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.pdfIt 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.
... 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.pdf151 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:
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/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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Topic: Bees: a Serious Discussion (Read 1942 times)