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Author Topic: Bees: a Serious Discussion  (Read 1930 times)

sluissa

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Bees: a Serious Discussion
« on: May 13, 2011, 12:07:40 am »

This morning I read an article on Aljazeera in regards to bees and cell phones. I'm unable to find that article again, however, others have popped up while searching, some from different time periods, at least two seperate studies are mentioned in these articles.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2011/0430/1224295739786.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/are-mobile-phones-wiping-out-our-bees-444768.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20006445-71.html
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/05/12/mobile_phones_affect_honeybee_population/

Long story short, researchers run experiments and in each case, it seemed that exposure to cell phone radiation would dramatically increase the chance of the bees in the colony being run off.

Now, I admit to being a bit biased on the side of the environment (and thus, the bees) However, it's not just environmental. Bees also have a direct and indirect commercial effect in honey production and agriculture.

What caused me to start this topic was that the, "TheRegister" (shown at http://www.reghardware.com )version of the article was claimed as sensationalist in another thread. However, I believe this is a serious problem and while perhaps being sensationalized to some extent, as any mass media tends to do with stories, it is a problem that deserves some attention. This is something I've been hearing about for years now, and yet I don't see anything being done nor anyone even really caring excepting the occasional news article or affected bee keeper. Anyone else have an opinion?
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Owlbread

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2011, 11:03:18 am »

I have noticed a sharp decline in bees where I live (even though it's the countryside), as with hedgehogs. We certainly have enough daffodils and blossom, but I have not seen very many this spring. It's unfortunate, because I love bees. Especially bumble bees. If they did not possess a sting, I would stroke them avidly. All I have seen are wasps. Enormous ones too.
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Duke 2.0

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2011, 11:18:28 am »

 I thought colony extinction was due to several factors working together and not any one source? I'm just skeptical that any one finding would save this problem.
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Leafsnail

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2011, 12:14:22 pm »

The studies seem pretty... small scale, to the point of being little more than anecdotal.  There seem to be plenty of studies pointing at other factors, and it could be that there's no one cause.
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sluissa

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #4 on: May 13, 2011, 01:04:06 pm »

I thought colony extinction was due to several factors working together and not any one source? I'm just skeptical that any one finding would save this problem.

That is one hypothesis, and I'm not suggesting that cell phone are the only things that can cause colony death. Other possible causes include: mites, viruses, fungi, pesticides, genetically modified crops, malnutrition and environmental and climate change.

However, several studies (admittedly small ones) have been done testing the effects of electromagnetic radiation on bees and there have been some possible effects noted. Enough, I'd say, for at least more study to be done. The correlation between the sharp increase in what's termed Colony Collapse Disorder in the early 2000s and the rise in cell phone usage is also somewhat suspicious, although I admit it could just be coincidence.
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Pnx

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #5 on: May 13, 2011, 05:12:34 pm »

I seem to recall that evidence strongly points to pesticides as the root of the problem, in particular Bayer's clothianidin pesticide as being the primary cause of the huge outbreak of colony collapse disorder that popped up everywhere.

A leaked document from the EPA said that there was strong evidence of clothianidin causing issues with bees. The idea with the pesticide is that the seeds are protected, and when they grow up the pesticide wears off it and doesn't affect bees (and birds) when they come to gather pollen from the flower. There wasn't anything conclusively saying that the pesticide would still cause problems in plants that have been treated with the pesticide (there were issues with the research that makes it rather suspect, the researchers themselves were quite clear in saying this), but there were some strong hints that it might cause trouble with bees.

In spite of this, the EPA waved the pesticide through. That was in 2003, hard statistics are difficult to get, since there didn't used to be a lot of interest in bee populations until they all started dying. It was only around 2006 or 2007 that the issue became apparent. Bee health had been declining for a few years. It can't be said that bees started dying in the US after 2003, but it fits the profile.

In addition there's the issue of the bee genocide that happened in germany, which WAS conclusively due to clothianidin, though it's claimed that that was because of "inappropriate usage" by which I'm guessing they're talking about spray crops rather than just seeds.

Then there's the comparison between France and the UK. France had the pesticide banned, but the UK let it in, the UK has been losing bees in droves, while France hasn't.

Then there' imidacloprid, it's basically the predecessor to clothianidin, imidacloprid has been shown to kill off bees when used to treat seeds (it leaves a residue in pollen strong enough to kill them), although how strongly it kills off bees is debatable. In spite of this imidacloprid is still used in the US, and it can be linked to the earliest drops in US bee populations.

