The Disappearing Bees: CCD and Electromagnetic Radiation
Colin Buchanan | 22.02.2008 18:56 | Ecology | World
1973
“In 1973 Karl von Frisch won the Nobel prize for a series of studies done in the 1940's on the navigational ability of the honeybee. He found that they utilized both a sun angle compass and a polarized light system for navigation. Perhaps more amazing was their ability to communicate the vector and distance of a food source to other workers in the hive by means of a "dance" that used both the sun angle and the gravitational vector. While the sun angle and polarized light were quite efficient they would be absent on cloudy days. However, the bees were still able to navigate with the same precision under those conditions. There obviously had to be a back-up system of some kind available to these animals that was totally independent of these two cues.”
Electromagnetism and Life
http://www.ortho.lsuhsc.edu/Faculty/Marino/EL/EL3/Positional.html 1974
“In 1974, the Russian researchers Eskov and Sapozhnikov found that bees generate electromagnetic signals with a modulation frequency between 180 and 250 Hz when they do their communications dances. (It is important to note that our GSM mobile sys-tem is modulated with 217 Hz). Hungry bees react to those frequencies by erect-ing their antennae [8]. Warnke reported that the communication impulses of the antennae when touched by a fellow bee can be measured with an oscillograph [9].”
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 1976
Ulrich Warnke publishes a report “Effects of electric charges on honeybees.” It included the finding that “Bees in strong electric field became aggressive, stinging each other to death; communication was disturbed....Bees left the hive if they could.”
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/warnke_bee_world_76.pdf 1980
Journal of Experimental Biology 86,1-8 (1980) publishes a report on
“Orientation of Demagnetized Bees” which concludes that
“The orientation of honey bee dances is affected by the earth's magnetic field.”
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/1/1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Orientation+of+demagnetized+bees%2C&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT 1982
State University of New York publishes
Electromagnetism and Life
Robert O. Becker and Andrew A. Marino
This provides the theoretical foundations for the interaction between electro-magnetism and life, an interaction which had previously, and, to some extent, still is, presumed not to exist. In it, a chapter is dedicated to the role of EM radiation in the navigation of bees and other creatures. He opens with this summary:
“It is clear that the existence of the biological cycle phenomenon is dependent upon the living subject having precise knowledge of its position on the earth. Since it also appears that the earth's electromagnetic field is the most important single signal for this function, it seems likely that it is similarly involved in the migrational and direction-finding abilities of many animals. This possibility has been confirmed by recent studies.”
Concluding with this warning:
“From all the foregoing reports it is obvious that the present normal earth magnetic field is an important parameter of the environment for living things. Changes in the fields in the past have been shown to exert evolutionary pressure and possibly even to have been associated with biogenesis. All living things are at present intimately tied to various aspects of the earth's field, and it seems quite possible that even more dramatic findings will be reported in the future. It must be kept in mind that the relationship is a subtle one, in contrast to the more obvious parameters of the environment. Since the present relationship between living things and the electromagnetic environment is the result of several billions of years of development, the question of the biological effects of abnormal electromagnetic parameters introduced into the environment by man's activities becomes of some importance.”
Positional and Navigational Aids. Section of Chapter 3.
http://www.ortho.lsuhsc.edu/Fac ulty/Marino/EL/ELTOC.html 1990
Sharp decline in number of commercial bee colonies in US begins. Between 1990 and 1996 one quarter are lost
http://www.pmac.net/birdbee.htm 1992
According to a statement from the French parliament in 2007 the unexplained die-off of bees in France dates from 1992.
“Messieurs les Députés, la surmortalité inexpliquée des abeilles (et inexplicable si l’on dédouane avec expertise le Gaucho et le Régent) existe depuis 1992. Pourquoi donc avoir attendu 15 années avant de proposer la constitution d’une commission d’enquête???”
[Gentlemen, the unexplained die-off of bees...has been with us since 1992. Why then have we waited 15 years to set up a commission of enquiry?]
