Friday - September 03, 2010

One for Old Cat Man

The growing use of mobile telephones is behind the disappearance of honey bees and the collapse of their hives, scientists have claimed.

Their disappearance has caused alarm throughout Europe and North America where campaigners have blamed agricultural pesticides, climate change and the advent of genetically modified crops for what is now known as ‘colony collapse disorder.’ Britain has seen a 15 per cent decline in its bee population in the last two years and shrinking numbers has led to a rise in thefts of hives.

Now researchers from Chandigarh’s Punjab University claim they have found the cause which could be the first step in reversing the decline: They have established that radiation from mobile telephones is a key factor in the phenomenon and say that it probably interfering with the bee’s navigation senses.

They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behaviour and productivity of bees in two hives – one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two fifteen 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 [the eggs] 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. Because of this the amount of nectar produced in the hive also shrank.

Ved Prakash Sharma and Neelima Kumar, the authors of the report in the journal Current Science, wrote: “Increase in the usage of electronic gadgets has led to electropollution of the environment. Honeybee behaviour and biology has been affected by electrosmog since these insects have magnetite in their bodies which helps them in navigation.

Tim Lovett, of the British Beekeepers Association, said that hives have been successful in London where there was high mobile phone use.

“Previous work in this area has indicated this [mobile phone use] is not a real factor,” he said. “If new data comes along we will look at it.”

He said: “At the moment we think is more likely to be a combination of factors including disease, pesticides and habitat loss.”

...

There has been an increase in the number of thefts of hives across the world and in Germany beekeepers have started fitting GPS tracking devices to their hives.

GPS enabled hives? Wouldn’t that EM also mess them up? Seems a little counterproductive. I’d just bolt the things down, or maybe mount them with a big spring loaded boot. Touch the hive and the boot kicks it over ... and woe be to the would-be thief when 68,000 pissed off bees come out.

But honeybee loss is a big problem.

In the US, bee keepers are experiencing unprecedented die offs of bees some losing as much as 80% of their colonies. Commercial beekeepers in 22 states have reported deaths of tens of thousands of honeybee colonies. So far the cause remains unexplained and somewhat mysterious. It is being called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and is causing agricultural honeybees nationwide to abandon their hives and disappear and raising worries about crops that need bees for pollination. It’s a kind of mass suicide in the bee world. “There have been cases where there have been these die-offs of bees before, but we have never seen it to this level,” said Maryann Frazier, a Pennsylvania State University entomologist. “One operation after another is collapsing.”

Bees have done quite well for millions of years, in the last 60 years that began to change. In recent years, beekeepers have been losing 25 percent of their hives each winter. Thirty years ago, the rate was 5 percent to 10 percent, said Keith Tignor, the state apiarist for Virginia.

Studies have suggested that the electromagnetic radiation affects the internal navigation system of the honey bee, causing it to not be able to return back to the hive. The bees then die off, because they are not able to do their normal activities. This premature dying off of the bees causes the fruits and vegetables to not grow as normal, simply because pollination does not occur. This affects the harvest, which can have a significant impact upon the world’s food stores now and in the future. This bee phenomenon has been seen all over the world from North America to Asia and this can have significant repercussions for mankind.

Cell phone use has grown exponentially for the last 20 years, and the shift to ever higher frequencies (850Mhz, 900Mhz, and now 1900Mhz) may be a factor as well. Base stations for hands-free cordless phones are 10 times more powerful than in the past.

“At the beginning of the present century, 3G (third generation) mobile phone systems became publicly available, leading to a surge in popularity of mobile phones, and many more phone towers.”

We may be drowning in a sea of electromagnetic pollution, and the bees are the first casualties.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/03/2010 at 12:11 PM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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