There's another interesting note, colonies that have CCD leave behind pollen and nectar stores. Other creatures are often hesitant to eat them, other bees don't like to raid them, and other insects don't seem very keen to eat them. In fact in some cases the stores simply rot. I'm not sure how to take that, but it doesn't seem to lend itself to cellphone towers being the cause.
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Heliman

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2011, 05:19:29 pm »

*Looks up chimney, sees a beehive*
No problems with dead colonies in South Cali. People are practically tripping over hives where I live this season.
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PsyberianHusky

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #7 on: May 13, 2011, 05:24:07 pm »

On the note of what Heliman said, is there any cross regional survey of hive deaths, comparable regional data may help discover what factors are contributing
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Askot Bokbondeler

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #8 on: May 13, 2011, 05:34:51 pm »

posting to follow the discussion
anybody else read the thread title as bees: a zeriouzz zizcuzzion?

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Jackrabbit

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #10 on: May 13, 2011, 07:35:56 pm »

It's probably a bad thing that I first heard of this on Doctor Who.
I'm not even sure if that was related, though.
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Pnx

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #11 on: May 13, 2011, 08:28:20 pm »

So I decided to try gathering some more data, it's tricky, if there were more information of course, there wouldn't be an debate.

This is a report from the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) on information they gathered from various European member states:
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/scdocs/doc/154r.pdf
It has some sketchy numbers about beekeepers, honey production, mortality rates. A lot of it is hit and miss, there's a lot of information about number of beekeepers, bees, and mortality rates that's unrecorded (even in the countries with the best records), which makes it all but useless in my book.

To nitpick something from it.
Quote from: page 22
... Data prior to 2003 when the first reports of CCD arose would be especially valuable. ...
That correlates with what I said. Earlier, about CCD first popping up when clothianidin was released.


Then there's this report from the Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des aliments (French food safety agency) also known as the AFFSA.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/canpolin/Publications/AFSSA%20Report%20SANT-Ra-MortaliteAbeillesEN.pdf
151 pages, lengthy and contains a buttload of studies and data. They probably do a better job of studying this than I ever could, although it doesn't contain any information on ground/seed treatments for pesticides.

It has an interesting discovery in it though, they found certain viruses, IAPV in particular, which which correlated with CCD colonies:
Quote
IAPV emerged as being closely correlated with CCD: 83.3% of the affected colonies
(25/30) carried the virus, which was only detected in one colony not affected by the
syndrome (4.8%). As no “pathogenic” causality link has yet been established between
this virus (or any other pathogen) and the colony losses, lAPV is currently proposed by
authors as a “significant marker” of CCD with a positive predictive value of 96% (Cox-
Foster et al., 2007). This positive predictive value is the likelihood that a positive result
for a pathogen indicates a significant association with CCD.


Then there's cellphone radiation... Would it kill people to be less sensationalist and refer to it as radio?
Anyway... So according to this study cellphone signals can emulate "worker piping" and tricks the bees into swarming. Which as you can imagine is quite disruptive. However what concerns me is how far away a cellphone has to be to cause this effect. I doubt it could cause any damage from anything further than 10 feet away, and cell phone towers don't produce a signal that is much stronger (remember, the connection has to go both ways). I don't see this as weakening bee hives very much, and it certainly doesn't justify colony collapse syndrome.

I also found this site, which provides a "heat map" of cellphone signal strength:
http://opensignalmaps.com/
Spoiler: pics (click to show/hide)
As you can see, most of the developed world is more or less saturated the same amount.
Referencing it with the EFSA report,  Estonia, Finland, Romania, and Norway have both low mortality rates, and poor coverage.
The Czech Republic, Germany, The United Kingdom, and France, have moderate to low mortality rates, and great coverage.
Italy, The Netherlands, and Sweden in descending order, have the most deaths. Sweden has poor coverage in most of the country, though just the more rural areas.

Of course, the data in the EFSA report is pretty suspect, and cell phone coverage would be directly linked to development, which links to a whole buttload of other factors like how easily figures can be reported. Also this doesn't take into account the amount of bees in the country. Without even mentioning the accuracy of the heat maps.

There does seem to be a link between the development of a country and it's mortality rates. Other than that there's not much to go on. What I think it is, it's a combination of factors. We've got a paralyzing virus, disruptive cellphone calls, and pesticides. That could all be part of the cause of CCD.
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Heliman

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #12 on: May 13, 2011, 09:15:12 pm »

Only one way to find out I guess, just put a cellphone transmitter thingy in a bunch of man-made beehives and see what decibel they stop freaking the fuck out at.
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Grimshot

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #13 on: May 13, 2011, 10:54:40 pm »

.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2012, 11:18:15 am by Grimshot »
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SalmonGod

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Re: Bees: a Serious Discussion
« Reply #14 on: May 13, 2011, 11:03:13 pm »

How about those amphibians?... like all of them?

And hey, what's Paris Hilton up to this weekend?
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