Cellphones killing bees?

While I have an open mind on he posibility that cell phone radiation may be slightly harmfull to the user, I strongly doubt it is causing bees to lose their way. Bees basically use the fact that scattered sun light (including the blue sky) is polarized to guide them to and from the current better nector sources.

When one bee finds a new good source, it returns to the hive and does a vigorious "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 (inthe dark hive) tell 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.

I kept bees. (As a tax dodge, mainly to keep farms I had bought for later development into suburban lots with the low farm tax rate.) They are very interesting and complex societies. If you can keep a colliny, do so, even if you do not need the tax dodge. One of the best educational and profitable hobbies you will find with a sweet reward to boot! Also you will learn that if you can control your fear, not move quickly, etc. you will not get stung. - Good practice in mental disipline to let them craw on your hands etc.
 
It reads like a propaganda piece against cell phone use. If it is really interested in the bees, then shouldn't it actually talk about the bees? If anything, it should have only a short piece on the possibility of cell phone use causing cancer in humans (a claim which has been refuted, by the way), instead it segues from the bees to human cancer and then latches on to it as though it were the real target all along.

If nothing else, piss poor writing skills. But, I suspect that the shift in focus highlights the motives of the writer.

And Billy is right about how bees navigate.

Also, it's ridiculous that: "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." Why would the hives be avoided? Are the abandoned hives directly under cell phone towers? Is there a preponderance of cell phone radiation near the hive? If so, then this should be easy enough to determine, but none of the 'studies' mention this in the least.

However, CCD is a huge problem. And it is real. It needs to be solved and fast.

I wonder if they aren't being rustled...? But, if the queen remains with the hive, I don't suppose that's a real option as workers don't breed well (but they do breed, contrary to popular belief. And their eggs are systematically destroyed by other workers.)
 
Haven´t seen the evidence yet , so I will see it as a theory only ........
Still CCD could spell major trouble for all of us .......
 
Oh, I saw this on the news tonight. And just remember, the "radiation" isn't JUST cellphones, but all types of radiation. That can include radiation from high-power electric lines, radio, television, airport radars, microwave ovens, ...., and any number of devices that "radiate" energy through the atmosphere.

Baron Max
 
IF THE BEES DIE OFF.... so will mankind.

its very important....

we should change the freuqencies used in our phones... PERIOD.


-mt
 
Baron Max said:
Oh, I saw this on the news tonight. And just remember, the "radiation" isn't JUST cellphones, but all types of radiation. That can include radiation from high-power electric lines, radio, television, airport radars, microwave ovens, ...., and any number of devices that "radiate" energy through the atmosphere.

Baron Max
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Some of the bee people think it might be pesticides or Gmo organisms because predators and parasites avoid the dead hives. They won't even eat the honey unless the hives are aired out. I can't see how airing out the hives would help with cellphone generated problems unless the radiation makes the bees produce (shit) something toxic. So the whole thing is still up in the air, but the odds are good that they are dying because of somethign we have done and probably somethign we are rather attached to.
 
Billy T said:
While I have an open mind on he posibility that cell phone radiation may be slightly harmfull to the user, I strongly doubt it is causing bees to lose their way. Bees basically use the fact that scattered sun light (including the blue sky) is polarized to guide them to and from the current better nector sources.
.
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One of the experiments they did was to place active cellphones near hives and this did in fact discourage returns. And clearly.

I am not convinced it is cellphones or cellphones alone, but I just wanted to make clear that however this may not seem to fit current understandings, the scientists who are warning about the cellphone connection are not simply guessing.
 
draqon said:
humans are affected too...so what talk of the bees?
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If you mean by 'what talk'
'why talk' about it,
the reason is the bees are dying in the billions. Large %s of the bees populations are dying in many countries in a pattern that is a menace to our food supply.
 
Grantywanty said:
...I just wanted to make clear that however this may not seem to fit current understandings, the scientists who are warning about the cellphone connection are not simply guessing.
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I think they have evidence that placing a cell phone near the entrance to the hive will make the bees have difficulty in returning, but think that true even if the batteries were dead. Bees are very confused by even slight visual changes in the last foot or so of their "landing approach."

