Could cell phones be the culprit in honeybee disappearance?
Apiarists in the U.S. and Europe have been scratching their heads for months over rapidly waning honeybee populations. Now some scientists who have combed through the data are all abuzz with a new theory: cell phones. In bad news to mobile-attached ears, British researchers are suggesting that phone radiation could be disrupting bees’ navigation systems. Research has shown that bees act differently around power lines, and a recent study found that up to 70 percent of the little stingers failed to return to hives that contained cordless-phone docking units. The implications, of course, go beyond bee welfare; Albert Einstein — if not a bee expert, a relatively smart guy — once said that in the absence of the busy crop pollinators, humans “would have only four years of life left.” Ooh, that stings. Other theories for the bees’ departure have included mites, pesticides, global warming, and genetically modified crops, but so far, none has been definitively proved.