Cited in “Pesticides. Révélations sur un scandale français” by Nicolino et Veillerette
http://www.liberterre.fr/gaiasophia/agriculture/pollinisateurs/requiem01.html 1995
The decline in bee colonies accelerates in France.
“En France, un tiers des colonies meurent chaque annee depuis 1995 et 1.500 apiculteurs, amateurs et professionnels, cessent leur activite ce qui menacerait au total 5.000 emplois. (2007)”
[In France a third of colonies have died in every year since 1995 and 1,500 beekeepers, amateur and professional,have ceased their activities threatening a total of 5000 jobs.]
http://www.consoglobe.com/ac-environnement_1736_fin-des-abeilles-fin-du-monde.html 1996
Something of a panic takes hold in the USA with the publication of this work:
Our Forgotten Pollinators: Protecting the Birds and Bees
By Mrill Ingram, Gary Nabhan and Stephen Buchmann
PANNA, San Francisco, CA
http://www.pmac.net/birdbee.htm "A pollination crisis is flaring," write authors Stephen Buchman and Gary Nabhan. "It threatens rare, endangered plants as well as the common ones that keep people clothed and fed... At risk is every plant crop that depends on pollination for reproduction: one in three mouthfuls of the food people eat."
Albion Monitor July 28, 1996
http://www.monitor.net/monitor 1997
A French study in 2006 cites a stream of publications and articles from 1997 showing “a weakening and abnormal mortality rate amongst bee colonies in France”.
Le deperissement de l’abeille domestique, Apis
mellifera L., 1758 (Hymenoptera : Apidae) : faits et
causes probables
http://www.fsagx.ac.be/zg/Publications/pdf%20zoologie/1551-1600/1585.pdf 29 December 1997
“The honeybees are being decimated' according to a report by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. She also refers to Rachel Carson's prediction of a “silent spring”.
http://www.democracynow.org/1997/12/29/forgotten_pollinators_americas_bees 1998
The insights of Becker's theories and, more immediately those of Dr. Phil Callahan find a commercial outlet in the use, by a student of the latter,Tom Dykstra, of EM radiation to kill off pests, by, for example, ”disrupting the insects mating cycle through amplified low-level energies”
Callahan Theories in Action — Battling Pests with Electromagnetics
http://www.acresusa.com/tapes/closeup.asp?prodid=558&catid=49&pcid=3 1999
This is the year of the first confirmed reference I can find to what is now called CCD, referred to in Spanish as “sindrome de despoblamiento de las colmenas”(hive desertion syndrome). It comes in Spain's major scientific report into CCD published in 2007, which states categorically:
“Nuestro equipo comenzo a investigar el origen de este síndrome ya a finales de 1999”
[Our team began to investigate the origin of this syndrome at the end of 1999]
El despoblamiento de las colmenas en España.
http://apitrack.com/informaciontecnica/higesnoscemaceranae122006_es_open.htm 2000
Winter: CCD starts in northern Spain
“La desaparicion de millones de abejas sin dejar rastro no afecta solo a Estados Unidos, sino que es un fenomeno generalizado en casi todo el mundo. En Euskal Herria comenzo a detectarse en el invierno de 2000-2001.”
[The disappearance of millions of bees without trace doesn't only affect the USA; it is a general phenomena almost everywhere. It was first observed in Euskal Herria(Spanish Basque country) in the winter of 2000-2001.]
http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20070425/14714/es/Enigmatica/desaparicion/abejas/todo/mundo 2001
A scientific study “Magnetite-based magnetoreception 2001” affirms the “sensitivity to electric fields and their role in navigation across wide range of species.”
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~jkirschvink/pdfs/COINS.pdf 2002
29 January, 2002
Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists organized and hosted a workshop at Calgary Alberta which concluded:
“Beekeepers in Canada are experiencing an increasing incidence of unexplained and substantial colony mortality”
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/folder.asp?FolderID=4971 May 25, 2002 - Researchers try to unravel cause of bee die-off(National Post, Canada)
“Honeybees have been dying in alarming numbers around the world since the mid-1990s. More recently, the problem has surfaced in North America, where the honeybee is not an indigenous creature, but was imported from Europe many decades ago.
