Cell Phones: Do They Really Have Something To Do With Bee Loss?
By Cindy Cui, Editorial Writer
“If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” said Albert Einstein. Bees are crucial for maintaining the balance and biodiversity of the earth’s ecological system. These tiny little insects, together with other animal pollinators, have provided services worth roughly $215 billion to the global agricultural industry.[1]
However, entomologists are concerned about the situation of these diligent workers, taking into account that beekeepers across the United States lost 45.5% of their managed honey bee colonies from April 2020 to April 2021[2].
Then mobile phones, the most frequent “fall guy” for many of human beings’ own failures, are blamed again for being the cause of bee decline.
The origin of the “bee-killing cell phone” is a study conducted in Switzerland in 2009. In the original experiment, the researcher placed cell phones in honey bee hives and observed what happened when the phones were active, inactive, powered down, or ringing. He found that the bees exposed to ringing phones or ones that were active became confused and signaled each other to leave the hive[3], and thus drew the conclusion that bees are sensitive to cell phone radiation and their navigation ability could be disabled by that radiation.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation system, preventing the famously home-loving species from finding their way back to their hives. And thus it is considered to be a convincing potential cause of colony collapse disorder (CCD), which is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food, and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees and the queen[4]. No one knows where the vanished bees went, all we know is that they possibly died in a remote place far from their hives. But the good news is, despite sounding creepy and disastrous now, it has become much less frequent than in 2013-2014, when it first appeared on social media.
However, as further research is conducted, new evidence suggests that it might be inappropriate for people to blame mobiles for bee loss. Despite providing evidence that bees did respond to ringing cell phones, there was no such word or proof that explicitly pointed out cell phones as the cause of bees’ death. Mentioning cell phones “could be partly to blame” is not scientifically conclusive proof to declare mobiles as bee killers. Besides, there is no real evidence that honey bees rely on the electromagnetic field to navigate, and many apiaries that are still experiencing losses are in rural areas where cell phone service is spotty or absent[5].
Having healthy pollinators is vital to both the world’s ecology and economy, and that’s why the media used to be swarmed with worrying articles claiming ideas from either of the two sides–which might contain distorted facts that will mislead the public. Fortunately, as evidence for both sides of arguments popped out, writers today have become slightly more calm and neutral. They have decided to quit the fight and leave the question to the scientists–which I think is sensible.
Whether cell phones are responsible for bee loss or not is still under investigation, but at least when you finish reading this on your phone you’ll be less worried about those diligent pollinators, since the truth is right there in front of you.
—citations:
Caro, P. (2017, April 11). What Is Happening With the Bees? | Yale Environment Review. Yale Environment Review. https://environment-review.yale.edu/what-happening-bees-0.
Woods, J. (2021, June 15). U.S. Beekeepers Continue To Report High Colony Loss Rates, No Clear Progression Toward Improvement. Auburn University. https://ocm.auburn.edu/newsroom/news_articles/2021/06/241121-honey-bee-annual-loss-survey-results.php.
Renter, E. (2013, February 21). Could Cell Phones Be Killing the Honey Bee?. Natural Society. https://naturalsociety.com/is-the-cellphone-killing-the-honeybee/.
Colony Collapse Disorder | U.S. EPA. (2013, August 29). U.S. EPA. https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder.