I have been reading the story in today's Telegraph newspaper with the headline 'Honey Bees may be wiped out in 10 years' and I am very concerned about this. I am writing to you from Canada. I was unable to find an e-mail address for the British Beekeepers Association and decided to pass this message to Shropshire Beekeepers because Shropshire is my birthplace and was home during my youth. Please pass this information on the National organization and to as many people as you can.
Four years ago I became very ill after moving to a home in the Ontario countryside. After much investigation I discovered that my illness was caused by exposure to microwave radiation from cell phone towers and other antennas. For the last four years I have been collecting scientific research and evidence which shows that electro magnetic radiation (EMR) is severely harming people, animals, birds and insects.
Early last year when I first heard about colony collapse disorder, I wondered if EMR could be the cause. Since then I have seen enough evidence to be fairly sure that it is. Autopsy results of bees killed by CCD show that their immune systems were badly damaged. This is the same method by which, humans and animals have been harmed. In my case, after suffering the symptoms associated with microwave sickness, I developed prostate cancer. When I moved away from my home, to a safe location my health immediately improved.
Although most of the research that I have collected is about the harm caused to humans, I have been collecting evidence of honey bees being killed around the world and have noted the links to electro magnetic radiation exposure. One of the most telling documents is the fourth one that I have attached to this message - 'La Leva di Archimede, Protecting bees from Mobile Phone Radiation'. It describes how bee hives were stacked on a truck in Germany. The hives that were protected from cell phone microwave radiation by being behind aluminum survived, but the hives with no protection died. When you add this information to the several other documents that I have attached, you will see that there is very strong evidence that mobile phone antennas other antennas are causing honey bees to die.
Please pass this message to others and encourage bee associations to demand safety for their bees, from the harm of electro magnetic radiation.
Yours sincerely
Martin Weatherall. Director WEEP - Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Pollution.
Colony Collapse: Do Massive Bee Die-Offs
Mean an End to Our Food System as We Know it?
By Scott Thill, AlterNet Posted on
June 11, 2007, Printed on June 11,
2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/53491/
The joke may have fallen flat, but this time no one could blame Bill
Maher. Sure, it happened on the May
4, 2007 installment of his show Real Time With Bill Maher, but
CNN personality and senior medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta was the one
delivering the punch line, and it seems he was the only one in the room
who believed the issue of Earth's mysteriously vanishing honeybees was a
joke. And while some may argue that he stayed on message, promoting his
May 19 documentary called Danger: Poison Food, he nevertheless
fumbled for answers when Maher asked him about what could be killing a
major component of the nation's food supply.
"Gosh, I don't know," Gupta answered, searching for context. "The --
you know, with regards to bees in particular, I'm not sure what's killing
the bees. I'm not sure what's killing the birds or the bees."
Cue the laugh track.
In Gupta's defense, a few weeks or months ago, the increasing
disappearance of the honeybees, known now by the technical term Colony
Collapse Disorder, had that feel of an urban legend, a phenomenon so
esoteric and strange that it sounded like something out of science
fiction. Except it's not: It's a frightening trend that, according to
those hard at work at solving the problem at universities and
organizations worldwide, could lead to everything from a radically
transformed diet to an overall wipeout of the world's food supply.
"It is real," argued Dewey M. Caron, professor of entomology at the
University of Delaware and one of several authorities investigating the
issue with the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium's
Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group (MAAREC). "We surveyed a few
states and figured out that half to three-fourths of a million bee
colonies have died. This is no urban legend. It is serious."
What is so serious is not only that the bees themselves are dying off
without a smoking gun present, but that most people have no idea of the
role they play in the food supply at large. Commercial beehives pollinate
over a third of America's crops, and that web of nourishment encompasses
everything from fruits like peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries and
more, to nuts like California almonds, 90 percent of which are helped
along by the honeybees. Without this annual pollination, you could
conceivably kiss those crops goodbye, to say nothing of the honey bees
produce or the flowers they also fertilize.
