Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: bustr on April 16, 2007, 06:48:21 PM
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http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
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
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Oh noes! The poor wittle bees
Heres comes PETA banning the use of cell phones
:rofl
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LOL TIME TO START THE P.E.T.A."People for the Eating of Tasty Animals" banner again XDDDD :lol
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You are right, that sounds like some B grade techno thriller movie gone bad.
But when you think about just how much the human species relies on bees to pollonate the plants we eat, and those that feed the animals we eat it is downright scary.
60 and 70% of bees MIA? :O
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See Rule #7
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Totally bogus. Many of the dead bees are found IN the hives and colonies.
I've seen several reports to the bee die offs in relation to a mite that has infested the colonies. Also possible vectors being looked at include: "mites and associated diseases, some unknown pathogenic disease and pesticide contamination or poisoning" (from a Penn State College of Agriculture Report). There is probably an environmental trigger as well (overall warmer weather propagating the mites or disease vectors for example).
For some reason, I trust a leading Agriculture College that's been studying it for a while now, over a UK rag called "The Independent" on this issue.
No doubt some scientists ARE suggesting this is all due to cell phones (they haven't been blamed for anything lately and are due), and that if these scientists were only to receive really big monetary grants to study the problem and possibilities, they will be able to tell us if it is the case.
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Originally posted by BBBB
See Rule #7
Well. The bees are kinda important if you and a lot of others want to keep eating affordable foodstuffs in the future.
As to the powder coated yellow on your car? You live in an area with pine trees (or maybe a coal fired plant?) --- because it sounds like pollen from pine trees (or sulfer from a plant), which don't depend on bees. Many pollens don't, dependent on the wind and such instead (pines being a big one).
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A few weeks ago my dark blue Camaro was a pale yellow due to all of the pollen. We have some pine trees here but not nearly enough to cover all the cars in the area. I really miss the white paint of my '96 Camaro.
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Ive noticed alot fewer bees over these past dozen years. Whos to say for sure, but the beekeepers associations are mighty concerned.
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Originally posted by DiabloTX
A few weeks ago my dark blue Camaro was a pale yellow due to all of the pollen. We have some pine trees here but not nearly enough to cover all the cars in the area. I really miss the white paint of my '96 Camaro.
You'd be surprised at how much pollen some varieties of pine trees can put out if they are healthy, or how far that pollen can travel.
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You boys been messing with the bees?
The Point :D
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What Kind of Bees make Milk?
Boobies!!
:-D
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My favorite kind of bees :)
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Lose the bees and we lose the pollinators. Lose the pollinators and we lose our food.
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lose our food and we will look like europeans
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good.. give the hand wringers something to worry about other than than "man made global warming"
that one was getting kind of stale anyway.
lazs
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As with all popular articles, you can't understand anything about the weight of evidence from that link.
If radiation from cellular phones is to blame, it should be easy to verify in a controlled experiment. I wouldn't put any money betting on this.
Bozon
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I hope it is all just an exaggeration ... if it isn't, say hello to MUCH higher food prices
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I dont think major grain crops are pollinized by insects. Thats mostly wind pollination.
However most flowering food crops are pollinized by insects (tomatoes, squash, fruits).
Ironically, honey bees, which have become our major insect pollinators, are an introduced species. There were no honey bees in the Americas before the europeans arrived.
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Thought the basic setup of cell towers was gleened from the cell structure of behives.... so your saying they can use cells and we can't ?? :rolleyes:
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The cellphones are giving the bees brain cancer, I bet.
Charon
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Originally posted by tedrbr
Well. The bees are kinda important if you and a lot of others want to keep eating affordable foodstuffs in the future.
As to the powder coated yellow on your car? You live in an area with pine trees (or maybe a coal fired plant?) --- because it sounds like pollen from pine trees (or sulfer from a plant), which don't depend on bees. Many pollens don't, dependent on the wind and such instead (pines being a big one).
UGH..my post was edited. Must have been a bee lover. Screw the bees. (Is that better?) You guys are going a bit over board on these edit things.
I live in Ga and we do have a ton of pine trees here. My car was yellow. I mean you could see some paint under it, but it was mostly yellow. I washed it every other day but after four days I said screw it and just let it stay yellow.
But I also see a large number of bumble bees here too. More so than last year. I mean the sky was swarming with them until it got cold again. Cell phones get blamed for everything. Pearl Harbor was because of cell phones.
-Sp0t
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Originally posted by bozon
As with all popular articles, you can't understand anything about the weight of evidence from that link.
If radiation from cellular phones is to blame, it should be easy to verify in a controlled experiment. I wouldn't put any money betting on this.
Bozon
Apparently a limited study was done at Koblenz-Landau University in Germany, and it found mobile phones were placed next to hives, bees refused to return to them.
Cellphone radiation implicated in CCD (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21562618-663,00.html)
Still not enough information about the study to suit me, and use of the word "refused" implies free will - that the bees chose not to return to their hives. It may be the case they were unable to return to them.
