Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee

Originally posted by Donnie Darko
Would you give up your cell phone to save the planet?

Just askin'.

Would you give up your cell phone based on a single badly-done amateurish piece of crap research published in an India-centric journal that will apparently publish ANYTHING as long as it's done by an Indian?

Personally, I wouldn't give up flossing my teeth with Publix brand waxed mint floss based on research as badly done as this, much less something meaningful.

It's hard to explain just how BAD this paper is unless you've participated in some actual research. Seriously, I've seen the local high school science fair pop out better work, which, given it's Escambia county, is pretty harsh.

More meaningful research would not only include a much better experimental setup than this, but also might attempt to explain why the authors think that 900MHz is magical - if bees respond to radio signals in some way, why think that the frequencies used by GSM cell phones are alone in causing problems? If you're going to go down that road, there's a big spectrum of radio transmissions you'll need to examine. The real problem might be airport radar, or TV stations, or police radios. There's very little of US radio spectrum space that's lying around fallow, it might be different in India, but there's a metric s--theap of radio frequency sources around, any of which COULD be the culprit, if you're going to make the statement that bees respond adversely to low level EM waves.

Originally posted by Donnie Darko
Would you give up your cell phone to save the planet?

Just askin'.

Yes, in a heartbeat. IF it is proven by multiple reputable scientists that doing so would actually save the world. The experiment in the OP of this thread doesn't do that.

I was watching one of the "Jamie Does" shows the other night about Jamie Oliver travelling throughout Europe. There was one show - I think it was based around Athens - where he went to a bee keeper to look at honey being made.

The Greek beekeeper said that when he places his hives in areas where he can get cell phone reception, large numbers of his bees all mysteriously disappear. When he places the hives where there is no service for his cell phone, his bees thrive and honey production increases.

California has the highest population of any state in the union, (read into this - more wireless waves) and has one of the biggest bee population decreases in the USA - hives now have to be bought in from outside the state eaach year in order to get the almond crop pollenated, and bee keepers who take their bees to California say that they return with less each time.

It's time for an extensive study into this. I'd rather see pork money spent on important research such as this than on research into the sex lives of stag beetles, finding out that old people in retirement homes are depressed, or something equally assinine.

reply to post by pause4thought


Thanks OP for posting this. For comparison's sake I would offer the following:

Is cell phone radiation as damaging to the Honey Bee population as:

1. ...the over one billion tons of pesticides dumped into their food chain every year in the US alone?
www.epa.gov...

2. ...the vast amount of GM crops used in agriculture today that these bees did not evolve with?
www.naturalnews.com...

3. ...the natural amount of radiation in the atmosphere in which they seem to do just fine?
www.ans.org...

4. ...the myriad amount of disease and parasites affecting them?
en.wikipedia.org...

5. ...or some combination of these factors and more?

I think there may be some validity to the cell phone argument but to simply pin the blame on one culprit seems kind of premature in light of all the other threats our environment faces.

Keep up the good work bringing this to ATS

reply to post by babybunnies


In one case you offer anecdotal evidence and in the other you suggest that California has a bee problem because of a high population. But it does not have the densest population.

I have always thought that mobile phones have been to blame for the disappearance of honey bees (after I had first heard of it). Interesting though that many are talking about this or that... it doesn't really matter if it is to blame for it or not. We need to take action against whatever it is anf findout why the backbone to our societies is gone... aka where the **** are the honey bees?

Its not immediate that when the honey bees leave an ecosystem will die, it will take time because other creatures pollinate too... but honey bees are still VERY important to an ecosystem.

We need to exclusively research the areas where there is a large decline in honeybees... what is consistently prevalent in each of the areas... and areas that are unaffected what is not prevalelnt that is in others.

REGARDLESS I bet the evidence will point to... When humans are not prevalent in an area honey bees thrive

I can't go with the phone theory.

We have eight cell phones and all my neighbors and their kids have cell phones this entire community if full of towers and cell phones and most of the Honey Bee's I feel are living in my trees out front.
There are many thousands annoying the ----- out of us.

