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April 16, 2007
Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees'
navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. 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.
The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".
It's an interesting theory, but it doesn't hold up to the common sense test. One has to believe that bee keepers that transport their bees across the country would have been early adopters of cell phone technology, meaning that the bees would have been exposed the cell signals for years in advance without showing any of the symptoms listed. So why is it just now is it having an effect? Bees have very short lifespans so it's not like they could build up a problem like a human. Now if you told me that there was a new standard that started to be implemented last year in cell towers all across the country and that it worked on a previously untapped frequency, then I'd be on board with this theory.
The other problem with this is that it's happening in bee hives that don't move across the countryside. And more importantly why don't the scavenger animals enter the hive after it's been abandoned? Are they being effected as well? Seems like a massive chain depending on a lot of things to happen in just the right order. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when did GSM start being supported in the United States? I mean I could buy that argument, that the cell towers are slowly being upgraded to support the new standard and it's now reached a critical mass to start causing problems in the countryside, because who would notice it in a city? There aren't that many bee hives. So I think we need to keep looking for a theory that works to explain every aspect of the problem. The Einstein quote is terrifyingly true, so we need to start working faster to find the problem.
Read more over at The Independent.
Posted by Jamison at April 16, 2007 10:24 AM
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