Are mobile phones wiping out our bees (and thus our food supply)?

probe

This article appeared in sindo.gb about mobile phones and their impact on bee colonies. (Personally I'd have thought that the mobile phone cellsites are an even greater threat - they are in the same position 24h/24, dumping out far higher doses of radiation on a continuous basis).

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.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece

10-10-20

I don't believe that the handsets or mobile masts are to blame.
"The alarm was first sounded last autumn" This doesn't explain why the event occured - what changed last autumn? What one event just switched like that? Blame 3G if you will, but this sounds like a biological issue - not and electronic one!

mike65

Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

Einstein was a brilliant theoretical physician I belive.

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.

I hate that sort of reporting, which 'blue-chip' research was this?

As for it being collapsing bee colonies I suspect a bit of historical digging might well show similair phenomea has occured before, if it were the fault of mobile phone radio waves then why's it taken 20 years?

Mike.

gilroyb

Mobile phone usage was lower in the US than Europe, in particular Germany and the Nordic nations. This fall in bees has started in the US, came to UK and into Europe. The countries that have had the highest concentration of masts weren't the ones where this problem started.

Afraid this isn't the explanation, these 'scientists' you refer to are going to have to do something else to occupy their time.

bonkey

The cynic in me is wondering whether or not there is a correlation between GM foods and the die-off in bees. That cynical voice is then suggesting that this "its all about the mobile phones" would be a typical move one could expect to ensure that even were such a correlation shown, there would be alternate so-called-theories already in the public consciousness, thus ensuring that there was maximum scope for the "oh get over your tree-hugging anti-GM stance, there's nothing wrong with it, and why aren't you against those dangerous mobile phones anyway" counterpoint.

WHen I stop listening to the cynic in me, I'm also wondering if this is a natural event being blown out of proportion. From what (little) I've read, bee die-offs aren't anything new, although the scale of this one seems atypical.

Múinteoir

A lot of it is actually due to a parasite called verroa. It recently arrived here in Ireland and has killed off large amounts of Ireland's wild bees. Veroa can be treated, but it means that only domesticated bees survive longterm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor

The Varroa mite has been the parasite with the most pronounced economic impact on the beekeeping industry. It may be a contributing factor to Colony Collapse Disorder which is threatening hives throughout North America.

bonkey

The quote you supply says it may be a factor, but you yourself say it is the cause of a lot of it.

probe

I have been doing some research... It seems that bees are one of the most sensitive insect to the earth's magnetic field. They use it for navigation and to adjust their internal body clocks. Mobile phone radio waves are pulsed electromagnetism. It is easy to understand how something that depends on tiny magnetic field changes for navigation and time information could be affected by these electromagnetic forces which are infinitely more powerful near a mobile phone cellsite. They have never allowed passenger use of wireless devices on aircraft because of the risk of electromagnetic interference with the aircraft's navigation system. The ill conceived for many reasons proposal to allow the use of mobile phones on aircraft, if it ever goes ahead, will be based on the installation of very low wattage cellsites on the aircraft itself. These will turn down the power output of passengers' mobile phones to a few mW - compared with up to 2W from a GSM 900 MHz handset and 40 or 50 watts or more from a cellsite. While North America is well behind Europe and Asia in the use of mobile telephony, they have large military communications radio grids which blanket the country.

I have no doubt that there are other chemical, viral etc forces involved in killing off bee populations. That doesn't absolve electromagnetic radiation...

.probe

Please also see the following:

Millions of Bees Die - Are Electromagnetic Signals To Blame?
Categories

Bees in the US are dying of some unknown cause - millions of them are leaving their hives and do not come back. What is happening? The problem has got a name - colony collapse disorder - but no apparent cause.

Some years back, France and other European countries had a similar, if less severe die-off of honey bees. At the time Gaucho, a poisonous seed treatment chemical produced by Bayer, was blamed, the die-off has continued in Europe, although at a comparatively slower pace.

The situation in the US seems even more severe than what happened in Europe, and certainly the onset is more sudden. According to The Independent, millions of honey bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die, leaving beekeepers facing ruin and US agriculture under threat.

"Across the country, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, honey bee colonies have started to die off, abruptly and decisively. Millions of bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die (they cannot survive as a colony without the queen, who is always left behind).

Some beekeepers, especially those with big portable apiaries, or bee farms, which are used for large-scale pollination of fruit and vegetable crops, are facing commercial ruin - and there is a growing threat that America's agriculture may be struck a mortal blow by the loss of the pollinators. Yet scientists investigating the problem have no idea what is causing it."

On one of my weekly news grabs, I linked an article on the mysterious die-off of honey bees, and a reader commented, suggesting that emissions of GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network, might be to blame. Here is what he had to say:

After reading several articles on the disappearance of the honeybee, the thought occurred that this appears to be happening only in the US. A Google search turned up nothing on this phenomenon in any other country, including Canada and Mexico.

Why only the US? Also, why are nonsensical excuses being offered up by the pseudo-scientific community for the demise of the bee?

Researchers have dubbed the syndrome the "colony collapse disorder." They say the bees presumably are dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or disoriented and eventually dying from exposure to the cold. Or, it could just be that the bees are stressed out. Give me a break!

Tired bees? Dying from weather exposure? Stressed out bees? Disoriented?

Just imagine a tired bee for a moment. When’s the last time you saw a tired bee?

Dying from weather exposure? Weather cold enough to kill bees in their hives would also decimate other insect populations. No report on that, huh?

Stressed out bees? What, all of a sudden bees get stressed out? What about bees in other countries? They don’t seem to be having a problem at all.

Disoriented bees? Ah, well this is a possibility. But what would make them disoriented? Perhaps it is the 250 HZ signals being pumped out of GWEN stations all over America. This signal makes people angry, so that they support the administrations idea of going after Iran and violence in general. It works great for mass manipulation of opinion. Unfortunately, the same signal will induce a misdirection of up to 10 degrees in the navigation ability of the honeybee. They go away from the hive and never come back because they can no longer find it. That’s why it’s only happening in the US.

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this is that US media has never ventured to question why it is only happening here. Somebody must have told them to clam up on this issue or the current crop of US reporters got their degrees in journalism out of a Cracker Jack box.

Now what the hell are GWEN stations, you might want to ask, and what could they have to do with the catastrophic die-off of honey bees...

GWEN, Microwave Arrays and Mobile Phone Radiation

GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network, is a military communications network, consisting of some 300 transmitters dotting the whole of the continental United States. Each tower is 300-500 feet high. The stations are from 200 to 250 miles apart, so that a signal can go from coast to coast from one station to another. The official purpose is "to ensure adequate communication between command authorities and land-based strategic nuclear forces in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States mainland." But there are others who say, a different, hidden use of the system may be "electromagnetic mind-altering technology" using ELF or Extremely Low Frequency waves.

According to a 1982 Air Force review of biotechnology, ELF has a number of potential military uses, including "dealing with terrorist groups, crowd control, controlling breaches of security at military installations, and antipersonnel techniques in tactical warfare." The same report states:

"Electromagnetic systems would be used to produce mild to severe physiological disruption or perceptual distortion or disorientation. They are silent, and counter-measures to them may be difficult to develop."

Robert O. Becker, M.D., in his book "Crosscurrents: The Perils of Electropollution" said:

"GWEN is a superb system, in combination with cyclotron resonance, for producing behavioral alterations in the civilian population. The average strength of the steady geomagnetic field varies from place to place across the United States. Therefore, if one wished to resonate a specific ion in living things in a specific locality, one would require a specific frequency for that location. The spacing of GWEN transmitters 200 miles apart across the United States would allow such specific frequencies to be 'tailored' to the geomagnetic-field strength in each GWEN area."

