Mobile phones & Bees

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Mobile phones & Bees

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Misdemeanor

Joined: 25 Apr 2009
Posts: 109

Posted: Tue Sep 01, 09 9:23 pm Post subject: Mobile phones & Bees

With no knowledge aforethought of bees and beekeeping - but this was in the telegraph today and I felt it warranted posting:

Quote:

The electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile phone towers could wipe out honey bees within 10 years, according to a study.
An experiment in India’s southern state of Kerala found that a sudden fall in the bee population was caused after mobile phone companies expanding their networks installed more towers across the region.
Waves from the towers crippled the “navigational skills” of the worker bees that collect nectar from flowers to sustain the colonies, said Dr Sainuddin Pattazhy, the study’s author. He found that when a mobile phone was kept near a hive worker bees could not return to it. Hives were left with only the queen and the eggs and the colony collapsed within 10 days.
Over 100,000 people in Kerala work in apiculture and the dwindling worker bee population threatens their livelihood. Dr Pattazhy said if the number of towers and mobile phones increased further, honey bees could be wiped out.

The article didn't provide a link to the study if posted online, my apologies if this reads like an attempt to lecture one's elders on the art of sucking eggs. It's just an fyi.

goosey

Joined: 29 Apr 2009
Posts: 380
Location: Merry England

Posted: Wed Sep 02, 09 5:23 am Post subject:
Beeking-wise, I'm not one of the elders. Thank you very much for this. It is worth setting up some apiaries to study this phenomenon here, in my opinion.

Tavascarow

Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Posts: 8407
Location: South Cornwall

Posted: Wed Sep 02, 09 6:47 am Post subject:

If the bees fly close enough I have no doubt they would be affected.
Don't ever recall seeing any birds roosting on them either.
But I have had a mobile mast within 2 miles of my hives for 9 years & my bees are doing fine.
I know some that claim using a mobile or even a video camera near a hive makes the bees angry but I always leave my mobile off when I'm working my bees & have only ever taken stills so no evidence.

beean

Joined: 04 Jun 2009
Posts: 254

Posted: Wed Sep 02, 09 12:38 pm Post subject:
there was a theory that mobile phone masts and the like were causing problems like CCD, but evidence from bees kept near such things compared to bees away from them showed no link.

BahamaMama

Joined: 21 Sep 2006
Posts: 2315
Location: Away with the fairies

Posted: Wed Sep 02, 09 3:08 pm Post subject:
I had a discussion with a french beekeeper this summer and she also thought there was a connection. That was the first time I had heard it until today.

beean

Joined: 04 Jun 2009
Posts: 254

Posted: Wed Sep 02, 09 5:00 pm Post subject:
It does kind of make sense that there should be a link really - bees navigation and all that....but no connection found by scientific experiment.

beesontoast

Joined: 01 Feb 2009
Posts: 21
Location: Devon, UK

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 10 10:11 pm Post subject:

...and if it were true, there would be no bees in London, whereas there are many beekeepers in London whose bees are quite happy.

It's largely the rural bees that have the problem, and the blame for that is pointing more and more towards pesticides.

The phone mast theory was put about by ignorant and lazy journalists, mis-reporting a sloppy experiment in Germany a couple of years ago, in which someone placed a DECT phone inside a hive...

beean

Joined: 04 Jun 2009
Posts: 254

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 10 8:46 am Post subject:

I too have heard this is a load of mince, although a very tempting theory (it sounds like it should be true) in comparisons of bees near masts and bees away from masts there's no connection.
CCD has (fortunately) not yet reached the UK, or rather, the very few incidences of CCD which UK beeks claim have generally been explained as being something else.
IMO (no expert though) it's likely down to bees foraging on mono-crop agriculture (hence its prevalence in the US), the poor treatment they receive (old combs, antibotics "just-in-case" etc etc), inbreeding, together with the sheer variety of virus types they are exposed to during really extensive migratory beekeeping.

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