral and alien animals, do harm as well as good, in their supplanting of native (and occasionally superior) pollinators.

What we face is a reminder of the necessity of making significant changes in our systems of growing food. If the pollinators of a landscape have been so reduced, in number and kind, that a single plague aflicting one variety of honeybee can knock out a quarter of the fruits and veggies in the supermarket, that's a problem whether the plague comes or not.

 

The bee is the most prolific pollenator on the planet, thats a fact. Nature will not reproduce if there is a key element missing.

 

No, I'm not making a mistake, you are.

Let me make this as plain as possible: your error is that you are relying ONLY upon your own personal opinion while totally and completely ignoring the real facts.

You still do not understand that there NEVER has been, nor would there EVER have been enough native pollinators to support modern agriculture!! As they
say in legal circles, you are assuming facts not in evidence and that is the fatal flaw in your lack of understanding the real problem.

Once agriculture passed the point of a man with a mule and hoe, the die was cast and there was no turning back. Your vastly overestimated numbers of natural pollinators could not possibly handle 500 acres of (each) cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, peaches, apples, pears, etc. And to assume so is rather foolish. You do not seem to realize that the honeybee was introduced not for the production of honey but for the production of FOOD.

What I've just presented you with are facts. What you keep submitting is nothing more than uninformed opinion.

 

And you insist on ignoring the obvious falsity of that statement. The world, including the North American continent, was covered with flowering plants fully as productive of plant stuff as any apple orchard or cucumber field, for a million years before the domestication of honeybees.

Before there were 500 acres of cucumbers, there were 500 acres of flowering plants all successfully pollinated without a single honeybee around.

The Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi Valley city dwellers, etc, had the most sophisticated plant agriculture in the world, supported large cities on plant agriculture without a single large domesticated meat animal, lived in cities and built huge buildings and fielded armies off their wide variety of fruits and beans and nuts and grains and vegetables, without a single honeybee on the continent.

The current shortage of pollinators is a consequence of modern agriculture, not a prior difficulty that can only be overcome by hauling in truckloads of specialty bees.

The problem of industrial dependence on one key factor, such as setting things up so your crops fail and your whole system falls apart if this one particular kind of imported specialty domesticated bee gets sick, is indeed characteristic of "modern agriculture", but there's no sense in pretending it's necessary. Modern agriculture needs to change a bit, is all.

 

No, once again it's you who is not facing facts.

To begin with, the ancient peoples in Central and South America were very much dependent upon corn (maize) as their primary source of food. ( And it's self (wind) pollinated.) Wild game was the second. And those vast fields of flowering plants you mentioned existed only in your imagination.

As to your likes or dislikes of modern agriculture, that's totally beside the point - it exists. And "changing it a bit" is a sensless statement as far as I can tell. What "bit" of change would you propose?

One last question: have you ever been involved, even remotely, in ANY phase of agriculture? The reason I ask is because you seem to know so little about it.