Another candidate for a source of disturbing radiation is the Microwave Vertical Array, a large number of microwave towers erected throughout the US, which may have uses other than simple communication.

The bees seem to be playing the role that canary birds had in the mines, warning us of impending desaster. Are these insects, by their unprecedented behavior of flying off without returning to their hives, showing that something insidious is going on? Whether this is a signal of covert mind control or simply radiation from mobile phone applications, for sure we should be paying attention.

According to a message from Paul Doyon, electromagnetic waves may well have the capacity of disorienting not only bees but a number of flying creatures. Here is a specific instance involving bees he quotes:

At Cornell Univ. honeybees in a hive relocated into a new building became disoriented. After extensive research ruled out other causes, someone noticed the hive was next to the building's electric transformer. The bees were confused by 60 hz magnetism strong enough to interfere with homing and communication to gather nectar and pollen. (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/RofD4.html)

In Germany, a study of honeybees irradiated with DECT mobile phone base station radiation found that only few of the irradiated bees returned to the hive, and that they required more time to return than the non irradiated bees. Also, the weight of the honeycombs of the irradiated bees was found to be smaller than those in the hives of non irradiated bees. (Stever H, Kuhn J, Otten C, Wunder B, Harst W. Verhaltensaenderung unter elektromagnetischer Exposition. Pilotstudie. Institut fuer Mathematik. Arbeitsgruppe Bildungsinformatik. Universitaet Koblenz-Landau; 2005. http://agbi.uni-landau.de/materialien.htm)

See also

www.mikrowellensmog.info/bienen.html Bees die from microwave irradiation - German site of Dr. Ferdinand Ruzicka, University professor.

and

http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/ouruhia/ Ouruhia Web, a New Zealand electromagnetic waves website.

and

Firstenberg, A. 1997: Microwaving Our Planet: The Environmental Impact of the Wireless Revolution. Cellular Phone Taskforce. Brooklyn, NY 11210.

See also Alfonso Balmori on EMFacts.

Other indications put together by Doyon about the effects suffered not only by bees but also birds and farm animals from the effects of cell phone radiation:

The effects of EMR are being felt by wildlife and the environment as a whole, Birds, bees, worms, trees are all being affected. We need to fight for not only the future of mankind but for the future of the whole environment.

Vienna physicians are displaying information posters in doctor's surgeries. They state radiation from mobile phones is far from being harmless as they have been told by the cell phone companies. They have therefore, in order to act responsibly, the Chamber of Doctors in Vienna, Austria, has decided to inform people about potential medical risks.

http://www.mast-victims.org/

His findings, and subsequent related work by Dr Cyril Smith (Smith and Baker, 1982), seem relevant also to the earlier and more generally accepted studies on bees and homing pigeons, both of which are known to have receptors which are able to sense the Earth's magnetic field and its variations, which they use to help direct their survival behavior. My own extraordinary first experience of complete disorientation below the lines may also be relevant; I had never experienced this before, though I have done so since, most notably after I had held up a fluorescent tube for over an hour, to be photographed under the lines; the next day, after a distressingly sleepless night, I found what looked like a burn on that shoulder.

http://www.bewisepolarize.com/man-made%20emf%20sources.htm

Our cheap transistor radios can pick up and separate out hundreds of radio signals at levels of a few hundreds of microvolts/metre. More sophisticated communications receivers can work down to levels of about 10 microvolts/metre. Radio-astronomers work on informational signals from stars at less than 1 microvolt/metre - this is a power level of about 0.000 000 000 001 microwatt/cm2 (1 attowatt/cm2 !!). We can now detect and create pictures from signals from spacecraft at our outer planets using transmit powers similar to those use by mobile phones of a few watts!

Honeybees have been shown to be sensitive to magnetic flux differences of 1 nanotesla (10 microGauss) [4][Theoretically humans could also be sensitive down to less than this level (pineal thermal noise c. 0.24 nanotesla - Smith, 1985). Various sea creatures can detect voltage gradients of a few 10's of microvolts/metre.

Biological stochastic resonance from regular pulsing EMFs can effectively amplify coherent signals (like power EMFs) by vast amounts.

What arrogant nonsense to suggest that living systems need to be "cooked" before they realize they are being bombarded by signals and that microwaves of 100 volts/metre are harmless to us.

http://members.aol.com/gotemf/emf/animals.htm

Honey bees navigate by observing changes as small as 0.6% in the Earth's magnetic field (2.5 mG out of 400 mG). Other studies have shown that other animals, such as sea turtles and homing pigeons, can navigate using the Earth's magnetic field as a guide. In order to navigate to precision, it is necessary to have many magnetosomes with a permanent dipole moment which are able to maintain their direction in the Earth's magnetic field while being buffeted by Brownian thermal fluctuations.

V.3. Animals: Honey bees follow B fields (Walker/Bitterman, J. Comp. Physiol. 157, 67-73, 1995, and Science 265, 95, 1994) down to a few mG DC accuracy and sea turtles turn when B varies at earth's locations (Science 264, 661 (1994).

42. "Honeybees Can Be Trained to Respond to Very Small Changes in Geomagnetic Field Intensity," M.M. Walker and M.E. Bitterman, J. Exp. Biology 145, 489-494 (1989). (A)

- - -

Although the major trouble seems to be in the US, beekeepers in many European countries are also reporting heavy losses. Perhaps we should not concentrate, therefore, on one particular system of electromagnetic emissions but consider the explosive growth of the cellular communications system in just about every country.

We are covering the earch with a fine-mesh network of microwave-emitting senders and repeaters, in addition to now billions of mobile phones we are using to keep in contact with each other.

One of the major points of trouble seems to be that the radiations from mobile phones have passed from analog to digital in the last few years, which means they are pulsed at around 220 "packets" per second. That frequency is very close to the native frequency of the bees' hum, which has been measured to be in the range of 190 to 250 cycles per second.

There are those who warn of health dangers of the mobile phone craze, but the mainstream response seems to be "here comes the tinfoil hat brigade".

Are we going to run our of food before we realize what we're doing?

See also:

When Bees Disappear, Will Man Soon Follow?
On a recent conference call, Dr. Carlo laid the blame for the sudden demise (often within 72 hours) of entire bee colonies on the recent proliferation of electromagnetic waves (EMF). He cited the startling statistic that, at present, there are some 2.5 billion cell phone users around the world. While this (plus the explosive growth of cell phone towers) used to be the major concern, the problem has been significantly exacerbated by the recent introduction of satellite radio. Dr. Carlo commented that the constant electromagnetic background noise seems to disrupt intercellular communication within individual bees, such that many of them cannot find their way back to the hive.

The problem could well be in our unbridled use of electromagnetic radiation in communications, which is one of the great unacknowledged health threats not only for humans, but it may be killing the bees as well.

EMF frequencies or microwave frequencies are overriding normal control mechanisms in the body and shutting off energy production

As in radio and other transmitters, crystals act to convert certain discrete frequencies into electrical signals. Before we had all of the electro-pollution, animals could simply orient themselves to the earths electromagnetic signature. Additionally animals could store into memory at a subconscious level the discrete signatures of subtle variations in electromagnetic signalling from various regions. This would explain the highly specific nature of migratory behaviour seen in certain animals. What has not been appreciated is the ability which has probably evolved over time to see, complex patterns that are generated from the earth's electromagnetic signature.