But as the world has grown, so has its hunger and crowds, which has
paved the way for the death of wild pollinators as well as the importation
of honeybees from different climates in order to have massive crop
pollination.
In the case of California's aforementioned almonds, the largest managed
pollination event in the world, the growing season occurs in February,
well before local hives have suitably increased their populations to
handle the pollination load. As a result, the region is increasingly
dependent on the importation of hives from warmer climates.
The same goes for apple crops in New York, Washington and Michigan, as
well as blueberries in Maine. Almonds alone require more than one-third of
all the managed honeybees in the United States, so it's entirely possible
that the honeybees may have already been stretched to the breaking point,
as far as environmental and chemical stressors are concerned. In fact,
it's safe to say that the nation's honeybees, already a tireless lot, are
totally exhausted from work.
"The honeybee is so important for pollination of hundreds of
agricultural crops, because humans have made it so," Caron explained. "We
destroyed the natural pollinators, plowed up the area they needed to live
and continued to replace their habitats with strip malls and housing
developments. So, farmers have come to rely on honeybees because of
mushrooming human populations and our own destructive habits to the
natural ecology."
And not just here, either: The disappearance is under way across the
world. Regions of Iran are experiencing the same phenomenon, as are
countries like Poland, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland,
Germany and more every day, including Latin American and Asia. The breadth
of the problem suggests that a major environmental balance could be to
blame -- what else is new? -- yet no authority will sign off on the
possibility and the specific causes still remain unknown.
"Other countries are also experiencing serious declines of honeybee
colonies," said Maryann Frazier, senior extension associate at MAAREC and
the department of entomology at Penn State University. "But we are not
certain that the cause behind the losses here in the United States are the
same as those causing [losses] in other parts of the world."
Throw in the fact that this type of thing has been recorded as a
regular occurrence since the 19th century, and you have an apiary mystery
of mammoth proportions.
"Bee colonies die all the time," Caron added. "They die over winter,
lose queens, are destroyed by pests or diseases. But this is different, as
the bees are simply gone and do not develop normally."
"We have had honeybee die-offs in the past which may or may not be
related to the current situation," said Frazer. "However, they seem to be
getting more severe. If the problem of honeybee health isn't addressed
quickly, there could be serious consequences."
Meanwhile, MAAREC and others have ruled out a few possibilities, at
least in the sense that they are not currently studying them. Radiation
from cell phone towers -- "Get serious!" laughed Caron -- and genetically
modified organism (GMO) crops such as Bt corn are no longer in the chase
for public enemy No. 1, although some farmers would like them studied
further. John McDonald, a biologist, beekeeper and farmer in rural
Pennsylvania wrote an extensive
piece for the San Francisco Chronicle questioning the role Bt
corn, which is used extensively in commercial beekeeping, plays in the
suppression of the honeybee's immune system. He echoed the concern to a
recent roundtable on the issue for Salon.com., but so far, the scientific
and industry consensus, for what it's worth, seems to be mostly united on
disavowal of the GMO threat.
But why? After all, the rapid increase of GMO crops plays as much a
role in the destabilization of natural environments as warming
temperatures, which opens the doors to all manner of pathogens and
parasites, such as the Varroa (or vampire) mite infestation that allegedly
leveled the same fate on crops in the winter of 2004-2005. And though that
particular theory carries a good amount of weight in the scientific
community, it has yet to be ultimately confirmed. Same goes for the fungus
Nosema ceranae, which was reported in the Los Angeles Times as
being one of the many recently discovered pathogens that could be
devastating honeybees in Europe, Asia and America.
"By itself, it is probably not the culprit," Diana Cox-Foster, Caron
and Frazer's colleague at MAAREC, as well as a professor of entomology at
Penn State University, told the Times, "but it may be one of the
key players."
And so on. Science's search for the smoking gun may not be able to see
the honey for the bees, pardon the paraphrase, because they are searching
for so specific a threat in the face of an acknowledged overall
environmental instability. Scientists may be hard at work looking for a
pathogen, parasite, pesticide, pollutant or disease, and may not be
interested in arguing that the culprit could be all of them, given what
the IPCC and others are calling our precarious environmental situation. So
the question has to be asked: Is this yet another byproduct of climate
crisis, our increasing global temperature? As usual, the answers aren't
too satisfying.
