Cell Phones Aren't Killing the Bees

Last month, an article in *The Independent *seized upon cell phone radiation as a possible culprit in the mysterious honeybee disappearance that has baffled scientists and threatens to profoundly disrupt U.S. agriculture.

Basing their story on a small study by researchers at Germany's Landau University, the journalists wrote, "It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. Some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages as the world's harvests fail." It was scary-sounding stuff, and widely reported -- but as the authors of the study soon pointed out, they hadn't even studied cell phones.

Good story for sure, except that the study in question had nothing to do with mobile phones and was actually investigating the influence of electromagnetic fields, especially those used by cordless phones that work on fixed-line networks, on the learning ability of bees. The small study, according to the researchers who carried it out too small for the results to be considered significant, found that the electromagnetic fields similar to those used by cordless phones may interrupt the innate ability of bees to find the way back to their hive.

Those searching for answers for the recent disappearance of millions of bees in the United States - what researchers are calling colony collapse disorder - jumped on the possible explanation though there was one particular, cellphones and cordless phones emit different types of radiation and what you learn studying one type is not necessarily significant to the other, according to the researchers.

The study's co-author recommended that people looking to explain the disappearing honeybees turn their attention to pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified crops.

Case of the disappearing bees creates a buzz [International Herald Tribune]
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Image: Mike Kline*