EMF frequencies or microwave frequencies are overriding normal control mechanisms in the body and shutting off energy production

http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/issues/emr.php?id=bees

Catastrophic Bee Population Decline May Be Related to Bt-Spliced GMO Crops
"Nobody knows why the bees are dying. There is evidence though that GE crops contribute to this, in particular insect resistant crops producing the Bt-toxin. Though healthy bees do not seem to be affected by Bt pollen, a scientist called Hans-Hinrich Kaatz in Germany has found that bees infested with parasites and fed with Bt pollen were affected and died at a high rate.

City Beekeeping
Just to get a bit of an idea of what it involves to work with bees

A Natural Mystic: The Honey Bee is Speaking to Us
Other causes that are effecting the bees are electromagnetic frequencies that are being pumped into the air by all the cell phone towers and military technologies such as HAARP. These frequencies are having an effect on the bees along with the chemtrails that work in tandem with these frequencies as plasma antennas. Bees use natural electromagnetic frequencies to hone in on where the flowers are that they gather their pollen and nectar from and to speak to one another. Birds do the same when it comes to traveling south for the winter.

15 April 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.


Source: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/03/06/millions_of_bees_die_are_electromagnetic_signals_to_blame.htm

bonkey

probe wrote:

I have no doubt that there are other chemical, viral etc forces involved in killing off bee populations. That doesn't absolve electromagnetic radiation...

What would seem to absolve EM radiation is the lack of significant change within the timeframe that teh problem has emerged, coupled with the very sensitivity of bees that you go to lengths to stress.

Consider that EM radiation in Europe and the US from mobiles are on different frequencies. Consider also that the banwidth used for mobiles - particularly in the US - was far from an EM wasteland prior to the emergence of mobiles phones. Consider that mobile phones - whilst increasing in density - have been decreasing in output-per-unit since their inception, as I believe have base-stations.

The long and the short of it is that while one can find a correlation between EM radiation and bees, any correlation which suggests that mobile phone emissions are causing problems to bees should logically suggest that these problems should have emerged years, if not decades ago and that there is no factor which suggests we are currently reaching a tipping point.

As for teh article you quote, well you'll have to forgive me if I find i thard to take an article seriously which suggests that the following is a strong argument:

Just imagine a tired bee for a moment. When’s the last time you saw a tired bee?

Dying from weather exposure? Weather cold enough to kill bees in their hives would also decimate other insect populations. No report on that, huh?

Stressed out bees? What, all of a sudden bees get stressed out? What about bees in other countries? They don’t seem to be having a problem at all.

Disoriented bees? Ah, well this is a possibility.

How come I should reject the notion of tired or stressed bees because I haven't seen them, but disorientation - which I've never seen in a bee either - is suddenly a valid idea?

Its also notable that the author has identified a correlation between mobile apiarys and the worst-effected, but doesn't explain why this doesn't suggest that mobility is the issue. Some digging around for alternate points of view will show that the whole issue of mobile apiaries could well be linked to the problem.

There are numerous issues at play with a mobile apiary, such as what the bees are fed in transit, how well they cope with being unable to go out and fly or defecate, which they apparently refuse to do in their hives about as strongly as the average human will refuse to defecate in their clothes for extended periods of time. Indeed, if we also consider the well-stressed point as to how sensitive bees are to EM, then we also have to take into account the potential differences in local background conditions in EM with these mobile apiaries.

Of course, there is the obvious question that such speculation raises - if mobile apiaries were a problem, wouldn't all of this have surfaced long ago? Unfortunately, such a question only has validity if one is willing to apply it to other mooted factors as well....such as the "electro-smog" caused by mobile phones.





.probe

Please also see the following:

Millions of Bees Die - Are Electromagnetic Signals To Blame?
Categories

Bees in the US are dying of some unknown cause - millions of them are leaving their hives and do not come back. What is happening? The problem has got a name - colony collapse disorder - but no apparent cause.

Some years back, France and other European countries had a similar, if less severe die-off of honey bees. At the time Gaucho, a poisonous seed treatment chemical produced by Bayer, was blamed, the die-off has continued in Europe, although at a comparatively slower pace.

The situation in the US seems even more severe than what happened in Europe, and certainly the onset is more sudden. According to The Independent, millions of honey bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die, leaving beekeepers facing ruin and US agriculture under threat.

"Across the country, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, honey bee colonies have started to die off, abruptly and decisively. Millions of bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die (they cannot survive as a colony without the queen, who is always left behind).

Some beekeepers, especially those with big portable apiaries, or bee farms, which are used for large-scale pollination of fruit and vegetable crops, are facing commercial ruin - and there is a growing threat that America's agriculture may be struck a mortal blow by the loss of the pollinators. Yet scientists investigating the problem have no idea what is causing it."

On one of my weekly news grabs, I linked an article on the mysterious die-off of honey bees, and a reader commented, suggesting that emissions of GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network, might be to blame. Here is what he had to say:

After reading several articles on the disappearance of the honeybee, the thought occurred that this appears to be happening only in the US. A Google search turned up nothing on this phenomenon in any other country, including Canada and Mexico.

Why only the US? Also, why are nonsensical excuses being offered up by the pseudo-scientific community for the demise of the bee?

Researchers have dubbed the syndrome the "colony collapse disorder." They say the bees presumably are dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or disoriented and eventually dying from exposure to the cold. Or, it could just be that the bees are stressed out. Give me a break!

Tired bees? Dying from weather exposure? Stressed out bees? Disoriented?

Just imagine a tired bee for a moment. When’s the last time you saw a tired bee?

Dying from weather exposure? Weather cold enough to kill bees in their hives would also decimate other insect populations. No report on that, huh?

Stressed out bees? What, all of a sudden bees get stressed out? What about bees in other countries? They don’t seem to be having a problem at all.

Disoriented bees? Ah, well this is a possibility. But what would make them disoriented? Perhaps it is the 250 HZ signals being pumped out of GWEN stations all over America. This signal makes people angry, so that they support the administrations idea of going after Iran and violence in general. It works great for mass manipulation of opinion. Unfortunately, the same signal will induce a misdirection of up to 10 degrees in the navigation ability of the honeybee. They go away from the hive and never come back because they can no longer find it. That’s why it’s only happening in the US.

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this is that US media has never ventured to question why it is only happening here. Somebody must have told them to clam up on this issue or the current crop of US reporters got their degrees in journalism out of a Cracker Jack box.

Now what the hell are GWEN stations, you might want to ask, and what could they have to do with the catastrophic die-off of honey bees...

GWEN, Microwave Arrays and Mobile Phone Radiation

GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network, is a military communications network, consisting of some 300 transmitters dotting the whole of the continental United States. Each tower is 300-500 feet high. The stations are from 200 to 250 miles apart, so that a signal can go from coast to coast from one station to another. The official purpose is "to ensure adequate communication between command authorities and land-based strategic nuclear forces in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States mainland." But there are others who say, a different, hidden use of the system may be "electromagnetic mind-altering technology" using ELF or Extremely Low Frequency waves.

According to a 1982 Air Force review of biotechnology, ELF has a number of potential military uses, including "dealing with terrorist groups, crowd control, controlling breaches of security at military installations, and antipersonnel techniques in tactical warfare." The same report states:

"Electromagnetic systems would be used to produce mild to severe physiological disruption or perceptual distortion or disorientation. They are silent, and counter-measures to them may be difficult to develop."

Robert O. Becker, M.D., in his book "Crosscurrents: The Perils of Electropollution" said:

"GWEN is a superb system, in combination with cyclotron resonance, for producing behavioral alterations in the civilian population. The average strength of the steady geomagnetic field varies from place to place across the United States. Therefore, if one wished to resonate a specific ion in living things in a specific locality, one would require a specific frequency for that location. The spacing of GWEN transmitters 200 miles apart across the United States would allow such specific frequencies to be 'tailored' to the geomagnetic-field strength in each GWEN area."