"There is no way to demonstrate global warming effects with a simple
experiment," Caron explained, "but last year was very poor nutrition-wise.
We do not have the smoking gun. Our experiments are along three credible
lines. Stressors inside or outside, including beekeeper manipulations, may
stress bees leading to their being susceptible to pathogens. The pathogens
themselves -- maybe a virus has mutated and is now in epidemic form -- but
we cannot say the pathogens are the cause or effect. Or chemical
stressors, such a pesticides that bees are increasingly exposed to,
causing them to have weakened immune systems that then permit pathogens to
enter more easily and kill the bees. Chemicals could be acting
synergistically."
But what could be more synergistic than our environment, a dense
webwork of annually occurring natural actors and events that give us our
food, air and water on a basis so regular that we barely take the time to
notice how all of it works? Or what we will do when it stops working?
And that is where the future of this debate lies, regardless of what is
causing the honeybees to disappear. What this phenomenon has made
glaringly obvious is our vulnerability to any environmental disruption
going forward. Which is a scary proposition, plugged in as we are to
addictive simulations like American Idol and YouTube while our
real-time environments bite the dust. What do we do when the honeybees
stop working for our collective benefit?
"We can find alternatives and grow other crops," Caron said, "but not
immediately. It will take time for farmers to adjust. In the meantime, our
food production goes offshore, and we become a food-dependent country like
England, a decision their leaders elected to pursue when they stopped
supporting agriculture. But most people think food comes from the
supermarket, and they have no perception of what things cost anyway."
Since perception is reality, as the aphorism goes, that attitude might
change in a hurry once the strawberries and almonds stop coming. The way
forward, therefore, is the same as it ever was: Education and funding.
We're not going to make it to the next century without both.
"Twelve cats died from tainted foodstuffs," Caron fumed, "and six vets
at Cornell University alone were studying the losses. Meanwhile, we have a
few dedicated pathologists and bee experts on this issue. What is wrong
with this picture? Twelve cats or the loss of one-fourth of America's bee
colonies? Not to say the cat deaths didn't need to be investigated, but
the resources we are prepared to pour into that issue versus the
disappearance of our honeybees is what is out of whack."
Now that's a joke, Dr. Gupta. A terrifying one.
Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared
on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.
Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony
collapse' of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007
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".
No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides,
global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.
German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power
lines.
Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return
to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried
it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.
Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile
phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced
the possibility is real."
The case against handsets
Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is
still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take
decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official
Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were
40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the
handset.
Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from
mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go
senile in the prime of their lives.
Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use
mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors
have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant
texting.
Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned
that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety
recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.
Honeybees will die out in Britain within a decade as
virulent diseases and parasites spread through the nation's hives,
experts have warned.
Whole colonies of bees are already being wiped out,
with current methods of pest control unable to stop the problem.
Disease is killing off Britain’s
honeybees
The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) said that
if the crisis continued, honeybees would disappear completely from
Britain by 2018, causing "calamitous" economic and environmental
problems.
It called on the Government to restart shelved
research programmes and to fund new ones to try to save the
insects.
Tim Lovett, the association's president, said: "The
situation has become insupportable and the Government is unwilling
to take steps to avoid disaster.
"We're increasingly unable to cope with threats as
they arise. No bees means a huge cost to agriculture, without
touching on the ecological and environmental issues. We're facing
calamitous results."
Last year, more than 11 per cent of all beehives
inspected were wiped out, although losses were higher in some
areas.
In London, about 4,000 hives - two-thirds of the bee
colonies in the capital - were estimated to have died over last
winter. Of the eight colonies inspected so far this year, all have
been wiped out.
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The losses are being blamed on Colony Collapse
Disorder, a disease that has severely affected bee populations in
America and Europe, and a resistant form of Varroa destructor, a
parasitic mite that affects bees.