One winter I put a brick on the lip of a hive to reduce the entrance slot. (It is about 1/4 th inch tall and 15 inches wide.) I knew they eat honey to stay warm and make it thru the winter. - I thought this would reduce the cold air entering, but that hive almost did not make it thru the winter. The bees do go out even in winter to "go to the bath room" and quickly return. The brick on the entrance lip must have changed the local visual impression so that it did not conform to their memorized pattern and many could not find their way back into the hive before the heat lost to the cold air made them flightless.

While the angle to the sun is their many reference for most of their flight, the final approach is by vision, but their vision is very differ from creatures with image forming lenses. - Basically it measures the light intensity coming from different directions without any image.

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 arround 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.

I have not read the report of the experiment, but if they 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.

I would be interested to know if they did the experiment correctly (had the no-battery cell phone case) It is not unusual for some disease to spread. 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.

BTW - I am strongly of the opinion that it is the hive that lives (or dies). I.e. that bees are just individual specialized "cells" in this hive organism, just as your liver cells are specialized parts of you, the living organism.

Individual bees have specialized jobs (but a set of different ones as they get older.) I put some flour on a few of the bees doing "ventilation duty" (wings furiously beating and feet griping the landing lip) one warm summer day when going into the woods to cut some fire wood. - They were still on duty a couple of hours later when I returned to look. I think that these "cells" of the "living hive body" are specialized into at least two dozen different tasks, like you have liver, teeth, retina, etc. specialized cells.

I again recomend you keep a hive of bees if you can. Very interesting and rewarding project if you read, study and experiment with them. As told in prior post, I started keeping bees for tax reasons, just as about two years ago I started to teach myself some thing about detailed biochemical mechanism of human cells for investment reasons. In both cases, the side effect of learning are more rewarding than the financial gains I acheived. (I am vey frugal, not interested in owning things etc. so making money is just a game and benefit to my grandchildren - might not do it if it were not excuse for learning.) - I am building a house by myself near a lake. (Why I am not active here on Mondays and Tuesday if there is no rain forcasted for the lake area.) As I work slowly (and completely stop to watch birds, sail boats, wild animals, even ants! etc.) it will be at least five times more costly that if I hired someone to do it, but it gets me out of the pollution of Sao Paulo and makes me do hard manual labor, which I would not otherwise do, and few my age can do. Also it has many strange features, which would be difficult to tell (in portuguese) to a hired laborer, I have been at it for 5 years now, and it will take another 10 before all the roof is on, still no windows or wiring etc. - I doubt if I can live long enough to finish it all - would be at least 120 before final coat of paint etc.

My philosophy in life is that the destination (the grave) is not important, or even desirable, but the journey is the important thing.
 
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So the whole thing is still up in the air, but the odds are good that they are dying because of somethign we have done and probably somethign we are rather attached to.
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Why does this have to be the case? What evidence do you have to make such claims?
 
And where's the comparrison to Asia, where as cell phone use is as widespread as in the west? DO they not have bees in Asia?
 
Should not we be talking about why and how many bees are dying off...and see if this is happening only near cell phone towers?
 
A lot of things kill honeybees. They are a domestic animal, like a chicken, and tend to get stressed and sick, etc, in commercial operations.

Some of the colonies that have collapsed in this new way are more than ten miles from cell phone towers.

If you look at map, this new thing seems to be hitting hardest in the more southern and western areas of both North America and Europe.
 
kmguru said:
Dude, that does not answer the "why" and "how many" part....:D
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Well the Microwaves signal that both the Cell phone and towers give off affects the Bee's navigation sensors ( or some shit like that!)

If the bees are expose to this long enough , they will just die.:m:
 
Bees do not emit microwave nor have microwave sensors. Organic creatures can emit ultrasonics and have rosolving capacities. Even the ultrasonic harmonics are way to low from microwave or cell phone frequencies (800 to 900 MHz)
 
kmguru said:
Bees do not emit microwave nor have microwave sensors. Organic creatures can emit ultrasonics and have rosolving capacities. Even the ultrasonic harmonics are way to low from microwave or cell phone frequencies (800 to 900 MHz)
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Well I'm beat, some smart guy on yahoo answer told me that was the really reason why this happend
 
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