Honey Bees affected by Cell phone towers?

Here is an article that claims Cell towers affect honey bees. Have there been any other studies released that claim the same thing? Bees are a huge part of our ecosystem, and they have been declining in numbers for the last 5 years. I am not sure we could comfortably live without our cell phones, but I am quite sure we cannot live comfortably without bees.

I don't think I've seen a single bee for about 3 years now. Can't say I've ever been a fan of bees, but this is worrying.

However, I've had a cell phone for about 15 years, so I'm not immediately convinced of the connection. There's gotta be SOME reason for it though so I'll keep reading...

A very poorly written, unscientific article.

How does the "electromagnetic radiation" kill the bees? Most cellphone tower antennas are much higher than bees fly, so they won't be killed by high energy RF radiation or from high voltage/RF shocks.

Structurally, bees are magnitudes in size too large for RF energy or "harmonics" to kill a bee. Do they fly into the tower at a high rate of speed and kill themselves? Trees would kill the bees the same way!

In particular, Dr. Pattazhy's scientific method is lacking! Statistically, one experiment is meaningless. So he set his cellphone next to a hive and the worker bees didn't return. How does setting a cellphone next to a hive prove cellphone TOWERS are killing bees?

What did he do; put the phone into the door of the hive? If bees hate cellphones so bad that a phone next to a hive would drive away worker bees, why didn't the rest of the colony also leave as a result? What impact did his harassment of the colony have on it's demise?

Was the hive exposed to disease, mites or predators? Since this brilliant scientist doesn't know what happened to the missing bees, how can he claim the bees were killed by cellphone towers? Where is the forensic analysis of the dead bees? How does he know that birds or other predators didn't eat the bees?

No, more likely bee colonies are dying due a combination of multiple causes - disease, mites, predation, chemicals, loss of flowering habitat and harassment from so-called "scientists" who scare the bees away from their colonies while trying to prove cellphone towers are the culprit.

I'll give you a real life example: My brother had over 20 hives/colonies that he tended on his property in the midwest. He was a beekeeper for more than 15 years, producing a lot of honey each year. But during the Clinton administration, a know-it-all divinity school dropout who had no scientific training and no science background forced the EPA to outlaw an anti-mite strip from sale to bee keepers. This strip was proven to kill the mites that weakened and eventually killed honey bees. Subsequent to the outlawing of the strip, within a year, all of my brother's bee hives died out from mite infestations, even though he tried many other anti-mite techniques. Guess how he know the hive was dying? The worker bees, who need to be the strongest, were disappearing! Probably couldn't make it back to the hive due to the weakened condition brought on by the mites.

Within 3 years of the clinton administration's outlawing of the anti-mite strip, a majority of the known bee hives in the midwest collapsed. All of my brother's beekeeper friends lost their hives as well. Actions have consequences, even if they are "well meaning" actions!

Any guesses as to who the brilliant bureaucrat that made the decision to outlaw the anti-mite strip was? I'll give you 3 guesses, the first 2 don't count! It's the same man who is frightening schoolchildren about CO2; is getting rich off of carbon credits, yet has a carbon footprint 1,000 times the size of the average American. If you guessed al gore, you were right!

reply to post by Hope for change


that is some good information. I posted the article because it made it ro Drudge Report and I thougth is was news worthy. I also saw a thread about bees making a comeback. I am not sure how many studies have been done about the different causes, but logic says something in the last 5 years has changed. In the past, there were plenty of bees. Cell towers are a logical direction to look as they have increased in abundance in the last 5 years.

So you are saying that Al Gore killed the bees by outlawing the mite strips? Were these same mite stips unchanged for a while?

reply to post by Clickfoot


I think that the corelation to the cell towers is that they have increased exponentially over the last 5 years. I remember how my cell phone used to have lots of dead spots in the past and now, not so much.

I just found this post, star and flag. The link to the article is dead, but I am familiar with the theory. It is proposed that somehow, cell signals 'jam' (for lack of a better term) the workers' navigation. The worker is unable to find her way back to the colony. There was work done on this theory in the UK a couple of years back, to see if it was related to Colony Collapse Disease. I have not seen any recent findings, but it is a very interesting theory.

It is true that Varroa and Tracheal Mites are a serious threat to honeybees. In fact, there are few 'wild' colonies left in North Carolina. Of course, the upside, if there is one, of wild colonies dying off is that we no longer need worry about the spread of Africanized Honeybees. Those are 'Killer Bees' to the National Enquirer set.

I don't believe much about this theory.

Maybe compiled by someone who doesn't like mobile phone towers more than they like bees.