The decline in honeybees is risking the
sustainability of home-grown food. They pollinate more than 90 of
the flowering crops we rely on for food. They are estimated to
contribute more than £1 billion a year to the national economy yet
the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra),
spends an average of only £200,000 a year on research to protect
them.
The BBKA will this week launch a campaign aimed at
forcing ministers to take the plight of the bee more seriously, and
to spend the £8 million over the next five years which it believes
is essential to guarantee its survival.
At their annual meeting held earlier this month, the
association's 11,200 members voted unanimously to condemn the
Government's position.
At a showdown meeting, between Lord Rooker, the
farming minister, and the BBKA last month, the minister refused to
increase the spending, even though in November, he appeared to admit
the severity of the threat, when he said: "If we do not do anything,
the chances are that in 10 years' time we will not have any
honeybees."
Mr Lovett added: "Defra has been alerted, but
chooses to take no action. If nothing happens, we may not even have
to wait 10 years."
Professor Francis Ratniek, a bee expert at Sheffield
University, said: "If there was to be a bee collapse the effect on
Britain would be huge.
"In Britain we haven't had our fair share of bee
research funds and research into bee disease has decreased just as
the threat to colonies is increasing. A complete die-off is a worst
case scenario."
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright
of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium
without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright
Here are another three interesting stories about
honey bees dying or vanishing.
In the Australian story researchers have dissected
bees that have died and they have found that their immune systems have "totally
gone to pieces". "It like they just lost their immune system and
anything will kill them".
For anyone who has looked at the evidence of human
cancer cases (and pets) around cell phone antenna and strong sources of
electromagnetic radiation, this will not be a surprise. There is evidence
of DNA damage, cell damage and changes in blood composition etc. from EMR.
I have strong reasons to believe that it was exposure to high levels of EMR that
compromised my own immune system, made me ill and caused me to develop prostate
cancer. Damage to the human and animal immune systems, by
EMR, has been shown by much research. I have little doubt that the
immune systems of bees can be damaged by EMR.
It is interesting that honey bees in Australia are
not being harmed as they are in California. I would place a bet that
the environment in California has far higher levels of electro magnetic
radiation than found in most of Australia.
The second article is about - "Taiwan,
the latest country stung by vanishing honey bees". This is
interesting because several months ago there was a news story from Taiwan which
stated a large number of citizens were suffering from the effects of electro
magnetic radiation and many antenna masts were being removed. There has
been widespread debate in Taiwan about EMR, and the removal of base
stations.
The third story is about GM modified foods and
their possible influence on bees.
Give
Bees a Chance The Simon - Los
Angeles,CA,USA And when you consider bees are big business as
well as a critical part of the food chain, that vanishing act is no
laughing matter. Consider: ... See all stories on this topic
A killer disease continues to wipe out honey bee
colonies across America, and British beekeepers say that their hives
are now starting to succumb. While everything from pesticides to
mobile phones is being blamed, Richard Grant joins investigators
hunting for the real culprit
'These are some of the sickest bees in America,'
says Dennis vanEngelsdorp, helping me into a beekeeper's suit but
wearing just a T-shirt, jeans and sandals himself. A scruffy blond
Dutch-Canadian, 37, and a casual veteran of many thousand bee
stings, he is one of the lead scientists investigating the
mysterious die-off of honey bees in America. He has been inspecting
hives around the country, bringing back samples for the various
laboratories studying the phenomenon and keeping some of the worst
cases under observation here by his cabin in the woods of central
Pennsylvania.
Sweet turned sour: bees are vanishing in huge
numbers
He opens the bear-proof fence and works the bellows
on his smoker, a nozzled canister full of burning leaves. Smoke
makes bees less aggressive. It disrupts the scent alarms sent by the
guard bees, instructing the others to come out and attack the
intruders. Instead they start gorging themselves on honey, on the
assumption that a forest fire is about to destroy the hive and
they'll need the extra energy to build a new one. He puffs some
smoke into the first hive, takes off the lid and lifts out one of
the frames. 'Look at this,' he says, 'This should be covered in
bees. There's plenty of honey, pollen and brood [eggs, larvae and
pupae] but hardly any adults, just these few small groupings.
