Are Mobile Phones Wiping Out Bees? 419
Mz6 wrote with a link to an article on The Independent site about a most unusual scientific theory. "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."
New Bee Attack recommended guidelines? (Score:5, Funny)
little tin hats (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:New Bee Attack recommended guidelines? (Score:5, Interesting)
If hive bees vanish, then successful farming will REQUIRE that less insecticide be used...or at least that it be of a very targeted variety.
Re:New Bee Attack recommended guidelines? (Score:4, Insightful)
I call baloney on this bee vs. cell phone theory. Cell phones were commmon in Europe for many years before they became ubiquitous in the US, so the fact that the bee problem started in the US and spread to Europe argues against a causal relationship. If a bee-decline were related to handi use the problem would have started in Europe and spread to the US.
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Reasons to believe this is bogus (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Europe has been using these frequencies far longer than in the US. Thus if there was any sort of "deployment pattern", it would start there.
3) Europe has higher cell use per capita and higher population density than the US. See (2)
4) Some of these frequencies have been heavily used in the past by high-channel UHF television stations with MUCH greater power (like 10,000 times). Ever wonder where channels above 70 went when cell phones started showing up? If it was something to do with these frequencies, all bees would have been gone back in the 70's.
and the most important one
5) these die-offs have been happening since people have been watching, long before there was any RF except for lightening
Maury
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Great insight.
That reminds me of how polar bears are the misleading poster child for global warming as well: instead of dying at sea because there's not enough ice, they and their progeny are taking the artic by storm. [telegraph.co.uk]
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Sounds like the same scientific insight as all the climate science I read about lately
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Re:Reasons to believe this is bogus (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been a general decline in beekeepers as cited in this news paper http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2007-02-15/news/bee-
Re:Reasons to believe this is bogus (Score:5, Insightful)
And then add in this paragraph in the story in TFA:
"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."
This tells volumes to anyone with a hint of a clue about biology. It says that whatever is happening is natural, and has happened enough for Nature to have built in defenses against whatever it is. The only time in nature you leave food untouched is when your instincts tell you it is BAD. For that to happen takes evolution a longtime to perfect, thus this crap isn't new. It tells me it is something very nasty but very old, older than H. sapiens and certainly cell phones.
But cell phone scares are all the rage these days so...... Not saying cell phones don't pose some major risks, but that has nothing to do with a media bandwagon. They start for reasons totally unrelated to science and then in the chase for funding, marginal scientists hook up to the bandwagon and make it self sustaining.
Re:Reasons to believe this is bogus (Score:5, Informative)
t says that whatever is happening is natural, and has happened enough for Nature to have built in defenses against whatever it is.
If I set off a teargas canister in a field, every critter in the area will move away from it quickly. That does NOT mean that teargas canisters occur in nature or that they have existed for millions of years.
The microwave pulses from some radar systems will scatter a flock of birds. AFAIK, RADAR is fairly recent in the natural world as well.
Re:Reasons to believe this is bogus (Score:5, Informative)
No, but it does mean that toxic gasses have existed for millions of years. Believe it or not, most creatures don't actually react when presented with fundamentally new stimuli; with the exceptions of neophobic animals like rats, and animals which think something about the deployment is threatening - like maybe the tear-gas canister hisses, or whatever - you're more likely to see animals go towards the grenade than away.
"But it's painful, of course they're going to run away." Yeah, why do you think pain exists? That's an evolved defense against generic caustic gasses, fires, et cetera. The gas in teargas was chosen specifically because it does a damned good job of setting off our natural reaction to the gasses in forest fire smoke. Just because humans can imitate the source of a biologically hardwired behavior doesn't mean that the behavior doesn't have an originating source. You'll note that tear gas is fine-tuned to piss off human biology; several other biologies on earth, such as insects, lizards, fish and hippies are completely unaffected, and still other biologies, such as deer, are killed by tear gas.
For comparison, set off a can of teargas in a container, then put the resulting liquid in the water of a tank containing crabs with an easy path out. The crabs will not react, if you're careful to not splash the water. They'll die quite ignorant of what's happening. We don't just magically run away from things. Biology has to know they're harmful before we'll bother. Most humans will silently asphyxiate in a room full of carbon monoxide, because the body doesn't know how to differentiate it from oxygen, and just sort of quietly fails.
There are tons of things humanity has made that are quietly toxic, and a few that were already in nature, like radon. The teargas reaction is not random. It's highly evolved and for a damned good reason. Animals set up shop in toxic sludge all the time.
every critter in the area will move away from it quickly.