Another candidate for a source of disturbing radiation is the Microwave Vertical Array, a large number of microwave towers erected throughout the US, which may have uses other than simple communication.

The bees seem to be playing the role that canary birds had in the mines, warning us of impending desaster. Are these insects, by their unprecedented behavior of flying off without returning to their hives, showing that something insidious is going on? Whether this is a signal of covert mind control or simply radiation from mobile phone applications, for sure we should be paying attention.

According to a message from Paul Doyon, electromagnetic waves may well have the capacity of disorienting not only bees but a number of flying creatures. Here is a specific instance involving bees he quotes:

At Cornell Univ. honeybees in a hive relocated into a new building became disoriented. After extensive research ruled out other causes, someone noticed the hive was next to the building's electric transformer. The bees were confused by 60 hz magnetism strong enough to interfere with homing and communication to gather nectar and pollen. (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/RofD4.html)

In Germany, a study of honeybees irradiated with DECT mobile phone base station radiation found that only few of the irradiated bees returned to the hive, and that they required more time to return than the non irradiated bees. Also, the weight of the honeycombs of the irradiated bees was found to be smaller than those in the hives of non irradiated bees. (Stever H, Kuhn J, Otten C, Wunder B, Harst W. Verhaltensaenderung unter elektromagnetischer Exposition. Pilotstudie. Institut fuer Mathematik. Arbeitsgruppe Bildungsinformatik. Universitaet Koblenz-Landau; 2005. http://agbi.uni-landau.de/materialien.htm)

See also

www.mikrowellensmog.info/bienen.html Bees die from microwave irradiation - German site of Dr. Ferdinand Ruzicka, University professor.

and

http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/ouruhia/ Ouruhia Web, a New Zealand electromagnetic waves website.

and

Firstenberg, A. 1997: Microwaving Our Planet: The Environmental Impact of the Wireless Revolution. Cellular Phone Taskforce. Brooklyn, NY 11210.

See also Alfonso Balmori on EMFacts.

Other indications put together by Doyon about the effects suffered not only by bees but also birds and farm animals from the effects of cell phone radiation:

The effects of EMR are being felt by wildlife and the environment as a whole, Birds, bees, worms, trees are all being affected. We need to fight for not only the future of mankind but for the future of the whole environment.

Vienna physicians are displaying information posters in doctor's surgeries. They state radiation from mobile phones is far from being harmless as they have been told by the cell phone companies. They have therefore, in order to act responsibly, the Chamber of Doctors in Vienna, Austria, has decided to inform people about potential medical risks.

http://www.mast-victims.org/

His findings, and subsequent related work by Dr Cyril Smith (Smith and Baker, 1982), seem relevant also to the earlier and more generally accepted studies on bees and homing pigeons, both of which are known to have receptors which are able to sense the Earth's magnetic field and its variations, which they use to help direct their survival behavior. My own extraordinary first experience of complete disorientation below the lines may also be relevant; I had never experienced this before, though I have done so since, most notably after I had held up a fluorescent tube for over an hour, to be photographed under the lines; the next day, after a distressingly sleepless night, I found what looked like a burn on that shoulder.

http://www.bewisepolarize.com/man-made%20emf%20sources.htm

Our cheap transistor radios can pick up and separate out hundreds of radio signals at levels of a few hundreds of microvolts/metre. More sophisticated communications receivers can work down to levels of about 10 microvolts/metre. Radio-astronomers work on informational signals from stars at less than 1 microvolt/metre - this is a power level of about 0.000 000 000 001 microwatt/cm2 (1 attowatt/cm2 !!). We can now detect and create pictures from signals from spacecraft at our outer planets using transmit powers similar to those use by mobile phones of a few watts!

Honeybees have been shown to be sensitive to magnetic flux differences of 1 nanotesla (10 microGauss) [4][Theoretically humans could also be sensitive down to less than this level (pineal thermal noise c. 0.24 nanotesla - Smith, 1985). Various sea creatures can detect voltage gradients of a few 10's of microvolts/metre.

Biological stochastic resonance from regular pulsing EMFs can effectively amplify coherent signals (like power EMFs) by vast amounts.

What arrogant nonsense to suggest that living systems need to be "cooked" before they realize they are being bombarded by signals and that microwaves of 100 volts/metre are harmless to us.

http://members.aol.com/gotemf/emf/animals.htm

Honey bees navigate by observing changes as small as 0.6% in the Earth's magnetic field (2.5 mG out of 400 mG). Other studies have shown that other animals, such as sea turtles and homing pigeons, can navigate using the Earth's magnetic field as a guide. In order to navigate to precision, it is necessary to have many magnetosomes with a permanent dipole moment which are able to maintain their direction in the Earth's magnetic field while being buffeted by Brownian thermal fluctuations.

V.3. Animals: Honey bees follow B fields (Walker/Bitterman, J. Comp. Physiol. 157, 67-73, 1995, and Science 265, 95, 1994) down to a few mG DC accuracy and sea turtles turn when B varies at earth's locations (Science 264, 661 (1994).

42. "Honeybees Can Be Trained to Respond to Very Small Changes in Geomagnetic Field Intensity," M.M. Walker and M.E. Bitterman, J. Exp. Biology 145, 489-494 (1989). (A)

- - -

Although the major trouble seems to be in the US, beekeepers in many European countries are also reporting heavy losses. Perhaps we should not concentrate, therefore, on one particular system of electromagnetic emissions but consider the explosive growth of the cellular communications system in just about every country.

We are covering the earch with a fine-mesh network of microwave-emitting senders and repeaters, in addition to now billions of mobile phones we are using to keep in contact with each other.

One of the major points of trouble seems to be that the radiations from mobile phones have passed from analog to digital in the last few years, which means they are pulsed at around 220 "packets" per second. That frequency is very close to the native frequency of the bees' hum, which has been measured to be in the range of 190 to 250 cycles per second.

There are those who warn of health dangers of the mobile phone craze, but the mainstream response seems to be "here comes the tinfoil hat brigade".

Are we going to run our of food before we realize what we're doing?

See also:

When Bees Disappear, Will Man Soon Follow?
On a recent conference call, Dr. Carlo laid the blame for the sudden demise (often within 72 hours) of entire bee colonies on the recent proliferation of electromagnetic waves (EMF). He cited the startling statistic that, at present, there are some 2.5 billion cell phone users around the world. While this (plus the explosive growth of cell phone towers) used to be the major concern, the problem has been significantly exacerbated by the recent introduction of satellite radio. Dr. Carlo commented that the constant electromagnetic background noise seems to disrupt intercellular communication within individual bees, such that many of them cannot find their way back to the hive.

The problem could well be in our unbridled use of electromagnetic radiation in communications, which is one of the great unacknowledged health threats not only for humans, but it may be killing the bees as well.

EMF frequencies or microwave frequencies are overriding normal control mechanisms in the body and shutting off energy production

As in radio and other transmitters, crystals act to convert certain discrete frequencies into electrical signals. Before we had all of the electro-pollution, animals could simply orient themselves to the earths electromagnetic signature. Additionally animals could store into memory at a subconscious level the discrete signatures of subtle variations in electromagnetic signalling from various regions. This would explain the highly specific nature of migratory behaviour seen in certain animals. What has not been appreciated is the ability which has probably evolved over time to see, complex patterns that are generated from the earth's electromagnetic signature.

