# Study links bee decline to cell phones



## iran bee (Aug 5, 2015)

In a study at Panjab University in Chandigarh, northern India, researchers fitted cell phones to a hive and powered them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day.

After three months, they found 
the bees stopped producing honey, 
egg production by the queen bee halved, 
and the size of the hive dramatically reduced.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

If you want the majority of members of this forum to give this any thought, you'll need to provide a link to the article that's in English.

This is old news. 2010. Here is a link to an article mentioning the study, but as of yet, no one has posted a link to the actual study.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/06/30/bee.decline.mobile.phones/


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

iran bee said:


> In a study at Panjab University in Chandigarh, northern India, researchers fitted cell phones to a hive and powered them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day.
> 
> After three months, they found
> the bees stopped producing honey,
> ...


My grandaughters' production decreased when they got cellphones too.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

If we made it where the user(s) of the phone paid for it's use the cell-phone-addicted bees would go back to work right after the service was cut off.


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## Eikel (Mar 12, 2014)

I've also drawn a correlation between the number of times my cell phone rings and a productivity decline. But I've also noticed answering the phone (it's black) while working a crabby hive makes for a very short conversation.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Eikel said:


> I've also drawn a correlation between the number of times my cell phone rings and a productivity decline. But I've also noticed answering the phone (it's black) while working a crabby hive makes for a very short conversation.


ha ha obviously your bees don't pass the cannon test


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

Here is the study:
Ved Prakash Sharma and Neelima R. Kumar,Current Science, vol.98,No.10, May 2010
http://www.gammel.felo.no/2010_Bier...923|33892|file|2010_Bier Sharma-Kumar.pdf.pdf

Lots of problems...but as a starter, they start out claiming to be using 4 colonies (2 control, 2 experiment)...yet the text seems to compare 'the' control colony to 'the' experimental colony.


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## Eikel (Mar 12, 2014)

> ha ha obviously your bees don't pass the cannon test


What's the cannon test?


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

The Apple people could have a little fun by saying I Phone equipped bees are twice as productive as the Samsungs. Two times zero is zero still...right?


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Thanks Dean. I guess the most glaring question from reading it, how does gathering data from cell phones placed directly inside a hive have relevance to the real world? And on top of that, two hives to base it all on!


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

A physicist friend of mine will only use a cell phone when absolutely necessary, and then uses a headset hand holds the phone as far away from his head as possible. He's convinced the radio signals do cellular damage, and will tell you abut studies he has done.

It has been known for a long time that certain molecules and structures within cells will vibrate strongly when exposed to certain electromagnetic frequencies, causing, among other things, cell membrane damage. Tryphan blue, a stain used to detect dead cells, will show fluid leaking out of cells after such exposure. He says you can expose brain cells to cell phone signals and see this effect.

By coincidence, he used to keep bees. I imagine he would not strap a cell phone to the hive.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

Well, I think it is an OK starting point....if there is a subtle effect from real world exposure it might be hard to measure.


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## gnor (Jun 3, 2015)

That's a hoot, but there are a lot of variables not accounted for. For instance, were they smart phones, and if so, what games were installed? Did the phones have a talk and text plan, or just talk?


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Phoebee said:


> A physicist friend of mine will only use a cell phone when absolutely necessary, and then uses a headset hand holds the phone as far away from his head as possible. He's convinced the radio signals do cellular damage, and will tell you abut studies he has done.


Does this friend also walk where ever he needs to go. There have been lots of studies indicating the very real dangers of automobile travel.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

deknow said:


> Well, I think it is an OK starting point....


How so? If it starts out bad, how can it be a good starting point?


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Barry said:


> How so? If it starts out bad, how can it be a good starting point?


A friend of mine famously (writing for a major science fiction magazine) complains about an early explanation of the movement of planets in the skies, called "epicycles". Epicycles were wrong, an overly complicated analysis for which no physical basis could be determined, but they sorta fit the data. Eventually folks like Kepler and Newton provided the real answers.