Actually, many insects and smaller animals don't have the good sense to do so, and anything without exposed mucus membranes, like most lizards, won't have a good reason to leave. Only some classes of animal react to teargas, because many animals use different holy-shit triggers for fire. If you throw a quiet teargas grenade next to a seal, the seal will bat it around for a while, try to eat it several times, and end up getting bored and finding something to kill.
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OTOH, something like a natural poison that's been around a long time could be detected by all those natural enemies. Even an "unnatural" chemical could be detectable simply
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Possibly...but not likely. Seems more likely it's something along these lines [youtube.com].
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The mechanism is old, but the trigger new (Score:4, Interesting)
Blaming it on cellphones is a bit of a stretch though. There seem to be far more likely causes:
Pesticides/herbicides/fertilisers, particularly modern hormonal ones, could be disrupting the hives.
Cross breeding of bees (eg. Africanised killer bees) could disrupt bee/hive behaviour.
Monoculture farming cuts down of plant food diversity, leading to a less balanced diet. GM crops alter the composition of pollen & nectar.
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4) Some of these frequencies have been heavily used in the past by high-channel UHF television stations with MUCH greater power (like 10,000 times). Ever wonder where channels above 70 went when cell phones started showing up? If it was something to do with these frequencies, all bees would have been gone back in the 70's.
Not saying that I buy this theory or not but it would be interesting to see if it was related to the pulse nature of GSM transmissions. Did they do any studies to see if analog or CDMA
Re:Reasons to believe this is bogus (Score:5, Interesting)
end it is more to do with the soon to occur Geomagnetic Reversal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal [wikipedia.org]
http://www.synchronizm.com/blog/index.php/2007/03
http://www.setiai.com/archives/000063.html [setiai.com]
Excerpt: (paragraph 10)
Perhaps the most enigmatic of the bee's senses is their ability to read the Earth's magnetic field. Magnetism is used by many animals, including dolphins and pigeons. The honeybee, however, is more sensitive than any other creature known.
This is a signpost of nature, if we watch we can learn...
Ex-MislTech
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While the article is likely biased against cell phones and their usage, geomagnetic reversal does not explain everything. In particular, why this does not affect other species whose navigation appears to be dependent on the planet's magnetism. That, and why this is a spreading phenomenon, not one that suddenly happens to every honeybee worldwide. After all, changes in the magnetic field should affect the whole planet simultaneously and larg
Re:Reasons to believe this is bogus (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is for a healthy hive to lose its workers en masse. The queen is still producing eggs, but without mature workers the hive is doomed. It appears to be unrelated to the varroa pestilence which spread from Europe into North America in the 1970s and 1980s, and devastated many bee-keepers' livelihoods.
You are as serious as you should be: Not serious. (Score:4, Insightful)
It could happen to you: If you spend your time playing video games instead of learning about the world, you too can be so ignorant that you fall for every foolish, easily disproved theory.
--
Remarkable Occurrences Involving the Bush Family [futurepower.org]
Re:You are as serious as you should be: Not seriou (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't to say that this is the correct answer, just that it's consistent with the evidence against which it has been tested. (Probably that evidence forms the background against which it was formulated.) They are suggesting that it might be worth testing further. This seems reasonable. Since the cause of Colony Collapse Disease isn't known, examining
Max Planck would be very sad about this. (Score:3, Informative)
See my previous comment, posted January 13, 2005: Distinguish between real science and junk science. [slashdot.org]
Planck's constant [wolfram.com] is so small that interactions between electromagnetic waves and molecules cannot be chemically specific. The 2,000 MHz radiation from cell phones is felt as heat, a very, very small amount of heat, almost certainly no
I can guess too (Score:5, Funny)
*Sunspots
*Global warming
*Terrorism
*CowboyNeal
Re:I can guess too (Score:5, Funny)
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OT: "Crazy Frog" ringtone (Score:4, Informative)
It's Axel F [wikipedia.org], goddammit. Axel F, written by Harold Faltermeyer [wikipedia.org] in 1984 for the movie Beverly Hills Cop [imdb.com], the protagonist of which, played by Eddie Murphy, was named Axel Foley.
NOT "the Crazy Frog" song.
Oh, and for the record, that Puff Daddy song, I'll Be Missing You [wikipedia.org]? That was written by this dude called Sting, in a song called Every Breath You Take in 1983.
