Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 31 (PTI) Mobile towers are posing a threat to honey bees in Kerala withe electromagnetic radiation from mobile towers and cell phones having the potential to kill worker bees that go out to collect nectar from flowers, says a study.
A plunge in beehive population has been reported from different parts of Kerala and if measures are not taken to check mushrooming of mobile powers, bees could be wiped out from Kerala within a decade, environmentalist and Reader in Zoology, Dr Sainudeen Pattazhy says in his study.
In one of his experiments he found that when a mobile phone was kept near a beehive it resulted in collapse of the colony in five to 10 days, with the worker bees failing to return home, leaving the hives with just queens, eggs and hive-bound immature bees.
I know, I know, cellphones are precious. How could we EVER live without them?
Bad for bees…? They must be great for us. Or not.
They already found the cause of the Honeybee disappearance. It was a virus. It had something to do with the importation of bees.
No. It is the genetically modified plants. The bees eat the the empty calories and drop dead. They are full but don’t have any substance.
See the “The World According to Monsanto”.
Where is the picture of the BS meter for this one.
Bush did it.
DU has been pushing this since April 2007.
Can cell phones be behind the great bee die-off?
There is a recent and useful article in Science Daily Genomic Study Yields Plausible Cause Of Colony Collapse Disorder
The article notes that
“When the team looked at the pathogens of healthy bees and bees from hives affected by CCD, they saw that the CCD bees suffered “more than their share” of infections with viruses that attack the ribosome, Berenbaum said. These so-called picorna-like viruses “hijack the ribosome,” she said, taking over the cellular machinery to manufacture only viral proteins. The list of picorna-like viruses that afflict honey bees is long and includes Israeli acute paralysis virus, which was once suspected of being the primary cause of CCD.
Numerous suspects have been identified in the hunt for a cause of CCD, from nutritional deficiencies to exposure to genetically modified plants or pesticides. Researchers in Spain recently pointed to a parasitic fungus, Nosema ceranae, which afflicts many CCD bees in Spain.
The loss of ribosomal function would explain many of the phenomena associated with CCD, Berenbaum said.”
Is it the cellphone or the tower? Both?
How close to the transceivers is too close for the worker bees?
What frequencies affect the bees?
Time to write a grant proposal.
Lets all look among the things that are as recent as the reduction in bee populations for pattern matches that might be more apt.
Where was Twitter before the bee reduction?
How could you not notice the strikingly obvious connection between iPhone distribution and BR?
What was the Earth’s temperature average before and after the BR?
Is it not true that BR happened just as Americans were turning their backs to the Republican Party?
I’m pretty sure Alfredone is responsible for animals eating their young.
To be on the safe side, let’s just destroy all the cell-phone towers.
Its amazing! All the pro cell-phone people are calling BS. Whoda thunk it.
Equally amazing is that all the pro business pro capitalism pro SUV people call BS on global warming. Eerie coincidence?
Breaking news! Atheists call BS on Intelligent Design. Apple calls BS on exploding Iphones. Stay tuned for more incredible tales!
These posting topics seem to be getting boring, they’re repeating the same used topics?
I would love nothing better than to kill off cell phones, those nasty balls-n-chains that are contributing to the economic collapse.
Now I’ve said this before, so, yeah, this is all boring old news. Slow news day again. Oh, where’s Ben Franklin when we need him?
The problem is that the bees are texting all the time and they lose track of the way back to the hive.
I have a crazy idea I know.
Is is it possible that some bees have been adversely affected by the virus while also being affected by the cell towers (which could also affect the healthy bees)?
Don’t make me drawn a Venn diagram across these interwebs!
To paraphrase, there’s more than one way to f’up a bee (and weaken our food supply).
Not an expert, but I find the GModified crops idea the most plausible. We might eat the stuff and not drop dead immediately, but what if you were breathing/covered in the pollen?
Remember, they breathe through their skin!
#15, Mr. Show. I think you’ve cracked this thing wide open. It’s not just one single thing; it’s a combination of things that are interwoven into a gestalt of elements leading inevitably to the final result.
Consider: The cell towers/phones all work on a specific range of frequencies that were never present, say, in 1930 when bees were plentiful. Then there is the potential rise in a viral population—sort of the bee equivalent of swine flu—that ONLY reacts with bee DNA when the unique cell frequencies are present as a catalyst. Then there is the complete absence of Twitter before the bees started to disappear. And the almost absolute absence of Hulu!
Obviously, we should be coating our flowers with Tamiflu and stop twittering or watching TV on our computers and watch them on our TV sets as God intended.
A breakthrough!
I’d like to see some other research that supports “environmentalist and Reader in Zoology” Dr. Pattazhy’s claims. Environmentalists and Indian “academics” are both on my “not-to-be-trusted-without-clear-evidence” list.
If sticking a mobile phone next to a beehive killed off the colony in a week you’d think somebody else would have noticed.
Bee extinction has everything to do with inbred hives, poor bee keeping, environmental stress, pollution, parasites and a virus.
OTOH – a friend of mine lives in a penthouse apartment. They recently put a cell phone tower literally on his roof.
He is not happy. Neither would I be.
#17 Ouch, the barb of your sarcasm stings deeper than any cut by Occam’s razor.
I was throwing out an idea. Maybe not a great one but just damn…I think you made comedic gold Buzz!
We don’t need the bees.
Bobbo can pollinate the flowers.
As a bee keeper I follow this issue as closely as anyone with a casual interest. This is the latest:
http://newscientist.com/article/dn17676-bee-genome-gives-killer-clue-to-colony-collapse-disorder.htm
But I think my “general rule” does apply: always start and try to finish with causation being multiple. That way you can always blame something else rather than what you said.
#22–Beavis==every year I hand pollinate certain clusters on my grape vines just to make sure I get to taste the grapes each year. Haven’t had a problem with pollination yet, but there are fewer bees. Plus its fun on a limited scale to get close to my plants. Not much fun if I had to do it more than 2 hours a year.
Has this article even been subjected to a peer review? Been published in an accredited scientific journal? The author fails to mention any support from the scientific community (what the hell is a “Reader in Zoology”), so basically it’s just some crackpot from India who ran “tests”. Ask an entomologist!
Let’s limit cell phones to emergency use just to be safe.
Cellphones are bad….mmmmmmkay?
If you google the scientist you will find he is a heavy hitter in respected circles.
“We’re so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody’s going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven’t learned how to care for one another. We’re gonna save the fuckin’ planet? . . . And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin’ great. It’s been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn’t goin’ anywhere, folks. We are! We’re goin’ away. Pack your shit, we’re goin’ away. And we won’t leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we’ll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.”
George Carlin
#29–Great Man==a nice rant by George but very poorly based unlike most of his great stuff. “Save the planet====FOR THE BENEFIT OF MANKIND.”
Stupid not to turn our attention/science/skills that way.
I’m sure George would agree, because he was a great man. Still had to earn a living though.
I’m pretty sure it will take far more than loss of honey bees to discontinue the use of cellphones.
If it were up to republicans, the total evaporation of ocean waters and death of all trees may get them to act.
[Um- if we lose the bees we are all dead, that should pretty much do it – ed.]