Busy Bee courtesy of Natalie Dee

The Colony Collapse Disorder issue surrounding billions of bee deaths in the U.S. and around the world has reached epic proportions in the blogosphere. The most recent element of the unfolding drama has centred around a 'report' from Germany on the effects of cell phones on bee navigation.

I included this aspect in our recent Colony Collapse Disorder - a Moment for Reflection story, a post that has attracted a significant amount of attention. Given that the majority of blog readers also happen to be cell phone owners, people have tended to focus on this issue above all the other possibilities mentioned. Thus, a simple and inconclusive story from a few researchers in Germany has circumnavigated the globe in a blog-feeding frenzy that has blown the issue out of proportion compared to the more likely culprits: the lack of biological diversity inherent in modern human-managed environments, pesticide usage, and pollen and horizontal gene transfer from genetically modified crops.

The researchers themselves have been battling phone calls trying to put their study into context ever since the UK's Independent newspaper ran the story a few weeks ago:

Good story for sure, except that the study in question had nothing to do with mobile phones and was actually investigating the influence of electromagnetic fields, especially those used by cordless phones that work on fixed-line networks, on the learning ability of bees. The small study, according to the researchers who carried it out too small for the results to be considered significant, found that the electromagnetic fields similar to those used by cordless phones may interrupt the innate ability of bees to find the way back to their hive.

Those searching for answers for the recent disappearance of millions of bees in the United States - what researchers are calling colony collapse disorder - jumped on the possible explanation though there was one particular, cellphones and cordless phones emit different types of radiation and what you learn studying one type is not necessarily significant to the other, according to the researchers."We cannot explain the CCD-phenomenon itself and want to keep from speculation in this case," Jochen Kuhn, a professor in the physics department at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany who co-authored the bee study, wrote in an e-mail message. "Our studies cannot indicate that electromagnetic radiation is a cause of CCD."

... "If the Americans are looking for an explanation for colony collapse disorder, perhaps they should look at herbicides, pesticides and they should especially think about genetically modified drops," said Stefan Kimmel, a graduate student who co-authored the study last year with Kuhn and other professors.... "It's not my fault if people misinterpret our data," said Kimmel. "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. Now we are trying to force things back to normal." - Herald Tribune

In the U.S....

Beekeepers joked about roaming charges and not allowing their bees to use cell phones. - Bellville News Democrat

I've deliberately not focused on the cell-phone angle. Although this technology has been implicated in other health issues, we can't at all consider it a 'prime suspect' in the case of the missing bees. Please don't go back to sleep on the topic though! Although we're glad the cell phone issue brought many readers, we hope you'll focus on the main aspects of our discussion on this serious topic.

 

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