No Tinfoil Hats for Bees
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.24.07
Ever since the the UK's Independent asked "Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?" ten days ago, the internet and print media have been abuzz, with 3,317 blog postings and hundreds of print articles, all reprinting it without question.(our post here) Craig Mackintosh at the wonderful blog Celsias bothered to take the time to review background material in an excellent post here, and now posts about how the researchers quoted in the Independent have been trying to straighten out the record ever since. They say:
-they were not even using cell phones, they were using cordless phones, which work completely differently and have very short range;
-that their studies cannot indicate that electromagnetic radiation is a cause of CCD., and
“Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this."::Celsias image from Worker bee from Nataliedee
Joe Raedle
Meanwhile the New York Times has picked up the story in some detail, listing various possible causes:
As with any great mystery, a number of theories have been posed, and many seem to researchers to be more science fiction than science. People have blamed genetically modified crops, cellular phone towers and high-voltage transmission lines for the disappearances. Or was it a secret plot by Russia or Osama bin Laden to bring down American agriculture? Or, as some blogs have asserted, the rapture of the bees, in which God recalled them to heaven? Researchers have heard it all.
This has happened before:
In the late 1990s, French beekeepers reported large losses of their bees and complained about the use of imidacloprid, sold under the brand name Gaucho. The chemical, while not killing the bees outright, was causing them to be disoriented and stay away from their hives, leading them to die of exposure to the cold, French researchers later found. The beekeepers labeled the syndrome “mad bee disease.”
Imidacloprid one of a group of compounds called neonicotinoids, a common pesticide that is used to treat corn, which they seem to be growing a lot of in America these days.
Thanks Lloyd
It'd be interesting to monitor Bayer shares around now - not that Treehugger readers would be heavily invested in such companies... :)
Is that cartoon from Toothpaste for Dinner? Oh wait it's from Natalie Dee.
http://www.nataliedee.com/092905/calling-off-worker-bee.jpg
By the way, even though the only condition for reproducing her comics is that you link to her website, which I just did, you should probably do so in your article.
And thanks for the follow-up on this story, very interesting. Even though the pesticide link is just speculation at this point, it makes more sense than cellphones.
LA: I took it from another website that did not credit it. Now that you have told me the source I will revise the post.
from the article
"..., a common pesticide that is used to treat corn, which they seem to be growing a lot of in America these days."
Ummm, haven't they always been growing a lot of corn in America (ie. not just "these days") !?!
Just seems a little funny putting it that way. Geologically speaking (ie. millions of years), ok sure, but I don't think you're speaking geologically :)