EMF frequencies or microwave frequencies are overriding normal control mechanisms in the body and shutting off energy production

http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/issues/emr.php?id=bees

Catastrophic Bee Population Decline May Be Related to Bt-Spliced GMO Crops
"Nobody knows why the bees are dying. There is evidence though that GE crops contribute to this, in particular insect resistant crops producing the Bt-toxin. Though healthy bees do not seem to be affected by Bt pollen, a scientist called Hans-Hinrich Kaatz in Germany has found that bees infested with parasites and fed with Bt pollen were affected and died at a high rate.

City Beekeeping
Just to get a bit of an idea of what it involves to work with bees

A Natural Mystic: The Honey Bee is Speaking to Us
Other causes that are effecting the bees are electromagnetic frequencies that are being pumped into the air by all the cell phone towers and military technologies such as HAARP. These frequencies are having an effect on the bees along with the chemtrails that work in tandem with these frequencies as plasma antennas. Bees use natural electromagnetic frequencies to hone in on where the flowers are that they gather their pollen and nectar from and to speak to one another. Birds do the same when it comes to traveling south for the winter.

15 April 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.


Source: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/03/06/millions_of_bees_die_are_electromagnetic_signals_to_blame.htm[/QUOTE]

probe

bonkey wrote:

What would seem to absolve EM radiation is the lack of significant change within the timeframe that teh problem has emerged, coupled with the very sensitivity of bees that you go to lengths to stress.

While electromagnetic radiation from broadcast radio has been present in the environment for over 50 years, the profile of the “electromagnetic radiation map” has been changed drastically over the past decade – mainly due to cellular telephony.

In the past, the main sources of EM radiation were TV and radio transmitters. A handful of them throughout the country of any significant power output – and all of these located in areas of no human population (eg the top of Mt Leinster, Mullaghanish etc). All using analog transmissions.

Cellular wireless has a completely different profile. In addition to using pulsed digital transmission techniques, it has “carpet bombed” the country. If the bees were bothered by an RTE transmitter on Mt Leinster, they would presumably move away from that area and thanks to the workings of inverse square law would presumably find new habitats where the background electromagnetic radiation did not affect their navigation systems. In addition, the blast of EM radiation from a Mt Leinster type source was coming from a single direction – so if anything it could have been helpful to their navigation systems!

Cellphone sites and cellular telephones are blasting EM radiation left, right and centre all over the countryside. Imagine if you like, if one was blindfolded in a large field at night, and there was a powerful searchlight mounted on the roof of a house in the distance, you could probably make your way to the house with some difficulty by following the blast of light. If instead, someone installed 1,000 flashing searchlights all around the boundary fence of the field – you would have great difficulty finding the house on the hill, and would probably end up going around in circles!

While I am no expert in bee keeping, I read that they roam for long distances and must be able to find their way back to the hive and that they use the earth’s magnetic field as part of their navigation process. This leaves me in little doubt that that the cellphone infrastructure could be causing them severe difficulties.

And as I said earlier, EM radiation is probably not the sole difficulty that the poor little bees face in life...

.probe

bonkey

probe wrote:

While electromagnetic radiation from broadcast radio has been present in the environment for over 50 years, the profile of the “electromagnetic radiation map” has been changed drastically over the past decade – mainly due to cellular telephony.

Yes, I accept that.

In the past, the main sources of EM radiation were TV and radio transmitters. A handful of them throughout the country of any significant power output – and all of these located in areas of no human population (eg the top of Mt Leinster, Mullaghanish etc). All using analog transmissions.

We can stop right there.

All of the articles scare-mongering about this die-off of bees have been talking about it starting in the US, being most prevalent in the US, and spreading from the US here to Europe.

However, in Europe, we have had much greater cellular coverage - particularly in digital - than in the US. So why is it coming from there to here?

If you want to show that there is a correlation, you need to show that there is a factor which has progressed alongside the dieing off of the bees.

Saying we've got a completely different spectrum here in Ireland today than 10 years ago is completely irrelevant to why bees are dieing en masse in the US and why the current "epidemic" is spreading from the US.

In addition to using pulsed digital transmission techniques, it has “carpet bombed” the country.

And the relevance to bees dieing in America is....what?

Cellphone sites and cellular telephones are blasting EM radiation left, right and centre all over the countryside.

Having mentioned the inverse-square law, one would assume you'd know enough that "blasting" and distance from the transmitter is only relevant in terms of the power output of said transmitter.

Imagine if you like, if one was blindfolded in a large field at night, and there was a powerful searchlight mounted on the roof of a house in the distance, you could probably make your way to the house with some difficulty by following the blast of light. If instead, someone installed 1,000 flashing searchlights all around the boundary fence of the field – you would have great difficulty finding the house on the hill, and would probably end up going around in circles!

Right. Then imagine that this was occurring in two places. In one place, those 1000 searchlights had been blinking on and off like this for, ohhh, say about 10 years. In the other place, a slow transition was still being made, and it was up to maybe 100 searchlights. All of a sudden, severe problems occur in this second location, and apparently propagate to the first location.

Blaming the searchlights would seem stupid. IF it was the searchlights fault, why isn't the direction of propagation from the area with more searchlights then fewer???

Its like saying the bees in Ireland have been able to handle this for a decade, but all of a sudden have said "hang on a sec...this stuff should be wrecking my head like it is my distant cousins in the US" and having made this decision, fall voer dead.

While I am no expert in bee keeping,

Nor am I. I've read what bee-keepers have to say on the issue, though, and generally they seem to dismiss the mobile-phone argument as tosh.

I would also point out that most of the articles you're linking to are suggesting GWEN or other non-mobile-phone sources may be the culprit. But then one would wonder why the comparatively slow propagation and why its coming to Europe at all.

I read that they roam for long distances and must be able to find their way back to the hive and that they use the earth’s magnetic field as part of their navigation process. This leaves me in little doubt that that the cellphone infrastructure could be causing them severe difficulties.

But if it is, then it should have been causing it for over a decade. If its the digital network, then Ireland and Europe should have been hit long before and far far harder than the US.

We haven't.

If its US-based tech like large-scale ELF transmitters, GWEN etc. then it shouldn't be in Europe.

It apparently is.

And as I said earlier, EM radiation is probably not the sole difficulty that the poor little bees face in life...

EM radiation has undoubtedly causes some hardship in their life. I would asy its almsot certain that some bees have been killed because of it.

I'm not denying that at all. What I'm saying is that the argument blaming an epidemic apparently spreading from the US to Europe on a trigger which propagated in the opposite direction and which has been here far longer than the epidemic is simply untenable.

John_C

probe wrote:

But there are others who say, a different, hidden use of the system may be "electromagnetic mind-altering technology" using ELF or Extremely Low Frequency waves.

May I propose you wear a tin hat to block out the evil rays?

probe

bonkey wrote:

All of the articles scare-mongering about this die-off of bees have been talking about it starting in the US, being most prevalent in the US, and spreading from the US here to Europe.

However, in Europe, we have had much greater cellular coverage - particularly in digital - than in the US. So why is it coming from there to here?

If you want to show that there is a correlation, you need to show that there is a factor which has progressed alongside the dieing off of the bees.

Saying we've got a completely different spectrum here in Ireland today than 10 years ago is completely irrelevant to why bees are dieing en masse in the US and why the current "epidemic" is spreading from the US.

Surely you are confusing the timing and incidence of discovery/recognition of this problem with your perception of the roll out of wireless applications and technologies?
Simply because a "disease" is discovered and identified in country X first - doesn't mean that it first "originated" in country X. Differences in billing systems and network infrastructure choices between the US and Europe could also be a factor.