We have had three Bee Keeper's here and they say they can't get to the Queen Bee. I was told a year or so ago that in Pennsylvania they had come back okay but it is illegal to kill them to just keep the kids away....lol what a joke..... in the mean time they multiply.

I think these Scientist need to start earning the money they suck out of Society and come up with a better theory. Just saying!

While this is definately a repost of this information, I dearly believe it is worth merit to post again, and again, and again.

While it might not be painfully obvious right now, Bees are VERY important to our survival.

We have over 100 bee hives on various properties and we have definitely noticed something strange over the past few years. while 3g is nice, its not worth the price it seems to cost. with the genius we have on our planet, im sure we can figure out another way to communicate.

The next step that should be taken is to do more research on frequency specifics. Which frequencies hurt the bees the most? are their any that could actually help bees? Ive always thought it would be nice to have some kind of beacon that "reminded" the bees where the hive is.

Wish i could give you more flags OP!

On a side note- I was cutting firewood yesterday and one of our hives started to swarm. That was an amazing sight to see, about 5-6k bees all at once. Kind of scary too!

I wonder if cell phones killed off the dinosaurs?

It's very likely, I'm not saying it isn't. But there are lots of other factors that are more likely to be root causes.

Saying that I've always wondered about our own magnetic fields and how they're being messing with all this wave activity in the air


I suppose personally I've just accepted that we are royally ****** the planet and me stopping using my mobile phone (which I mostly use to listen to music and take pictures, get really annoyed when someone's ringning it) is not going to change a damn thing.

The problem with this theory is that I'm in an urban center, with a huge urban garden, yet there are tons of bees. Several different kinds in fact. Litlte ones, big ones, hairy ones, shiny ones and even some that look exactly like honey bees.

Shouldn't they all be dead?

And what about out in the middle of nowhere, in farmland where there are few phones, towers or people: shouldn't they have not had any problems?

[edit on 1-6-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

I think yall are forgetting the Georgia Guide Stones and the plans to depopulate the Earth by the elite....maybe they know this, or knew this all along, and wish for our food supply to collapse....

reply to post by AnonymousMoose


Getting rid of bees does not reduce the supply of grains such as wheat, rye, barley, rice, oats, and corn.

I often invite friends into my home to partake in a beverage, dinner or some cinematic stimuli.

The rules in my house are.

No puking on the carpet.

No disrespect to other guests.

No cell phones. (if you have one turn it off)

No cell phone music. (you know annoying ring tones that people just have to show to people that couldn't care less that they have the latest hit song on their cell phone.)

You would be amazed how hard it is to get people to turn off their cell phones for more than 3 minutes. You would think they where drug addicts or something. I've caught a few that would sneak into the bathroom just so they could text some random person without my knowledge. Obviously I get on them about it.

If the cell towers go down I tell them to enjoy being disconnected from the world. It really is a liberating experience.

They respond to that as if I was absolutely insane! They actually think they can't live without that constant connection to humanity.

Don't get me wrong, I own a cell phone. I rarely use it though and rather enjoy being without it.

It is impossible to take away people's cellphones. Even for the greater good. Sadly it seems people would rather die than be without them.

Hopefully they come up with a better way to send a cell signal.. for the bee's sake.

reply to post by DaMod


You are great. Great advice with the cellphones. I love to tell the addicts about the start of the telephone industry. Back then the rich bought phones. The rich had servants. To call a servant the rich would ring a bell and the servant came to do their bidding. So now the salesman comes in to sell the telephone service. The rich think about the sales pitch and respond incredulously, "You mean this rings and I pick up the phone?" Nothing has changed has it except that the average person can now be a servant to the machine.

Bravo and maintain your high standards of phone etiquette.

I looked into this a year or so ago and I came across an article that said the only bee population that was dieing off were the ones that were being professionally bred.

The independent breeders were not seeing the same decline.

That article led me to believe that what was killing the bees was in the food that the professional bee breeders were using.

As far as bees being found dead in mass under cell phone towers, I have never heard of that until now.

When I find the article I will link it.

Oh ...and since this is my first post I didn't want anyone thinking I was using any megaphone software or Google tracking to respond to this post. Ive been trolling here for quire a while and only recently registered. I swear.