What is going on with BEES ?

Honestly I don't know what to make of all this

But one thing is sure

If this problem is not solved with bees , it could be a back door crisis that will have a major impact on food production

I say back door because little attention is given to this problem , publicly

So its kind of a silent problem in a sense
 
Is there any bee keepers out there that could add to the thread ?

What is your experience with this problem ?
 
I grow an impressive veggie patch every year, and also have many fruit trees. This year, my yield was dismal- and I couldn't work out why.

Recently it ocurred to me that I hadn't seen any bees at all this year. In past years there's been thousands of 'em buzzing around. This year - none.

Also, I've read the same thing that your OP speaks of, about large crops here in Australia. Back door crisis indeed!

Meanwhile, here's an interesting if unrelated article I came across a while back, about bees;

http://frontlineassembly.tumblr.com/post/611011399/honeybees-found-to-interact-with-quantum-fields
 
river said:
Honestly I don't know what to make of all this

But one thing is sure

If this problem is not solved with bees , it could be a back door crisis that will have a major impact on food production

I say back door because little attention is given to this problem , publicly

So its kind of a silent problem in a sense
Click to expand...

I typically have honey bee hives and 2 years ago I lost both of my hives to CCD. The problem of CCD has been big news and continues to have a lot of research funds being spent on it - so I am not sure where you come up with the idea that there is a lack of publicity. I think it was just you that was not aware of it for some reason.
 
its radiation from cell towers that is killing the bees, albeit indirectly.

What would you rather have good crops and honey or bad crops and no honey but cellphone service?
 
Have not even heard of this as an actual issue. Seems like we'll have to start breeding bees and keeping dying breeds in zoos. But at the rate of endangered animals and extinction, its probably a better solution to put humans in cages in zoos lol
 
youreyes said:
its radiation from cell towers that is killing the bees, albeit indirectly.
Click to expand...

So:

30 watts per square meter of cancer-causing ionizing radiation hitting bees every day = no problem

1 microwatt per square meter of non-ionizing radiation hitting bees every day = killing all the bees

I think there's a bit of a problem with your theory.
 
billvon said:
So:

30 watts per square meter of cancer-causing ionizing radiation hitting bees every day = no problem

1 microwatt per square meter of non-ionizing radiation hitting bees every day = killing all the bees

I think there's a bit of a problem with your theory.
Click to expand...

It's not about the power but frequency.

Bees communicate in a swarm amongst each other, the range of their communication is: 50Hz to 900 (link:
http://apilink.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/frecuency-spectrum-Rejected.pdf)

There are a variety of human based (mostly military) communication systems that do operate at ELF/SLF/ULF range of frequencies. This interferes with the bees communication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency

rodereve said:
Haha I was only joking, but was that a shot at me or are you referring to someone else's ideaology?
Click to expand...

shot? A real man backs their words with actions.
 
youreyes said:
It's not about the power but frequency.

Bees communicate in a swarm amongst each other, the range of their communication is: 50Hz to 900Hz
Click to expand...

Those are sound waves.

Cell towers do operate at ELF range of frequencies. This interferes with the bees communication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency
Click to expand...

Two mistakes there.

First, there is a different between compression (sound) and electromagnetic (radio/light) waves. They have nothing to do with each other. Bees communicate using sound; cellphone towers use radio.

Second, the lowest frequency that any US cellphone towers use is around 700MHz. That is almost six orders of magnitude higher than 900Hz.
 
billvon said:
Those are sound waves.



Two mistakes there.

First, there is a different between compression (sound) and electromagnetic (radio/light) waves. They have nothing to do with each other. Bees communicate using sound; cellphone towers use radio.

Second, the lowest frequency that any US cellphone towers use is around 700MHz. That is almost six orders of magnitude higher than 900Hz.
Click to expand...

Majority of communication by bees is done at 150Hz and lower, look at the spike in the first link. At this range only some people can hear anything since range of audible to human ear frequencies start at 20Hz and goes to 20000Hz. Also I modified the cell towers communication to other types of communication systems utilized besides the cell towers that use such low frequencies, and clearly such communications are widespread and used.

Correction: Cell phone towers do emit audible low level hum at such frequencies.
http://www.kgw.com/news/Noise-enters-heated-debate-over-communications-tower-82651362.html
 
youreyes said:
Also I modified the cell towers communication to other types of communication systems utilized besides the cell towers that use such low frequencies, and clearly such communications are widespread and used.
Click to expand...

No, they're not. The only people who use such low frequencies are the military for underwater communications with submarines. (They've been doing that since the 60's.) They are not used for any terrestrial communications.

Correction: Cell phone towers do emit audible low level hum at such frequencies.
Click to expand...

You mean like 60Hz hum from the AC power they use? Yes, some do, primarily the ones with older transformer based power supplies.

However, since that 60Hz hum has been around since the 1900's - and was a lot louder back then due to poorer power supply and transformer design - it makes no sense that it would cause bee problems now.
 
billvon said:
... The only people who use such low frequencies are the military for underwater communications with submarines. (They've been doing that since the 60's.) ...
Click to expand...
I knew the Navy (I think) buried large antenna for that covering large part of a state (Wisconsin?) but thought it was not of much use as the maximum "bit rate" is directly proportional to the frequency (Sort of because each "bit" must have at least a few cycles of the carrier frequency). The sub's receiving antenna had to be many miles long wire trailing behind too. Are you sure they still have use for it?
 
Cell phones do seem to affect honeybees, but maybe not so as to be a reasonable major factor in colony collapse:

While this experiment does show that phones in a close proximity to beehives can disrupt the normal bee behavior, scientists argue that cell phones are not normally found in beehives and believe that other causes, such as pesticides, the varroa mite, viruses, genetically modified crops, and unusually cold winters.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-05-cell-contributing-honeybee-population-decline.html#jCp
Click to expand...

Honeybees are domestic animals, throughout most of their range. We can farm without them, by setting things up to take advantage of local conditions and especially pollinators. But until we have figured out what's suddenly killing these much studied and long familiar animals, the list of possibilities remains - a reminder of how little we know about these things and their effects on everything around us. The reason we don't know what's going on with the bees is that we don't know what's going on with pesticides, genetically modified crops, viral diseases of major commensals and mutualists, varroa mites, the weather, etc.
 
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