Having mentioned the inverse-square law, one would assume you'd know enough that "blasting" and distance from the transmitter is only relevant in terms of the power output of said transmitter.


Right. Then imagine that this was occurring in two places. In one place, those 1000 searchlights had been blinking on and off like this for, ohhh, say about 10 years. In the other place, a slow transition was still being made, and it was up to maybe 100 searchlights. All of a sudden, severe problems occur in this second location, and apparently propagate to the first location.

I would also point out that most of the articles you're linking to are suggesting GWEN or other non-mobile-phone sources may be the culprit. But then one would wonder why the comparatively slow propagation and why its coming to Europe at all.

You are confusing / twisting the analogy I used to simply describe a navigation problem in human terms with EM radiation impacts on the human body based on exposure time and wattage.

If its US-based tech like large-scale ELF transmitters, GWEN etc. then it shouldn't be in Europe.

You can't compartmentalize radio technologies and say that GWEN is a bee killer and GSM/UMTS is perfectly safe. It is all EM radiation. The point I am trying to make is that bees and humans have to put up with more and more of it coming from left, right and centre.

A few decades ago DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was used all over the place to kill insects. In time they discovered that it attacked the nervous system in humans, caused birth defects, killed fish and birds, and is persistent in the environment, and it was banned in most countries.

The extent of use and exposure levels has a lot to do with how dangerous a substance or technology is. Before they discovered the danger of X-Ray exposure, they used to have X-Ray machines in shoe shops in Ireland in the 1960s - so you could see if the shoes you were about to buy fitted properly!!!!! One can see the same issues with antibiotic over use today. MRSA etc. Generations never learn from mistakes made in the past!

I'm not suggesting that cellphones be banned - just that the service be used sparingly until we know the long term impact. Most mobile phone use is totally unnecessary.

.probe

probe

John_C wrote:

May I propose you wear a tin hat to block out the evil rays?

Probe didn't write this sentence - you took it from an article I cited/linked to and incorrectly attributed it to me.

"Inverse plagiarism"!

.probe

fits

Well my family keep bees, 3 km away from a television transmitter and 1 km from a mobile phone mast. I'll let you know if they mysteriously disappear.
The varroa mite is wiping out the wild bee population in Ireland (unless some mite resistant strain develops). Soon we'll be depending on beekeepers to provide bees for pollination.

bonkey

probe wrote:

Surely you are confusing the timing and incidence of discovery/recognition of this problem with your perception of the roll out of wireless applications and technologies?

No. I'm not.

Bees have not been dieing off for decades. The reports you have linked to which have mentioned Europe and the US have mentioned an epidemic in 24 states of teh US that appears to be spreading to Europe.

If you want to cherry-pick which facts you wish to use from the reports you have supplied, thats your lookout. I'm taking the reports you've offered and offering an analysis of the flaws contained within them.

Simply because a "disease" is discovered and identified in country X first - doesn't mean that it first "originated" in country X.

Again - I am not suggesting the direction of propagation. The reports you have supplied which mention both continents are.

Differences in billing systems and network infrastructure choices between the US and Europe could also be a factor.

Billing systems? The way I'm charged for my mobile phone is saving bees lives, whereas the American billing systems are killing them?

You are confusing / twisting the analogy I used to simply describe a navigation problem in human terms with EM radiation impacts on the human body based on exposure time and wattage.

No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that if its a density issue, then Europe has been far worse than the US for a long time....but we don't have anything approaching the epidemic thats being reported in 24 US states.

You can't compartmentalize radio technologies and say that GWEN is a bee killer and GSM/UMTS is perfectly safe. It is all EM radiation.

If its all EM radiation, then the argument that says modern mobile networks are different to the older analogue networks are bogus.

The argument which says mobile networks are different to television and other use of the same bandwidth is also bogus.

EM radiation also includes all telecommunications in use, as well as visibile light. Radio. Television. White noise generated by power lines. Satellite communications. Street lights. House lights. Car lights. Analog mobile phones. Digital mobile phones.

The point I am trying to make is that bees and humans have to put up with more and more of it coming from left, right and centre.

And? Why not argue for the lights to be turned off? For televuision to stop broadcasting? For powerlines to be shut down? Why are you concentrating on mobile phones, if its all EM radiation you've now decided is the issue?

Most importantly, why are you posting articles blaming mobile phones when you don't believe its the mobile phones but rather all EM radiation?

A few decades ago DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was used all over the place to kill insects. In time they discovered that it attacked the nervous system in humans, caused birth defects, killed fish and birds, and is persistent in the environment, and it was banned in most countries.

Yes, they did. But you know what....there wasn't a sudden epidemic caused decades after its use. There were consistent problems. Bees have not been dying en masse over the last number of decades. It is a recent, rapidly-spreading phenomenon....again, unless we're to discard the articles you've provided and make the facts up for ourselves as we go along.

Before they discovered the danger of X-Ray exposure, they used to have X-Ray machines in shoe shops in Ireland in the 1960s - so you could see if the shoes you were about to buy fitted properly!!!!!

Thats correct. And thats because it took such a comparatively a long time for individual humans to develop symptoms to low-level radiation exposure.

Bees, on the other hand, do not have this problem. They have shorter lifecycles. But the reports aren't saying that there have been gradually more and more die-offs as the concentrations have gone up, but rather that there's been massive die-offs all of a sudden...and they're spreading in a pattern completely unrelated to signal-density according to the reports you've shown us.

I'm not suggesting that cellphones be banned - just that the service be used sparingly until we know the long term impact. Most mobile phone use is totally unnecessary.

And here we go again. After having argued that its not mobile phones, but rather all EM emissions, you're off blaming one particular subset again.

So from what I can see, you've supplied some reports which blame mobile phones, but are choosing to disregard the bits of these reports which don't support the conclusion they've drawn. You've decided that there's other concerns that they're not discussing, but that mobile phones are still to blame. Its all EM, only its not. Its EM concentration, only its not. Its a problem thats taken decades to be recognised, only its not.

All you're convincing me of is that you don't like mobile phones, have seen articles linking them to something terrible and have decided it either must be true or if it isn't is worth supporting anyway because its anti-mobile-phone. I don't have any reports on that, but I can cherry-pick the bits of your posts that would support such an allegation and ignore the rest, just as effectively as you're using such techniques on the reports you've provided.

bonkey

Just to follow up on this....

There seems to be more information emerging, and an emerging hypothesis is that (surprise, surprise) there appears to be a number of factors, such as stress, diet, density of hives, and a single-celled parasitic fungus (Nosema ceranae).

No mention of mobile phones, unsurprisingly.

10-10-20

Another follow up...

A virus has emerged as a strong suspect in the hunt for the mystery disease killing off North American honeybees.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6978848.stm

Musha

Feed and weed killing off Clover Daisys and buttercups in our gardens could be to blame. I keep a patch of clover etc in my garden during the summer and get hundreds of "hits" every day for happy bees, nobody has ever been stung

Peanut

Mobiles linked to disturbed sleep
(BBC News)

' The study, funded by mobile phone companies, suggests radiation from the handset can cause insomnia, headaches and confusion.
...

"The study indicates that during laboratory exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals components of sleep believed to be important for recovery from daily wear and tear are adversely affected."

Researcher Professor Bengt Arnetz said: "The study strongly suggests that mobile phone use is associated with specific changes in the areas of the brain responsible for activating and coordinating the stress system."
...'

AngryHippie

Neighbour of mine had 3 hives 100m from vdfne mast without any major die offs or abnoramalities quite sucessfully for 3 or 4 seasons, eventually removed it because it was too far away from his house to keep an eye on it. Someone nicked a section box full of honey on him.
Its bollox. stupid americans.

