Honeybee decline due to Cell Phone Towers?

[monkeybird]

http://www.naturalnews.com/029958_mo...honeybees.html


In spite of industry claims to the contrary, cell phone towers may indeed be contributing to the collapse of honeybee populations.

Now this is interesting.

[610Alpha]

I think in the movie Johnny Mnemonic it talked about electronic pollution...anyone remember if this is correct?

[eeyore]

Here is an alternate idea being floated also

Report: Virus, fungus new suspects in bee disease
WASHINGTON (AP) - Researchers have a pair of new suspects in the mysterious collapse of honey bee colonies across the country.

The widespread damage to the bees has caused concern because the insects are needed to pollinate scores of crops.

Researchers say samples collected from hives affected by the syndrome indicated the presence of a virus as well as a fungus. The two pathogens were not found in bee colonies not affected by the syndrome, called colony collapse disorder, the researchers reported in Wednesday's edition of the journal PLoS ONE.

"We truly don't know if these two pathogens cause CCD or whether the colonies with CCD are more likely to suc***b to these two pathogens," Jerry J. Bromenshenk of the University of Montana said in a statement.

Previous studies have looked at the possibility of multiple viruses found in the bee colonies as well as the potential harm from pesticides, but researchers have yet to pin down an exact cause.

The new study said the suspect virus is insect iridescent virus, which is similar to a virus first reported in India 20 years ago, as well as a virus found in moths.

They said it affects the abdomens of bees, and the tissues may take on a bluish-green or purplish hue. The fungus is called Nosema ceranae, and this can sicken bees if they ingest the spores.

Robert Cramer, a pathologist at Montana State University in Bozeman said, "There seems to be a correlation between the presence of these two pathogens together. We envision the bee gets an infection from one or the other, and this causes the bees to become stressed, which then allows the second infection to come in and more effectively cause disease."

The analysis of the bees was done at the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.

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Online:

PLoS ONE: http://www.plosone.org/home.action

http://wtop.com/?sid=2071988&nid=220

[Bearman202]

This is interesting. I spent about an hour talking with a professional beekeeper a week ago. He lives is Alabama, and was here for a regional convention. I asked him specifically about CCD, and he said that he had hives directly under a cell phone tower and didn't have a problem. He did experience some loss to CCD, in that he lost almost 400 hives to it. He has 3600. He went into a lot of detail about them, and I wish I could remember all that he said. The things that stuck with me is that you never have ONE hive. You start with two, and grow from there. He said you could buy everything you needed to start two hives over the net for under $400. He said also that with CCD, the bees just disappear. If it was a fungus, they would be finding dead bees, but they don't. They're just gone. A friend that was with me engaged him, because he was planning on getting into beekeeping for the pollination assist. It was good information from someone who obviously loved what he did. I'm sure a search on the net for "beekeeping" would provide more information than anyone would want to know.