Goddamned kids these days. They're all "But I hate the 80s!" yet conveniently ignore the fact that three-quarters of their "culture" is ripped off from the 70s and 80s.
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Or maybe that is housewives? No, No, its globule warming that is making housewives extinct. Its all so confusing, I need another coffee!
The bees aren't dying (Score:5, Informative)
"It's not new this year," Williams said. "If you know what I mean."
Many beekeepers are skeptical of the reports or at least how they're adding up. For 100 years, beekeepers have logged periodic reports of sudden and inexplicable bee die-offs. People refer the latest die-off by its initials "CCD," but one Georgia beekeeper instead calls it the "SSDD" crisis for "Same Stuff, Different Day."
There have been a few good theories as to why they're dying off in certain places:
"The (bee's) instinct is to go out and collect pollen and nectar, and that's what they do. When they can't get out of the hive, it puts them under stress. They need to go to the bathroom on a regular basis, but they won't go in their hive," said Ken Ograin, an Elmira beekeeper.
"People think that's not the best thing to feed them. There's a lot of argument about that," Scher said.
Netcraft confirms: The bees are dying (Score:5, Funny)
You don't need to be a Darwin to predict the bees' future. The hand writing is on the wall: The bees face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for bees because the bees are dying. Things are looking very bad for bees. As many of us are already aware, the bees continue to lose market share. Royal jelly flows like a river of nectar.
The honey bee is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core queens. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time honey bee celebrities Maya and Willy only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: The honey bee is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Soul bee leader Q-Bee states that there are 7000 soul bees. How many bumblebees are there? Let's see. The number of soul bee versus bumblebee posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 bumblebees. Stingless bee posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of bumblebee posts. Therefore there are about 700 stingless bees. A recent article put africanized bees at about 80 percent of the bee market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 africanized bees. This is consistent with the number of africanized bee Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Pitcairn Island, abysmal sales and so on, the africanized bees went out of business and were taken over by the hornets who sell another troubled species. Now the hornets are also dead, their corpses turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that bees have steadily declined in market share. The bees are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If bee are to survive at all it will be among insect dilettante dabblers. The bees continue to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save the bees from their fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the bees are dead.
Fact: The bees are dying.
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That's obviously the problem. Bee transporters need minature baths installed!
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Re:The bees aren't dying (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The bees aren't dying (Score:4, Insightful)
There are probably other pathogens imported through globalization (like the Elm blight or Japanese beetle) which the european honeybees aren't resistant to, which will lead to some inconvenience as other pollinators move back into the open niche. This presumes, of course, that pesticide-besotted morons don't poison them first as well.
Slightly hopeful case in point; when I was growing up the bio-textbook example of adaptation was how some small moth was required to fertilize yucca, and without said desert moth, they wouldn't reproduce. People planted yucca in places (southern Michigan, NJ) that it doesn't belong, and apparently some other pollinator saw an opportunity, as I have seen new ones apparently sprouted from seed in the wild, sopme distance from the domestic plantings. This doesn't mean that the new pollinators are as efficient, and since they might include studly africanized "killer" bees, not as benign either, but we're probably not looking at total collapse.
When you see headlines like this involving radio-emissions as the cause of everything wrong in the world (as if the percent difference over natural field isn't trivial), you should require the alleged researcher to check one of two boxes, "I am a technophobic idiot who wants everyone to live in an unheated mud-hut like Gaia demands", or "I absolutely despise our over-connected, non-introspective, obnoxious cell-phone culture, and want a reason to make it go away".
Re:The bees aren't dying (Score:4, Insightful)
The US is the only country in the world that uses significant quantities of high fructose corn syrup, because the US Government bans sugar imports.
The epidemic has moved to Europe.
Therefore, it is not caused by feeding the bees high fructose corn syrup.
Also, while the problem of total hive die-offs in the case of CCD may be concentrated in huge commercial bee operations, the small scale rural local bee keeper we know, who's bees mostly stay on his own organic farm, and who's been doing this for a long time, told us that his yields have been down more and more over the last several years and that that's been standard for the industry, even for small operations like his. Even without total hive death, there's been an unusually large number of bees dying off, and surviving hives have been having trouble maintaining population.
I agree that the cell phone explanation isn't any good, but I don't buy the HFCS or traveling bee explanations either.