Peanut

Did the bees sleep ok though? :cool:

probe

AngryHippie wrote: »

Neighbour of mine had 3 hives 100m from vdfne mast without any major die offs or abnoramalities quite sucessfully for 3 or 4 seasons, eventually removed it because it was too far away from his house to keep an eye on it. Someone nicked a section box full of honey on him.
Its bollox. stupid americans.

100m is too close for any damage. The antennae on mobile phone masts are highly directional, and are focused on a particular target zone for optimum coverage. The umbrella area in near proximity to the mast has very little exposure. If this was not the case, the occupants of many Garda stations would be well microwaved by now!

.probe

probe

In case anyone missed it yesterday, Philip Boucher-Hayes reports on how governments fiddled "research" reports on mobile phone radiation safety, in support of the mobile phone industry:

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/investigate/1183485.html

.probe

abakan

That funny Ive just been reading this article this morning about electromagnetic radiation

http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/issues/emr.php?id=bees

It is true, my Granny had 12 hives with hundreds of thousands of honeybees and to date they are getting wiped out at a serious rate. We have put it down to the radio Antennas that are 5 mile away

The reason why Im researching this would be because we have the New North - South Electricity Interconnector coming through the area and apart from the health and devaluation aspects there are the environmental impacts, for example a 400kV Electricity is alot more powerful than radio masts so we can say goodbye to our bees in our area and the cattle that feed off the grass under the lines are going to be on your dinner plate.

Also radio signals I think have been blamed for the lack of salmon in the rivers of Ireland, but there are other factors there like pollution and overfishing

Food for thought

probe

abakan wrote: »

That funny Ive just been reading this article this morning about electromagnetic radiation

The reason why Im researching this would be because we have the New North - South Electricity Interconnector coming through the area and apart from the health and devaluation aspects there are the environmental impacts, for example a 400kV Electricity is alot more powerful than radio masts so we can say goodbye to our bees in our area and the cattle that feed off the grass under the lines are going to be on your dinner plate.

While one is no fan of overhead high tension electricity cables, they have been around for decades with no apparent consequences for the bee population. Furthermore if a bee detects a threat coming from the cable (eg impact on their ability to navigate), they presumably will instinctively keep clear of them.

They can't escape cellsites however - they are everywhere, and collectively are designed to spew their radiation all over the place.

.probe

MCMLXXXIII

Of course mobile devices make bees (and other animals) go away, but it needs to be at a close distance. Besides, who stands near bee hives talking on their mobile all day? Although it may have a small part, there are way too many other factors that contribute to name just one as the main reason.

Mobile phones have been around for much longer than the past incidents of missing bees. If you look at opposing studies it shows that the bees die because they just never return to their hive as long as there is a mobile phone around, so they starve because they are not welcome in other colonies' hives and refuse to return to their own as long as radiation is emitting from it.

The Varroa virus is an advanced disease. Western nations have been medicating bees so they are strong and can be used commercially to pollinate crops. This made the bees that escaped and procreated in the wild have very weak immune systems because it depended on the medication. The virus attacked and succeeded killed many bees. Supposedly the US government has genetically modified some bees to handle this virus, thus saving the $3 billion worth of pollination labour the bees perform annually.

Genetically modified crops also contribute. People used to just eat corn. Now, we still eat it, but corn is also used for medecine, plastic, petrol, even fertilizer for some other crops. In the US, corn is also a registered insecticide because if an insect eats corn - it dies - whether it's on the stalk or already harvested. Human bodies are larger and better able to handle those attacks on the immune system.

Don't worry though - as stated above, the US has new bees that can handle anything...for now.

probe

MCMLXXXIII wrote: »

Mobile phones have been around for much longer than the past incidents of missing bees. If you look at opposing studies it shows that the bees die because they just never return to their hive as long as there is a mobile phone around, so they starve because they are not welcome in other colonies' hives and refuse to return to their own as long as radiation is emitting from it.

Quite – but mobile phone use has been growing and growing – and the networks have increasingly migrated from 900 to 1,800 MHz GSM and UMTS frequencies – which require a far higher density of cellsites – compared with the 900 MHz signal traditionally used which can cover a distance of up to 30 km. This leaves no place to escape for any insect whose navigational system is sensitive to EMF.

One of the theories behind the 777 crash last week at a London airport was that it was caused by the aircraft’s navigation/electronics systems been thrown out by Gordon Brown’s car and the high powered mobile phone signal blocking device they use to stop mobile phone triggered bombs. Apparently his car was driving along the LHR perimeter road just as the BA 777 aircraft from Beijing was about to touch down.

Mobile phone presence is probably less of an issue for bees. It is more likely to be the cellsites. Cellsites are in a fixed position 365/365, and are spewing out a phenomenal amount of radiation on lots of frequencies – covering both 2G and 3G technologies.

Having said that, the growth in the number and use of the phones themselves could also be a contributory factor, particularly in terms of the insect’s ability to navigate.

If you were put in a 10 hectare field some night, blindfolded and handcuffed, and there was one searchlight shining on you from the north eastern corner, which you could faintly see through your blindfold, you could probably make your way either to the searchlight or in the opposite direction from the tiny quantity of light visible through your blindfold – depending on whether you felt that the searchlight was “friend” or “foe”.

If there were several hundred searchlights around the perimeter of the field, chances are you’d end up going around in circles in the field all night!

One can’t help but suspect that you have a vested interest here, like the consultants who advise governments that mobile phone technologies have no adverse health impact!

.probe

Capt'n Midnight

abakan wrote: »

The reason why Im researching this would be because we have the New North - South Electricity Interconnector coming through the area and apart from the health and devaluation aspects there are the environmental impacts, for example a 400kV Electricity is alot more powerful than radio masts so we can say goodbye to our bees in our area and the cattle that feed off the grass under the lines are going to be on your dinner plate.

Also radio signals I think have been blamed for the lack of salmon in the rivers of Ireland, but there are other factors there like pollution and overfishing

Food for thought

Salmon first, radio waves don't travel far in water.

The 400KV is running at 60Hz, for efficient transfer you could use a quater wave antenna but that's still 1500Km of wire.

People with mobile phones use them near their brains and when not in use a lot of guys put them in front trouser pockets near other precious organs.
There is also the inverse square law. This means that the radiation you experiance from your mobile phone is far far more concentrated than any phone mast or transmission line.

Kippure alone chucks out about 1MW on UHF, if you take into account that mobile phones extend battery life by using as little RF power as it need's to work reliabially it's emitting more radiation than every mobile phone and mast on the island. And you can get fairly close to it too and no mutant sheep either.

Peanut

Another recent change in mobile transmissions is the switch from analogue to digital.

This means that the signals are more likely to be pulsed than a continuous wave.

Whether this is relevant or not remains to be seen, but if you don't believe that modulation of radiation in general can have an effect on biological systems, then try replacing all your home lightbulbs with strobes.

Also, far more frequency ranges are being used now than in the past. New technology such as enhanced modulation schemes (eg. OFDM) and new antenna designs (eg. beamforming) has meant that communications on higher Ghz freqs have become more robust, and therefore, more widely used.

And of course, mobile phone ownership (in this country at least) only really started taking off about eight years ago, and wireless data services etc in the last five or six.

AngryHippie

probe wrote: »

One of the theories behind the 777 crash last week at a London airport was that it was caused by the aircraft’s navigation/electronics systems been thrown out by Gordon Brown’s car and the high powered mobile phone signal blocking device they use to stop mobile phone triggered bombs. Apparently his car was driving along the LHR perimeter road just as the BA 777 aircraft from Beijing was about to touch down.

