Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Maverick · Apr 17, 2007

shadow85 said: ↑

Wow thats cool. So the next time a bee comes at me i am gonna make a call.
Click to expand...

Yep, there goes another bee, ... disorientated by GSM radiation ...

AC0110 · Apr 17, 2007

xiaojia said: ↑

lol.. there goes my honey..

edit: cool.. first time I see a thread get moved
Click to expand...

HAHA... The admins are finally doing their jobs...

jking -sweat

hiake · Apr 17, 2007

shadow85 said: ↑

Wow thats cool. So the next time a bee comes at me i am gonna make a call.
Click to expand...

They may get too disoriented and decided your room is their hive =_=b

Maverick · Apr 18, 2007

They may mistake your head as their hive Gna Gna -lol
That will be an ugly picture -whistle

effxiikc · Apr 18, 2007

we not only lose honey, but bees pollinate a lot of our crops...without bees...we'd have to use a lot more resources to pollinate crops and plants

Maverick · Apr 19, 2007

effxiikc said: ↑

we not only lose honey, but bees pollinate a lot of our crops...without bees...we'd have to use a lot more resources to pollinate crops and plants
Click to expand...

Yes, that is the sad reality, but do you think that any government will take any action?

xiaojia · Apr 19, 2007

^ha.. what do you think? ban handphones.. now.. that will be a pretty big impact to buisness at the very least..

Maverick · Apr 20, 2007

Looks like a disaster must first happen before someone take action

xiaojia · Apr 20, 2007

^lol.. isnt that always the case? alot of ppl aren't even aware of the reality of global warming.. you think they will care abt the birds and the bees until they realise their gone?

Maverick · Apr 20, 2007

But then it is already too late, the damage is done.

boalover16 · Apr 20, 2007

yes it is true that cellphones harm bees. but is a good thing cuz there would be no more bees for summer, so then i dunt need 2 look around for bees when it comes 2 summer. but still, isn't the world changing? i mean there's murdering, violence, hatred....

hiake · Apr 20, 2007

^ Oh wait til there isn't any more crops to be sold in the market, then you'll know how amazing the world is without bees.

@Mav: Damage is done, but we can still reverse it by limiting network coverages... If only we are willing to give it up that easily.

Maverick · Apr 21, 2007

hiake said: ↑

@Mav: Damage is done, but we can still reverse it by limiting network coverages... If only we are willing to give it up that easily.
Click to expand...

O well, mobility to the front door is still mobility LOL

aych · Apr 22, 2007

lol. yeah. i think i've heard something about bees communicating on the same frequency.. except their poor antennas cant take a good couple hundred watts. rofl

fearless_fx · Apr 23, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Go to work, come home.

Go to work, come home.

Go to work -- and vanish without a trace.

Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why.

The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States, where honeybees are used to pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil.

Commercial beekeepers would set their bees near a crop field as usual and come back in two or three weeks to find the hives bereft of foraging worker bees, with only the queen and the immature insects remaining. Whatever worker bees survived were often too weak to perform their tasks.

If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen.

Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service.

"They're the heavy lifters of agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming."

Honeybees are used to pollinate some of the tastiest parts of the American diet, Pettis said, including cherries, blueberries, apples, almonds, asparagus and macadamia nuts.

"It's not the staples," he said. "If you can imagine eating a bowl of oatmeal every day with no fruit on it, that's what it would be like" without honeybee pollination.

Pettis and other experts are gathering outside Washington for a two-day workshop starting on Monday to pool their knowledge and come up with a plan of action to combat what they call colony collapse disorder.

"What we're describing as colony collapse disorder is the rapid loss of adult worker bees from the colony over a very short period of time, at a time in the season when we wouldn't expect a rapid die-off of workers: late fall and early spring," Pettis said.
Small workers in a supersize society

The problem has prompted a congressional hearing, a report by the National Research Council and a National Pollinator Week set for June 24-30 in Washington, but so far no clear idea of what is causing it.

"The main hypotheses are based on the interpretation that the disappearances represent disruptions in orientation behavior and navigation," said May Berenbaum, an insect ecologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

There have been other fluctuations in the number of honeybees, going back to the 1880s, where there were "mysterious disappearances without bodies just as we're seeing now, but never at this magnitude," Berenbaum said in a telephone interview.

In some cases, beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to the disorder, with some suffering even higher losses. One beekeeper alone lost 40,000 bees, Pettis said. Nationally, some 27 states have reported the disorder, with billions of bees simply gone.

Some beekeepers supplement their stocks with bees imported from Australia, said beekeeper Jeff Anderson, whose business keeps him and his bees traveling between Minnesota and California. Honeybee hives are rented out to growers to pollinate their crops, and beekeepers move around as the growing seasons change.

Honeybees are not the only pollinators whose numbers are dropping. Other animals that do this essential job -- non-honeybees, wasps, flies, beetles, birds and bats -- have decreasing populations as well. But honeybees are the big actors in commercial pollination efforts.

"One reason we're in this situation is this is a supersize society -- we tend to equate small with insignificant," Berenbaum said. "I'm sorry but that's not true in biology. You have to be small to get into the flower and deliver the pollen.

"Without that critical act, there's no fruit. And no technology has been invented that equals, much less surpasses, insect pollinators."
Click to expand...

this is actually a pretty significant situation... without bees and pollination alot of people are going to lose their livelihood. imagine a world without flowers and fruit... i cant.

nyckeion · Apr 24, 2007

i truly wish they can kill all the freakin mosquitos then i will be happy dont want bees to die i want honey

Maverick · Apr 25, 2007

We are doomed ...

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Maverick Lord Vader

AC0110 Let the Fun Begin

hiake Vardøgr of da E.Twin

Maverick Lord Vader

effxiikc Well-Known Member

Maverick Lord Vader

xiaojia Well-Known Member

Maverick Lord Vader

xiaojia Well-Known Member

Maverick Lord Vader

boalover16 Active Member

hiake Vardøgr of da E.Twin

Maverick Lord Vader

aych Active Member

fearless_fx Eugooglizer

nyckeion ....Boo....

Maverick Lord Vader