I also think that we should embark on a crash course of research funding in this area, because in case the bees don't start getting better on their own, the long term prospects for humanity don't look so good. With scientific "doomsday scenarios," the populous seems to already be divided into two camps- environmentalists who say every little thing is going to destroy the world in the next fifteen minutes, and conservatives who think that all doomsday scenarios are ludicrous. But every now and then, there's something where the science behind it is just scary enough that we should probably do some serious looking into it, just in case. Since no one's really disputing that
1. Bees in much of the world have been experiencing a significant unexplained population decline for years and
2. The food supply for humanity is overwhelmingly dependent on bees
that we should at least make a serious effort to ramp up research on this problem.
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Many amateur beekeepers (including my wife) are finding 90% or more of their hives wiped out here in California. These hives are not commercial, do not migrate.
Some people blame the high-fructose corn syrup that beekeepers feed the bees in the large-scale operations.
This is generally known to be not the best
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* Genetically Modified Organisms (plants AND animals)
* Global Warming (with or without Red Mites)
* Africanized ("Killer") Bees
* Russian bees
* Capitalism and free-market economics
* Republicans subsidizing corn for votes
That should be enough topics to kick start some foil hat discussions.
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*Don Imus
*Al Sharpton
*Nancy Pelosi
*Google's Purchase Of DoubleClick
*CowboyNeal
Better Reasons Exist than Mobile 'Phones (Score:5, Informative)
I for one am extremely suspicious about claims that bees are being wiped out by mobile 'phones. Here's an example of why:
US = 301,505,000 people in 2,718,695 sq miles = 111 people per sq mile
UK = 60,609,153 people in 94,526 sq miles = 641 people per sq mile
So, why is it that the US is suffering this major disappearance of bees when the UK isn't? Seeing as the density of mobile phone signals is going to be FAR higher in the UK? Ok, i accept that mobile phones in the UK work on different frequencies, but from what I've heard, the same thing is happening in Poland and Spain [earthfiles.com], which both have far lower population densities than the UK, and the same mobile phone frequencies. Of course, Poland and Spain import far more US Genetically Modified crops than the UK does.
Re:Better Reasons Exist than Mobile 'Phones (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe the government is using some sort of exotic systems to conduct mapping, drug interdiction or surveillance? Millimeter-wave radar can produce pictures of buildings, and operates on a frequency similar to cell phones.
In a few areas in the western US, there have been incidents when military aircraft electronic warfare systems have triggered widespread issues like garage doors opening and closing by themselves and TV signals being jammed.
Re:Better Reasons Exist than Mobile 'Phones (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Better Reasons Exist than Mobile 'Phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Better Reasons Exist than Mobile 'Phones (Score:4, Interesting)
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Or is it GMO's? (Score:2, Insightful)
According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have "altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry -- or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know."
babelfish translation of the article [altavista.com] or
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Personally, I think it's much more likely that in the UK and the rest of europe, people frown on excessive pesticide use, and when it is delivered, it's often by carefully targetted ground-based spraying, whereas in the USA, they spray lots more nasty shit from planes.
Given it's bees, I think it could just be a virulent fungus or mites or virus that just hasn't jumped across to the UK yet.
Also, UK and Ireland in particular have a diverse population o
different orders of magnitude (Score:3, Interesting)
What's called "millimeter" waves have a wavelength around one millimeter. Most cell phones operate around 300 millimeter wavelength, with the 2.45 GHz band used for some phones and other wireless equipment being around 120 millimeters. Not similar at all.
military aircraft electronic warfare systems have triggered widespread issues like garage doors opening and closing by themselves and TV signals bein
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The US has several different cellphone frequencies. They refuse to share the same network with each other. This means overlapping coverage from multiple sets of cellphone towers. I think it could easily make up the difference in the sheer number of cellphones.
Poland and Spain still tend to refute this, but their cause may be something else entirely, or just imagined.
Heck, it could be something completely unrelated, like the poles of the earth getting read
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Yeah, but...
There are only two frequency bands for cellular technology: analog & digital
Starting in February, 2008 the cellular industry is dropping analog in all but the smaller rural communities, if even that.
So by next year they'll all come back, right?
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That is wrong. What gave you that idea?
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Re:Better Reasons Exist than Mobile 'Phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully the strong bees will survive, and repollinate the earth.
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Though seems like this wouldn't be US centric either.
Any ideas?
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Sorta blows your theory out of the water, I think.
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Ah, if you RTFA, you should know this: "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." Sorta blows your theory out of the water, I think.
No it doesn't. Mobile phones have been popular in Britain for a long time; if it really was just down to mobile phones in general, this wouldn't explain the sudden jump in numbers.
