Perhaps it’s because cell phone technology seems too good to be true. You can’t go more than three months without hearing a news report about how cell phones are a peril to our lives. First came the notion that cell phones cause brain cancer…a notion that has been declared inconclusive by science. Then there’s the much more probable scenario where cell phones distract drivers and contribute to terrible traffic accidents.
Now the Independent gives us another reason to fear cellular telephony–it might be killing the bees. The Independent article cites Albert Einstein as saying “if bees disappeared, ‘man would have only four years of life left’,” emphasizing the nightmarish consequences if Colony Collapse Disorder persists.
The article is a bit thin, but it notes experimental evidence showing that bees refuse to return to their hives when a cell phone is placed nearby.
The problem that I see with this theory is that most hives don’t have a cell phone nearby, except perhaps for the short time when the beekeeper is present. In fact, I’d say that many hives are in remote locations where cellular signals are weak or nonexistant. Moreover, why would we suddenly be seeing colonies collapse? It seems that we would have seen this effect growing at a constant rate as new cell towers come on line.
Or, perhaps we’ve simply hit a tipping point…a level of electromagnetic saturation that is unsustainable and the bees are saying “enough already.”
(Via BoingBoing)