I think tedrbr was referring to a different bee problem - if the bees are found dead in and around the hive its not the same problem as CCD (colony collapse disorder is what their calling it). I might be wrong about that though. At any rate it's not hard to imagine that bees might have to deal with more than one stressor in their lives at the same time.
Einstein said if we lose all the bees we've got 4 years left to live. How's that for dramatic? Beats a small rise in sea levels over 50 years, for sure.
With the media's infatuation with disaster science in mind, we'll probably be hearing a lot more about this and less about global warming, until the next superstorm.
Hope to see alot more info come out about this. Another thing that was mentioned as a possible cause was genetically modified corn pollen. Cellphone radiation confusing the bees' homing ability seems to make the most sense to me at this point.
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Actually, despite the Sci-Fi scenarios being generated by this (how about this one; we train apes to pollinate flowers with Q-tips, the apes become more intelligent and develop a rudimentary language, then an Ape worker rebellion starts, and pretty soon they've taken over the planet...) The problem of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) is very real and a lot of money is now starting to be thrown at the problem and it's even being discussed by the Federal Gov't ( for instance: http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/agriculture_dem/pr_032907_HOAbees.html )
The thing that would seem to argue against a cell-phone cause is that the "syndrome" suddenly appeared in late 2006 long after Cell Towers had become commonplace throughout the United States and Europe. The sudden catastrophic decrease in Bee Populations would seem to argue more for either a disease or a parasite. Silly as it sounds, bio-warfare would actually seem to be a more plausible explanation than cell towers.
Who knows though, these wouldn't be the first workers to be made non-productive by cell phone conversations.
- SEAGOON
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I pity those people in this thread who don't feel a declining world bee population is a serious problem.
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Agreed Seagoon and Engine. I don't mean to belittle the seriousness of either global warming (err climate change) or CCD. I do mean to belittle the mass media and its short attention span and sensational yet superficial treatment of possibily very serious problems. There is no argument that massive numbers of bees are dying. And few people realize the importance of bees in pollenating crops and fruit trees.
The thing that doesn't make sense to me about a pathogen is that the colonies seem abandoned - despite what tedrbr said, I have heard there are no dead bees around the colonies that have collapsed - they are just gone. That makes me suspect something interfering with their homing ability.
Humanity is looking more and more to me like the proverbial bull in the china shop.
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I don't understand why bees would suddenly be dying over cell phone emissions when for decades there have been far higher power emissions from radio, TV and other microwave transmitters.
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Frequency of the transmissions.
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Originally posted by Maverick
I don't understand why bees would suddenly be dying over cell phone emissions when for decades there have been far higher power emissions from radio, TV and other microwave transmitters.
There are a lot more cell phones around than there are radio and TV transmitters, radars etc.
For all we know, emmissions from these objects have been causing dramas for decades, but not on such a scale as to make it immediately apparent.
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From a good article on the phonomenon in Cosmos:
Since October 2006, 35 per cent or more of the United States' population of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) - billions of individual bees - simply flew from their hive homes and disappeared. (Source: Mystery of the dying bees (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1087)
Ok so did Cell Phones reach some sort of critical mass worldwide in late 2006 or did they start using a new frequency or something of that sort?
- SEAGOON
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God please be too.... So they can ban cell phones.
I hate the ****ing things.
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it's not cell phones, it's the verroa mite. It came to north america in 1987 and has grown immune to pesticides.
<
The parasite, which is endemic to Asia, first arrived on U.S. shores in 1987, most likely smuggled in some eager apiarist’s luggage. (Bee importation has been illegal in this country since 1922.) It caused negligible damage in Europe, where it first appeared in 1908, because the beekeeping industry is smaller and far less mobile. In the U.S., however, the mite jumped from hive to hive with alarming rapidity. “In the U.S., beekeepers are a bunch of mechanized gypsies, moving from crop to crop all through the year chasing pollination fees and honey flows,” said Frank Eischen, a U.S. Department of Agriculture research entomologist tasked with searching for new medicines to keep the invaders at bay. “Because of all this unnatural movement, some colonies get stressed, and they may be more susceptible.”
During the first wave of infestation, the varroa killed nearly every feral colony on the continent. Well-kept colonies like Miller’s, however, escaped major damage, because application of a common miticide kept the bug in check. Over the course of the next decade, though, the mites developed resistance to that treatment. They acquired immunity to a second compound after only three or four years. And in the winter of 2005, beekeepers realized, too late, that the current medicines were no longer working. No operation was untouched: Miller, who lost 40 percent of his bees, was considered lucky; some of his colleagues lost more than 60 percent of their hives. “We hauled semi-loads of dead bees and equipment from the orchards,” Miller recalled. “In the old days we were shouting and spitting and swearing if we had an 8 percent dud rate. Now people would be happy with that.”
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