It might be suggested that more recent adoption of 3G technologies had something to do with this. However, AFAIK 3G penetration is greater in the UK than in the US, so if that were the cause we'd more likely be "ahead" of you with the bee problem, not behind.
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It's not JUST the US...its spreading (Score:3, Informative)
"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 apiaris
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Right.
Now all we need to do is convince all the girls that having unprotected sex with random strangers will save the cute fluffy bumble-bees, and we're set.
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That's right! Despite the fact that people in the Western world are living longer and healthier lives than ever before, those "bastard" mobiles are still perceived as a threat.
I'd think bees have killed far more people than mobile phones ever have.
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Bee guidance (Score:2)
Presumably if we could work out exactly what EMR does to bees navigation capabilities then we could exploit this "feature" to send the bees exactly where we want them.
OTH can people who react strongly to bee stings now carry a device to ward them off?
THE BEES! (Score:3, Funny)
its not just bees ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with plant propagation in the wild is there is a rough 500:1 chance if successful growth to maturity for the seedlings.
Re:its not just bees ... (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't think you get it (Score:2)
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Mod down, (-1, Bullshit) (Score:2)
Sure, man being the foremost of these creatures. If done in a country with very low wages [kafrin.com] one can sometimes offer a very expensive exotic product. You see, vanilla is a plant that can be pollinated only by bees, and only one very special kind of bee, that's found only in its native Mexico. This is because its flower [wikimedia.org] has a peculiar shape [wikimedia.org] that only fits the body of that bee.
So, well, yes, natural evolution may take care of that. If bees disappear
What study? (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like the sort of work he might do, but a one-sentence paraphrasal is scant information on which to base any comment.
Doesn't hold much water (Score:2)
Still, no shortage in bees. Quite the opposite!
On the other hand, though, we don't have crops with altered genes...
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On a more serious note: No, GM plants aren't necessarily the culprit, but they might be, since "insect-resistance" is one of the modifications used. Bee-killing pollen could conceivably b
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Invader Zim (Score:5, Funny)
THE BEEEES
New Theory (Score:2, Funny)
I put forth a new theory...
It's because of the ketchup bottles.
They were clear before, and you could *see* how much was left, but more importantly, how nasty the remaining amount looked like. When the inside of the bottle got so nasty, as to have the ShakeIt-Until-Even technique fail, the bottles would get tossed out.
These bottles would eventually find thei
Yet more ignorance to confuse the public (Score:5, Informative)
Medical misrepresentation in the media has a long history -- in the 18th century, when a British physician developed a smallpox vaccine based on cowpox, newspapers at the time described people turning into cows, causing a national panic. Mistrust of vaccines lingered for decades afterwards. In 1999, anti-vaccine hysteria again surfaced when an extremely poorly designed study managed to be published in Lancet, claiming that 80% of children with autism had received the MMR vaccine. (80% of British children received vaccinations in the first place.) Lancet retracted the article, and years of wasteful research went into re-examining the vaccine theory -- plenty of other locations had rising incidences of autism despite reductions in vaccination rates. There is no controversy among epidemiologists today, but the media continues to describe this as a "controversial theory".
The incidence of autism has since leveled off, suggesting that the observed increase was just based on changes in diagnostic criteria and public awareness; the true prevalence has likely never changed.
The bee disorder in question is probably caused by viruses such as black queen cell virus or bee paralysis virus. Also, South African apiaries have had a problem with transposons (jumping genes), possibly viral in origin, that cause drone workers to produce children, disrupting the hive. Despite what you may have learned in high school, honeybees are a domesticated species with an unnatural pattern of reproduction in the first place. Wild bees do not always have strict hierarchies.
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"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."
If parasites, wildlife, and other bees refuse to go near an abandoned hive when normall
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Just a small nitpick: I think you mean "that cause workers to produce children". Workers and drones are separate castes and all drones are male.
Biggest Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes it sound like a new disease to me.
Doesn't make sense from a power standpoint (Score:2)
On the other hand, that big shiny ball in the sky that emits huge amoun
Corn fields? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of the die-offs have been near corn fields, and a pesticide that coats some of the GM corn is a neurotoxin that causes disorientation in bees, even at low doses. There was a similar issue in France a number of years ago, apparently. Honey production was cut in half for several years. The Star-Ledger here in NJ ran an article about it today. Some are speculating that this might be a factor.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news -11/1176611470205100.xml&coll=1 [nj.com]
Not quite (Score:5, Funny)
This happened in 1996 (Score:5, Interesting)
The cell phone theory is a little weak. From TFA, researchers found that "bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby"?? How nearby? Inside the homes of honeybee keepers? If that were the case we'd have seen the issue spring up much sooner.