They're abandoning their young and their food stores, leaving the
colony and just disappearing.'
Honey bees cannot survive outside the sophisticated
social structure of the colony, with its guard bees and nurse bees,
heating and cooling teams, cleaning squads, foragers, comb-builders,
honey-processors - all of them female and all of them sisters,
daughters of the same queen, communicating with each other with
scents and through dances. The males, or drones, are big, hairy,
clumsy and stingless. They don't dance and their only function is to
mate with the queen, after which they die.
The investigators have no doubt that the
disappearing bees are dying but they almost never find the dead
bodies, which doesn't make it easy to determine what's causing the
phenomenon. For want of a better term, they're calling it Colony
Collapse Disorder (CCD), and since last November it has ravaged a
quarter of America's 2.4 million beehives. In mild cases 35 per cent
of the bees disappear. In severe cases an apparently healthy colony
of 30,000 bees will empty itself out completely in a few days. 'Some
people think their navigation systems are affected and the bees are
getting lost on their way back to the hive,' vanEngelsdorp says. 'I
think the bees know they're sick and they're leaving the colony so
they don't infect the others. But that's just a theory. At this
stage it's all just theory although we are narrowing down the
possible explanations.'
He lifts the lid off another hive. This one is
completely deserted but still contains a good supply of honey and an
intact comb. 'It's been like this for more than two weeks,' he says.
'Normally, within a day or two of bees leaving a hive, other bees
come in to rob the honey and small hive beetles and wax moths start
eating the comb. But this hasn't been touched and it's something we
see a lot with CCD. The toxin or the pathogen or whatever it is must
still be giving off a scent. These insects can detect it but as yet
we can't.'
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A third hive contains only the slender elegant
queen, still laying eggs, and a small surrounding cluster of her
newly hatched offspring. 'It doesn't seem to affect the queens.
Look, she's really trying but the adults are leaving faster than she
can replace them. Why? That's the big question.'
For American agriculture it's a $14 billion a year
question. That is the estimated value of the food crops pollinated
by honey bees every year - 90 different fruits and vegetables, or
one third of the American diet. They also make honey, of course, but
in economic terms that's strictly a sideline activity, valued at
$157 million a year. 'Without bees for pollination,' vanEngelsdorp
says, 'we'd basically be eating grains and meat.'
Colony Collapse Disorder has generated enormous
public interest and media coverage in America and dozens of theories
have been proposed, including some predictable nonsense: the bees
are experiencing rapture and ascending to heaven; aliens are
abducting the bees; the military is altering the earth's
electro-magnetic field in top-secret experiments; it's a plot by
Osama bin Laden to destroy American agriculture.
GM crops have come under more serious scrutiny. So
have the possible effects of climate change, air pollution,
chemicals in the water and radiation waves from power lines and
mobile phones. The main suspects, however, are a new contagious
disease, damage from pesticides, and the stress on bees from being
transported long distances and fed on artificial syrups and protein
supplements. Most commercial beekeepers in America live as nomads,
migrating from one flowering crop to the next with their hives
stacked up in 18-wheel juggernauts. These were the first to suffer
from CCD and the hardest hit, although it is also affecting some
small organic beekeepers who don't take their bees on the
road.
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright
of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium
without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright
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Colony collapse a new
phenomenon
Bees worldwide have been involved in a disappearing act
called “colony collapse disorder” over the past two years [1]
(Mystery
of Disappearing Honeybees, this series), with little sign
of the disease or infestations that have resulted in massive
loss of colonies in the past. The bees simply leave the hives
and fail to return. Beekeepers and scientists alike are
stymied as to the cause of this strange phenomenon.
One likely culprit is a new class of systemic pesticides,
which are not only sprayed on crops, but also used universally
to dress seeds in conventional agriculture, and can confuse
and disorientate bees at very low concentrations [2] (Requiem
for the Honeybee, this series). Another candidate is
radiation from mobile phone base stations that has become
nearly ubiquitous in Europe and North America where the bees
are vanishing; this possibility is considerably strengthened
by preliminary findings that bees fail to return to the hives
if cordless phone base stations are placed in them.
