Are Cell Phones Wiping Out Bees?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 14th, 2007
The mysterious vanishings of honeybees through Eurasia and America is beginning to worry people.
Across the country, beekeepers are grappling with the bizarre disappearance of hundreds of thousands of honeybees that leave their hives and are never seen again. In many cases, all that is left is an empty hive, a handful of sick bees and a swarm of unanswered questions.Gary Campbell, “The great honeybee mystery,” Fort Collins Weekly, April 14, 2007
Could it be cell phones? Read Campbell’s complete article here.
How fragile is the genetic basis of the bees?
The current bee population in the United States is maintained by a mere 600 queens that are keeping a bloodline alive that dates to the 1600s.Gary Campbell
If bees are leaving hives, dying out, and who knows what else by disorientation due to something like cell phones towers, what is happening to cryptids of all sizes?
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I wonder what bird flu and West Nile virus has wiped out. Also, what got killed off by smallpox and other diseases that came across from Europe after 1492?
Sounds like they haven’t got a clue, though parasitism appears to be the efficient cause.
Blaming cell phone towers sounds like blaming the new family in town for bad weather.
Need more input from BeeKeepers. May have to start some Bee Conservation breeding programs.
Bee populations are being wiped out by the varroa mite. See the information in the link at University of Kentucky Entomology. I used to brew a drink called Mead, which is like wine, but made from honey. When some supplies of specialty honey started to get hard to find, I did some research and found out these little guys were a big part of the problem. I haven’t heard anything about cell phone towers, but the varroa mite definitely is a problem.
This whole thing is actually very alarming news. Bees are a major pollinator and their demise will cause a domino effect that it is scary to contemplate. There is nothing that would be able to quite take the place of bees as prime pollinators if they die out. Cryptonut is right that the main culprit is a type of mite. There have been a few experiments with importing a type of mite resistant type of bee from Russia, but it remains to be seen what will become of this.
They better find a fix and quick!
I have a bee keeper friend who discussed this issue with me a couple of years ago.
We’re talking wild bees not domesticated.
Parisites and pesticides are some of the problem along with the cutting of woodlots and dead trees.
Dead trees afford protection to insects along with many birds and mammals.
More and more people are using pesticides on lawns, flowers , and gardens…the enviroment is now polluted with literally tons of pesticides.
The smaller animals have become effected, frogs, lizards , salamanders. Wild Honeybee colonies are almost non exisistant.
Oh well ,”Silent Spring” was only fiction.
Swnoel- Well, I know nothing of beekeeping, I’ll be honest. But I read an article recently saying that the threat was very real for domesticated bees and that whole hives had been wiped out in some areas. I don’t pretend at all to know a whole lot about this subject, but that is what I read. It is the same article that mentioned the mite resistant Russian bees.
swnoel,
A PRI show called Living on Earth has been talking about colonies of domestic bees being obliterated for at the last couple of months. Literally vanishing. loe.org is their website, its a great show.
btw, Irony doesn’t come across well in this channel of communication, (the rest of your message suggests you are being ironical) so I’m just pointing out your “Silent Spring” comment leaves you open to trolls, in a fashion.
There is no question that parasites were and are a problem with his domesticated colonies, I believe and maybe wrong but he controlled the problem with something like menthol.
He had bees for years , before he was problemed with mites, he noticed the rapid decline in wild bees, mites were not a real issue then.
He suspected it was due to the increase use of pesticides in gardens, orchards, and yards.
He use to bring his bees to orchards and got quite upset because the growers would spray during pollination time killing a large number of his bees.
The same pests they sprayed for, killed his bees.
I’m certainly not beating a drum for the elimination of pesticides, just that most people never think about the ramification of the use of them.
As I sit here now, I watch the snow fall , with the prediction for up to 10 inches, and think about how global warming must be the reason for this. 😉
How did they make the link from cell phones to bees? Is there some study or something that this article leaves out, or are they just looking for a scape goat? On the other hand, cell phone tech is new, and like most things, we won’t know the real ramifications of cell phones on the air waves for decades to come.
Ain’t I a cheery feller?
I think alot of people are not getting the full story of the Bee problem, and therefore they are focusing on the Mites and think that is the problem -but according to many beekeepers this has nothing to do with mites. The Mite problem is nothing new, but the main difference between bees dying from mites and from what is happening now is that people are not understanding that the hives are almost EMPTY. When mites attack the bees and they dye, the bees dye within the hive usually. The problem that is occuring now, from my understanding, is not mite related because there are not large amounts of dead bees in the hives, quite the contrary, the bees simply seem to leave the hive and not return, which is totally different than them dying due to mites. I have heard several different theories as to what is causing this: Genetically modified plants and their pollen adversely affecting bees, overuse and abuse of pesticides, cell phone towers disrupting the bees ability to find their way home, much the same way storms affect a homeing pigeons ability to find it’s way back to the roost, and even UV rays being so strong now they are literally making the bees blind so at to prevent them from navigating correctly to find pollen and make it back to the hive. I tend to think it is something man has done, as we have a hideously large record of filling our environment with chemicals, pollutants and goodness only knows what else. While bees are amazingly resilient little things, their dissapearance should be sending huge warning signals to scientists and the general public that something is seriously wrong, much the same way as when frogs started developing extra limbs and other deformities. Sadly, this is getting almost no press on the big media outlets such as CNN, and at this rate, by the time we found out what the problem might be, we won’t have any more bees left. So I seriously suggest all of you honey lovers out there to stock up on honey, because at this rate, we won’t have any more very soon.
Nightbird- Interesting post. I hadn’t heard that take on it before and the big reason could be exactly because it is getting next to no press coverage. What I had read up to now places the problem pretty squarly on the mites and gave very plausible scenarios for how this is occuring. Your information casts that in a different light which I find very interesting. Thank you for the new info!
Domestic bees have been in decline for quite some time now. I can recall hearing about this perhaps as much as a decade ago, so somehow I doubt that cell phones are a big factor. Regardless, we better care about what’s happening to all these bees, because, as bad as it might be for the environment in general, their complete disappearance will be hell on us, since they pollinate so many of our crops.
a Pathogen and a parasite are the likely culprits according to a posting on todays Science Daily