Anyway, bee population scares have come up before. From this article [newsbank.com]:
So how did the bees make a recovery 11 years ago? Had they even recovered before this current problem? Can anyone find a bee population trend from the past 50 years?
Another thought: could this have anything to do with the fear of Africanized honeybees spreading into North America? Sorry for spouting conspiracy theory, but what if the government tried to use GM to stop the killer bees and it backfired? (same level of plausibility as the cell phone theory).
Radio waves are not the problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
-
They are however, several miles away from other bees making the transmission of disease and parasites less likely.
- Both corn and soybeans are planted directly adjacent to them. So current pesticides and herbicides are not affecting them.
- Productivity of honey is down considerably from a decade ago when I had 13 hives in a different location. However those hives were much closer to other bees and I am sure got the parasites that killed so many bees in the last decade. All 13 of those hives died.
- Honey production is down primarily because no one is planting clover for hay anymore. It is all corn and soybeans. It is a struggle I'm sure for the bees to find enough to store away for the winter.
- Commercial bees are transported from site to site for pollination. That is stressful to the hive and subjects them too other bees that are possibly infected with whatever.
I just don't accept the theory that it is radio waves. The study sample is probably so small it means nothing anyway.Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, that doesn't mean the RF theory is any less bunk, only that this instance doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Man, I'm way too late (Score:5, Informative)
My grandfather was a semi-hobbiest beekeeper who made a decent living after retirement selling beekeeping equipment, and taught me all about the wonder of the bees. I don't claim to be the worlds leading authority on bees, but I find them pretty fascinating, and know a bunch about 'em.
Anyways, I don't see Occam's razor being applied here. Here is what devastates bees:
1) Foulbrood.. Comes in two varieties, American and European.. Makes the larva basically rot in their pupas. It can be prevented with teramiacin (sp?! its a horse medicine), but the only cure for an infected colony is fire, and lots of it - mandated by the authorities. It's been somewhat of an epidemic since the 80s. There is lots of talk about it spreading because of commercially sold queens, and or colonies. Ie; The industry developed a bee that makes lots of honey, but is succeptible to this. This accounts for a *lot* of missing bees.
2) Africanized bees? A lot gets made of "killer bees", but once they move into a colony, that colony doesn't collect as much honey - and you don't see as many bees.
3) Climate or other environmental problems. Bees will abandon a location if it isn't suitable. It's common to have a swarm (too little food or too much space, so half the bees pack up a new queen and leave) that leaves the original colony to die - too few bees left to tend to the queen, or an incapable queen is a death sentence to a hive.
I can't believe the "scientists" would skip past an obvious sign of climate change and jump straight to cell phones. I've never heard this before, and frankly, it sounds like a bunch of horse-shit.
So long and thanks for all the pollen! (Score:5, Funny)
Real information from the people working on this (Score:3, Informative)
"What are examples of topics that the CCD working group is not currently
investigating? GMO crops: Some GMO crops, specifically Bt Corn have been
suggested as a potential cause of CCD. While this possibility has not been ruled out,
CCD symptoms do not fit what would be expected in Bt affected organisms. For this
reason GMO crops are not a "top" priority at the moment.
Radiation transmitted by cell towers: The distribution of both affected and non-affected
CCD apiaries does not make this a likely cause. Also cell phone service is not available
in some areas where affected commercial apiaries are located in the west. For this reason,
it is currently not a top priority.
Causes still under investigation include:
What potential causes of CCD is the Working Group investigating? The current
research priorities under investigation by various members of the CCD working group, as
well as other cooperators include, but is not limited to:
Chemical residue/contamination in the wax, food stores and bees
Known and unknown pathogens in the bees and brood
Parasite load in the bees and brood
Nutritional fitness of the adult bees
Level of stress in adult bees as indicated by stress induced proteins
Lack of genetic diversity and lineage of bees
US first? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
GE crops (Score:3, Insightful)
genetic engineering is vital to our survival and evolution as sepcies
I have yet to see any proof or concrete evidence that suggests never mind says that genetic engineering is essential to human survival in the next milia. It's certainly not needed to grow enough food for everyone. Enough food is already grown for everyone however because of politics and other human caused problems many people don't get the food they need. Take Zimbabwe. The country used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. How