I counter, yeah, epicycles were a bogus explanation, but for folks wondering why the "wandering stars" sometimes moved one way in the sky, then backtracked for a while, it served as a starting point for the discussion. More importantly, they made people measure these motions. After enough time, a few people started teasing out the truth from data taken on a false premise. The premise might be bad, but the data were good. And from that false premise, we can now navigate a space probe some billions of miles to pass by a tiny planet within a few thousand miles.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

The study itself (at least the way it is written up) is flawed to the point of being unintelligible.

If I wanted to know if substance X harms the bees at Y concentration, it's probably a good first step (absent other data to piggyback off of) to see if you can measure harm of 10*Y and 100*Y concentrations.


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## gnor (Jun 3, 2015)

So, back to reality. I recently read a study that measured a minute electrical charge produced by flowers, and showed that bees were sensitive to this charge. A bee landing on the flower would discharge the flower, and other bees would then avoid that flower, preferring flowers with a full charge.
Cell phones, being electric, would produce a minute field that may have affected the bees some way. Maybe not so crazy after all.
I think they should use a lot more than 4 hives, though, for a good sample size.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

Barry said:


> How so? If it starts out bad, how can it be a good starting point?


If I'm curious about if/how toxic something is in real world exposure, I can pretty much discount it if I can't measure or observe toxicity at 10X or 100X real world exposure. A litmus test to see if there is anything to investigate.


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## Sky (Jul 7, 2015)

Aunt Betty - I agree - If you don't equip your bees with cell phone's, none of this would be a concern .....
Not to be a smartass or anything (because cell signals may be frying us all slowly) but my bees don't produce honey all year either (after a flow they slowdown/stop), and when the queen takes a break, her egg production usually cuts down by more than half.... and when this happens, naturally the size of the colony is dramatically reduced.... 
Wondering if seasonal timing had anything to do with the results......

Sky


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## mountainmanbob (Jun 3, 2015)

dsegrest said:


> My grandaughters' production decreased when they got cellphones too.


See, that pretty much proves the point.
MM


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Sky said:


> Aunt Betty - I agree - If you don't equip your bees with cell phone's, none of this would be a concern .....
> Not to be a smartass or anything (because cell signals may be frying us all slowly) but my bees don't produce honey all year either (after a flow they slowdown/stop), and when the queen takes a break, her egg production usually cuts down by more than half.... and when this happens, naturally the size of the colony is dramatically reduced....
> Wondering if seasonal timing had anything to do with the results......
> 
> Sky


Well, uhh it's sort of complicated but you know how the pooter dudes were always muttering something about bandwidth. It's about the width of a bee during dearth. j/k

But seriously the reason we need "digital TV's" is to give up some bandwidth so that cell phones can use it so the deadly signals were there all along but it was just I Love Lucy and old Cubs games sort of stuff back then and the bees were ok with that. It's all this hibbety hop uhm rap music that's destroying our uhm...bee community. (Petey Pablo reference). 

Our "phones" are radios that use a sophisticated form of ship-to-shore communications that was invented before the ark sailed.


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## Arnie (Jan 30, 2014)

Always blame the new technology. 

Remember when color TV was going to blind us?
When microwave ovens were going to make us sterile?
When aluminum pots and pans caused Alzheimer's?


These studies are old now. Didn't we hear about this back in the early 2000's?


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## AmericasBeekeeper (Jan 24, 2010)

You are on the right track. Cell phones emit electromagnetic and vibration (sound) signals. Insects are sensitive to and communicate to vibrations. If there is a repeated mis-communication from the cell phone in the study it is bound to impact and probably disrupt healthy function of the hive. When the experiment was replicated in Europe the EM and vibration were isolated. The vibration of the cell phones was the only contributing factor.
The flowers and bees are charged by design so pollen is transferred to the pollinator. Following polllinators ignore the flower because there is a pheromone (footprint) left behind and the protein has already been depleated making a visit unproductive. 
Honey bees are frequently found in healthy nests in cell towers and equipment in Florida. The variable in our case is the pesticide the maintenance workers use to complete their responsibilities. 
All these theories may seem logical if bees communicated, navigated, and had a similar physiology or lifespan to humans, but they have none such.


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