This article:
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
makes the case that we’re in big trouble. Our cell phones are killing off all the world’s bees and we’re all going to starve to death. Hopefully this point can be debated.
I don’t know about the whole cell phone angle, but I can tell you that the number of bees in SoCal has dropped dramatically, which doesn’t bode well for the hundreds of plant species that require pollenization by bees in order to fruit/flower.
It’s kind of scary.
From wikinews-
Alarming Disappearance of Honey Bees
Honey Bee Disappearances: Could Pesticides Play A Role?
Are GM Crops Killing Bees?
The cell phone scenario is pretty far out. If true, I’d expect mosquito, ant, and fly populations to also take a hit.
Why?
Ants follow scent trails on the ground. Mosquitoes aren’t social that I’m aware of, and neither are flies.
-Joe
Cell phones have been around for a while, why do they suddenly start killing bees now.?
I noticed the bees in Michigan dissappeaered about 4 years ago.They seem to be slowly coming back. A Bee keeper I met said it was due to mites. They planned on interbreeding with bees from other states to save them. Michigan bees were especially docile and efficient ,he said.
Yeah, I don’t know about this whole cellphone angle, either.
We used to have a lot of bees flying around our bushes in the front yard, but we’re lucky to see 2 or 3 these days. It’s pretty disturbing.
LilShieste
Problem seems not to be dying bee, per se. The bee colonies are not surrounded by cast off dead workers, it seems that they fly away and don’t come back. First guess would be something is messing with thier navigational apparatus.
Badgers evict their sick, it is also possible that ill bees fly off to die.
It could be mites or some disease, coupled with an Oates syndrome
It is not as if mobile 'phone coverage has dramatically increased in the last few years.
From the OP’s linked strory:
If the matter was simply one of the workers being confused and failing to return home, then there should be no reason for “parasites, wildlife and other bees” to “refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.” To me, that puts an enormous hole in the cell phone theory. It seems much more likely that some agent is interfering with the hives, themselves, that cause not only colony bees but also foreighn bees and parasites to avoid the locations.
(It is also not true, from what I have read, that ther colonies are all abandoned. The local stories on the topic have identified a number of cases in which beekeepers will find one of neighboring colonies filled with dead bees while an adjacent colony will still thrive.
The mite problem is not quite ten years old in the U.S. After wiping out a significant number of hives, the bees began to overcome that problem and slowly rebuild. Before they were back to full strength, this new hive death problem, unassociated with mites, reared up to threaten the bees and human agriculture.
That avoidance might be explained by the action of Cordyceps like fungus. However, if that’s the case, you’d think someone would have noticed by now.
Huh. Bee-serters.
Edited it? And said it anyway?
One question springs to my mind… If cell phones are causing this bee shortage, is anybody going to seriously consider not using cell phones and similar technologies (no wi-fi for you) just to save a few bees?
It is not a matter of saving a few bees. The successive bee die-offs, first from mites and now from hive death (of whatever origin) poses a very genuine threat to U.S. (perhaps North American) agriculture. A very large number of crops are primarily pollinated by bees. This particular cell-phone (I presume cell tower) issue sounds unlikely, to me, based on my previous observation, but if we discovered that the CCD die back was actually caused by any new technology, we might, indeed, have to consider having to choose between that technology and our agricultural economy.
From the University of Georgia
Wikipedia on Colony Collapse Disorder
What if we took away the bees’ cell phones?
No, it’s the revolution! The workers have been bee-mancipated!
They’ll be all right if they don’t use 802.11-bee for their devices.
I’m not buying the cell-phone theory. From the article:
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.
The pattern seems completely inconsistent with the theory. Sounds like parasites or an infectious agent to me. But it’s still a serious matter, whatever the cause. Before long we’ll all be out there with tiny paintbrushes, individually pollinating each flower, just so we’ll have something to eat.
Thing is, we have a new agricultural practice…where hives are trucked all over the country as pollinators. You move millions of bees all over the country, and epidemics are also spread all over the country.
No cite from me, but I don’t believe this is a new practice. Do you have any cites that show that the transporting of hives to perform pollination is a recent innovation?