Cell Phones Aren't Killing Bees After All 253
radioweather writes "A couple of weeks ago, there was a nutty idea discussed in The Independent that claimed the electromagnetic radiation from cell phones was causing bees to become disoriented, preventing them from returning to the hive. The flimsy cell phone argument was used to explain Colony Collapse Disorder. Today the LA Times reports that researchers at UC San Francisco have uncovered what they believe to be the real culprit: a parasitic fungus. Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country."
Why blame everything else? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it an artifact of ancient religion or superstition maybe? (Like the sun and moon worshipers, or offerers of livestock and enemies, witchhunting?)
Re:Can't be right (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a hazard of the modern world. Hopefully now that we've isolated the problem, we can go ahead and solve it with the application of still more technology! (Thereby creating strains of fungus resistant to whatever it was that we used to kill the fungus, yadda yadda yadda).
Fungi (Score:5, Interesting)
We should do research before we blame something. (Score:1, Interesting)
Bee were being killed by other things other than this fungus. In the early 1990s there we another diseases that were killing bee also and those were mites but no one ever got into the "blame the technology" witch hunt back then.
Please our proven scientific methods before we going on our witch hunts.
Nosema fits the CCD profile. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bees get Nosema in the fall. It weakens them greatly. In the spring as the hive turns the corner to build up, the foragers start taking cleansing flights (hell, the house bees do it too. Anything alive long enought o harden the wings probably takes a flight or two). Nosema leaves them weak, so they fall to the ground on their flight and die of exposure. House bees are held in their position by the presence of foragers but the hive's trying to build up. Soon house bees are pressed into foraging. These are infected too. Now the nurse bees are left. The ones older than five days take a few orienting flights and go at it. Nosema's a pain, so they die. What do you have left? Basically the CCD profile - a queen, the capped brood and a few dozen nurse bees in her retinue.
You want to know how cell phones kill bees? When you set the phone down on top of one.
Re:Fungi (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Swing that razor one more time. (Score:2, Interesting)