Is the only link between bees and that 777 that they both have wings ?
The Boeing 777's INS is not susceptible to the signal jamming on the PM's car. If that were the case, His car wouldn't be permitted within the Beacon range of the busiest airport in Europe. Really.:rolleyes:

probe wrote: »

One can’t help but suspect that you have a vested interest here, like the consultants who advise governments that mobile phone technologies have no adverse health impact!

Sure, mobiles are probably giving all of us tumors and increasing our risk of cancer and getting lost. But is it a massive conspiracy ? Unlikely.

luckat

Apparently it's not radiation but a parasite; organically raised bees tend not to get it (it's possible that this is because organic bees tend to be from smaller breeds which haven't been crossbred to increase the size of the individual insects; this has something to do with the size of the hexagonal cells they build, which in turn makes them less friendly to the parasites.... vague memory here of a discussion on OGL, the Organic Gardening List maintained by LSV.UKY.EDU (To subscribe, send mail to <mailto:LISTSERV@LSV.UKY.EDU>LISTSERV@LSV.UKY.EDU with the command: SUBSCRIBE OGL )



Some links:

Excellent article from the New Yorker about Bee Colony Collapse: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/06/070806fa_fact_kolbert (or http://tinyurl.com/3bzfnw)

http://dels.nas.edu/pollinators/?gclid=CN-C_ZWKj5ECFSJIEgoddAixGA - Why are pollinators dying, from the US National Academy of Sciences

MCMLXXXIII

probe wrote: »

One can’t help but suspect that you have a vested interest here, like the consultants who advise governments that mobile phone technologies have no adverse health impact!

Why yes, I enjoy spending exorbitant amounts of my income for a fair trade with degenerative brain cells…

…or maybe I plan on taking over the world by not using mobiles, but encouraging mobile usage for everyone else and hoping that they die of cancer so that I may rule as a dictator over the meek and pitifully ill public…

…or maybe you could thoroughly read the post and see how I said it could be one of the many factors causing CCD, and stop judging posts that observe slightly different views than your own.

probe

MCMLXXXIII wrote: »

Why yes, I enjoy spending exorbitant amounts of my income for a fair trade with degenerative brain cells…

…or maybe I plan on taking over the world by not using mobiles, but encouraging mobile usage for everyone else and hoping that they die of cancer so that I may rule as a dictator over the meek and pitifully ill public…

…or maybe you could thoroughly read the post and see how I said it could be one of the many factors causing CCD, and stop judging posts that observe slightly different views than your own.

You can attack pesticides and anything else you can think of in an attempt to deflect the focus on the environmentally unfriendly and almost certainly unhealthy business of the mobile phone industry.

If mobile phone radiation is problem free, why did the Germany government ask the public to minimise their use of mobile phones as much as possible?

.probe

MCMLXXXIII

probe wrote: »

You can attack pesticides and anything else you can think of in an attempt to deflect the focus on the environmentally unfriendly and almost certainly unhealthy business of the mobile phone industry.

Once again, please thoroughly read the post before you reply. I didn't blame pesticides themselves, I blamed genetically modifying crops, because corn (which used to be okay for insects to eat) now kills all small (insects and smaller) animals that eat it.

probe wrote: »

If mobile phone radiation is problem free, why did the Germany government ask the public to minimise their use of mobile phones as much as possible?

Although Germany asked citizens to minimize the usage, the World Health Organization has concluded that serious health effects (e.g. cancer) are very unlikely to be caused by cellular phones or their base stations.

However, Germans have conducted studies that have concluded "no overall increased risk of glioma or meningioma was observed among these cellular phone users."

In fact, Berlin is implementing caps on charges to those that roam out of their digital area. This will be implemented for the entire EU.

Could the limits be the for the same reason the US is forcing all American people to switch to digital television? There is little room left in certain frequencies for phones/TVs/radios to operate, so they are moving all the TVs to digital to make room for more mobile phone usage. TBH, I have no idea what's going on with phones in Germany, and it seems (from the articles above) that Germany doesn't even know either.

Peanut

MCMLXXXIII wrote: »

Although Germany asked citizens to minimize the usage, the World Health Organization has concluded that serious health effects (e.g. cancer) are very unlikely to be caused by cellular phones or their base stations.

However, Germans have conducted studies that have concluded "no overall increased risk of glioma or meningioma was observed among these cellular phone users."

It's worth remembering that there are a quite a number of studies that contradict this - the current consensus is that we can only say that there is no significant evidence for cancer in the short term. (However, this latest study suggests that there can also be acute physiological effects)

Q & A: Mobile phone safety (BBC News again... September '07)

We should also differentiate between exposure from handsets and exposure from towers when looking at different studies. Exposure may or may not be higher from one or the other, depending on location, usage patterns, measuring cumulative or peak exposure etc.

Capt'n Midnight

probe wrote: »

You can attack pesticides and anything else you can think of in an attempt to deflect the focus on the environmentally unfriendly and almost certainly unhealthy business of the mobile phone industry.

If mobile phone radiation is problem free, why did the Germany government ask the public to minimise their use of mobile phones as much as possible?

.probe

pesticides eh ?

Bj&#248 wrote: »

there were 20 deaths a year from well-regulated pesticides in the US. Yet the obvious solution of going organic would also have a price. Besides costing $100 billion a year in the US, it would have pushed up food prices, people would have bought slightly less fruit and vegetables and you could end up with 260,000 extra deaths from cancer.

In a similar vein how many lives have been saved by mobile phone ?

blackbox

Many of the posts on this thread are too long for my attention span - (phone issue?)

What I want to know is, can I use my mobile phone to get rid of an unwanted bee colony in my eaves? What exactly should I do?

It sounds like a much better idea than poisoning them.

NB they are dormant at present.

Capt'n Midnight

You could leave a nokia phone with a genuine holographed battery in the hive on charge until it catches fire and smoke them out that way, cos the only thing the radiation will do is keep them slightly warmer.

MCMLXXXIII

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

In a similar vein how many lives have been saved by mobile phone ?

That's a great point.

Besides all that, I think we can conclude that no one really knows exactly what is going on because there are studies all over the place and the conclusions are polar opposite from one another. As long as the US keeps inventing new breeds the crops will be fine. As far as your own personal helth effects...you just need to put it on the worth-it-scale. Is it worth it for an emergency situation...or even your own livleyhood?

galwaybabe

Where have all the bees gone?

blackbox

I saw my first bumble-bee of the year yesterday.

Húrin

If mobile phone technology is aiding the disappearance of bees (not a claim to be taken lightly) it is important to remember that it is one of multiple causes.

Another is that old chestnut, climate change.

galwaybabe

Húrin wrote: »

If mobile phone technology is aiding the disappearance of bees (not a claim to be taken lightly) it is important to remember that it is one of multiple causes.

Another is that old chestnut, climate change.

We can't ignore loss of habitat either

bonkey

Húrin wrote: »

If mobile phone technology is aiding the disappearance of bees (not a claim to be taken lightly)

Actually, until evidence is provided, linking the two then it most certainly is a claim to be taken lightly.

it is important to remember that it is one of multiple causes.

It is more important to remember that we should not assume multiple causes until we can show that there are, in fact, multiple causes.

galwaybabe

bonkey wrote: »

Actually, until evidence is provided, linking the two then it most certainly is a claim to be taken lightly.


It is more important to remember that we should not assume multiple causes until we can show that there are, in fact, multiple causes.

So what's your theory Bonkey?