Are Cell Phones Killing Bee Populations?

Last Updated on June 2, 2020 by

  In late 2006 a new term entered the vocabulary of the average household to describe the recent loss of bees on a massive scale.  The term was colony collapse disorder, and it carried with it an apocalyptic message that once the bees disappeared, mankind would not be far behind.  Apiaries across the world started taking measures to create buffers against colony collapse disorder.  But there seemed to be little defense against it.  After the deaths of roughly 1/3 of bee populations worldwide, many are looking to new sources for the answers.

At first colony collapse disorder was seen as an incredible mystery.  It was estimated in 2006 that bee populations would disappear by the year 2010.  As we know, this estimation was off by a great deal, but still the worldwide population of bees has still been declining at an unsustainable rate.  And the cavalcade of problems arising from the disappearance of the bees themselves is in itself problematic as well.  Bees, as we have all been made aware in the past few years, serve a very specific purpose in pollinating other plants.  The traditional image of a bee crawling along the rim of a flower is translated easily enough into crop yields and even the survivability of the human race.  Without pollination, crops cannot grow and famines soon follow.

But what is causing the depletion of bee reserves?  CNN recently spoke with Andrew Goldsworthy to try to uncover some of the mysteries and see if the buzz about electromagnetic radiation could be effecting beehives.  What Goldsworthy suggested was that the electromagnetic radiation mankind has unleashed on the world could be severely effecting bee populations and impeding their ability to use an ability known as cryptochrome.  Cryptochrome essentially works as a form of navigation guided by the Earth’s magnetic field.  Electromagnetic radiation interferes with this cryptochrome and as a result the bees cannot find their way back to the hive.  As a result, the hive collapses and honey production stops.  But the interference with cryptochrome is only one of several factors that could actually be affecting bee populations.  One of the biggest producers of electromagnetic radiation.  The most commonly proposed human interference of this type is cell phones, which do operate in a limited spectrum on the electromagnetic field.  Other major sources of electromagnetic radiation operate from EHF (Extremely High Frequency) to ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) with cell phones, the internet, radios, television, and the sun operating everywhere in between on the spectrum.  Electromagnetic radiation is something humans have implemented widely for communication since Marconi first invented the radio and observed that it could transfer information from one location to another without being heard without the assistance of a radio.

Other theories of Colony Collapse Disorder span everywhere from the use of pesticides that disrupt ecosystems to the spread of parasites that infect a colony and disrupt it.  In the end, however, is it not possible that all of these factors are an underlying cause that falls into one broad category?  The world is slowly changing.