Simple experiment with dramatic results
Researchers at Landau University in Germany designed a
simple experiment for students on the Environmental Science
course [3]. Eight mini-hives, each with approximately 8 000
bees were set up for the experiment. Four of them were
equipped with a DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless
Telecommunication)-station at the bottom of the hive, and the
other four without the DECT-station served as controls.
At the entrance of each hive, a transparent plastic tube
enabled the experimenters to watch the marked bees entering
and leaving the hive, so they can be counted and their time of
return after release recorded for a period of 45 minutes.
The experimenters also studied building behaviour by
measuring the area of the honeycomb and its weight.
In the course of the experiment, three colonies exposed to
mobile phone radiation and one non-exposed control colony
broke down. The total weights of the honeycombs in all
colonies, including those at the time of breakdown were
compared. The controls weighed 1 326g, while those exposed to
the DECT-stations weighed only 1 045g, a difference of 21
percent. The total area of the honeycomb in the controls was 2
500, compared to just 2050 in the exposed hives.
But it was the number of returning bees and their returning
times that were vastly different. For two control hives, 16
out of 25 bees returned in 45 minutes. For the two
microwave-exposed hives, however, no bees at all returned to
one hive, and only six returned to the other.
Cordless phone base station widely used in homes and
offices
These dramatic results are of a preliminary nature, but one
should bear in mind that the DECT-station is a simple cordless
phone base, widely used in homes and offices.
It emits microwave radiation of about 1 900 MHz
continuously, which is frequency modulated at 100 Hz. The
average power is 10 mW, with a peak of 250 mW. It represents
the exposure levels of perhaps tens of millions worldwide
living near mobile phone base stations, or have cordless
phones in their homes or offices.
The same scientists had carried out an earlier experiment
with the cordless phone base on a standby mode, in which the
average power is 2.5 mW, and that appeared to have had no
effect on the bees [4, 5].
Clearly the present findings need to be taken much further,
but their significance should not be downplayed for a number
of reasons. The findings are compatible with evidence
accumulating from investigations on many other species
including humans, showing that mobile phone radiation is
associated with a range of health hazards including cancers
[6] (Drowning
in a Sea of Microwaves, SiS 34). Furthermore, bees
are known to be extremely sensitive to magnetic and
electromagnetic fields, and there have been many suggestions
that they could be used as an indicator species for
electromagnetic pollution.
Bees as indicator species for electromagnetic
pollution
Experiments dating well back to the last century have
documented the phenomenal sensitivity of honeybees to
electromagnetic fields. Bees use the earth’s magnetic field to
navigate. Free-flying honeybees are able to detect static
intensity fluctuations as weak as 26 nT against the background
earth-strength magnetic field (average 500 mT) [7]. This has been demonstrated in
experiments where individual honeybees have been trained to
discriminate between the presence and the absence of a small
static magnetic anomaly in the lab. Honeybees can also learn
to distinguish between two 360o panoramic patterns
that are identical except for the compass orientation. In this
case, the difference was a 90o rotation about the
vertical axis [8]. The most powerful cue to direction for the
honeybee comes from the sky, but discrimination between
patterns is possible in the absence of celestial information,
as when the sky is overcast. Under those conditions, bees can
use a magnetic direction to discriminate between patterns.
The bees’ waggle dance on the honeycomb, which tells hive
mates where to find food, can also be misdirected by anomalies
in the earth’s magnetic field or very weak pulsed magnetic
fields at about 250 MHz applied in the correct direction [9].
Bees can even learn to detect very low levels of extremely low
frequency alternating electromagnetic fields [10].
But mobile phones have been around for close to 20 years,
so why now? There has been a recent change in cell phone
technology that coincides with the current crisis. 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 [11].
Bees are disappearing in North America, Europe and also
Australia, wherever mobile phones are greatly in use. Stay
tuned.
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