Beekeepers in the Maritimes announced two years ago that they, too, were suffering high losses among their hives. While a 5% to 10% annual loss of bees is expected in the industry, beekeepers in P.E.I. and New Brunswick began reporting mortality rates of between 30% and 90%. Similar complaints have since emerged in Nova Scotia and Southern Ontario.
Dr. Kemp, a UPEI botanist, was enlisted by the provincial government to find out what is killing Canada's bees.”
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/folder.asp?FolderID=4979 7 August 2002
“The National Beekeepers' Association UNAAPI said the country was witnessing a silent "slaughter of bees" and that Italian honey production
would plummet by at least 50% in 2002.”
http://www.mieliditalia.it/herald.htm 2003
14 October 2003
“Bee losses in France 2003”
“Until recently, the normal death rate for bees during the winter months was one in 10.Now, says Vincent Clair of the French National Bee Surveillance Unit, the death rate is six in 10.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3178400.stm September 2003
“Experiences of Beekeepers”
Prof. em. Dr. Ferdinand Ruzicka, who is a beekeeper himself and has contributed to a variety of beekeeping journals, has assembled a wealth of experiences from his own observa-tions and questionnaires to other beekeepers. He says: “The problems only appeared since several transmitters have been in-stalled in the immediate proximity to my hives.” After this event, he published a ques-tionnaire in the Beekeeping Journal „Der Bie-nenvater“ 2003/9 : The qu estion whether a mobile phone transmitter was within a 300m radius of the hives was answered affirmatively in all 20 replies. The question whether the bees displayed more aggressive behaviour after the in-stallation than before was answered af-firmatively by 38% of the respondents.
The question whether the bees showed a greater inclination to swarm after the in-stallation was answered affirmatively by 25% of the respondents.
The last question regarding unexplained colony collapse was answered affirma-tively by 63% of the respondents. According to Ruzicka’s observations, the bee colonies are so weakened by the mobile tele-communications radiation that they become more prone to various diseases, a fact that can also contribute to colony collapse. This is because bees are considered to be very fragile creatures, just like butterflies whose numbers have also dramatically fallen during the last few years. However, according to Dr Ruzicka, 15 years ago, bee colonies were able to deal with a much higher degree of Varroa mite infestation than they are able to cope with today.
"
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 2004
Mora, C. V., Davison, M., Wild, J. M., and M. M. Walker. 2004. Magnetoreception and its trigeminal mediation in the homing pigeon. Nature 432: 508-511
http://www.scq.ubc.ca/the-compasses-of-birds/ 15th March, 2004
This is an extract from an article which appeared in the German press.
“After retiring, and now at the age of 76, Mr. Vogel has enjoyed 15 successful years of honey production. He was housing his bee colonies inside an old wooden truck and until a year ago the beekeeper had four bee colonies in hives behind wooden planks on the truck.
This winter Mr. Vogel witnessed the disappearance of all four of his bee hives. The bees had met a tragic and mysterious fate.
Siegfried Vogel believes microwave radiation from mobile phone masts is responsible for the loss of his bees. Vogel explained that the microwave radiation is coming onto his property from four directions. There are three mobile phone masts in Selbitz, three more in Sellanger, and recently a new mast was erected in Leupoldsgrün, adding to an increasing level of ambient background microwave radiation infecting the area.
Our newspaper tested the mobile phone reception in this area and found it to be "good" to "very good."
Vogel offers as evidence - that mobile phone masts have caused the demise of his bee colonies - the fact that his son's colonies, which were placed behind aluminum shielding, have survived. (Aluminum is known to block microwave radiation.)
Since all their bee colonies were equally protected from cold weather with polystyrene insulation in the trailer, Siegfried Vogel concludes that the aluminium surrounding his sons beehives must be shielding them from the radiation from mobile phone masts.”
Werner Rost
http://www.laleva.org/eng/2007/04/protecting_bees_from_mobile_phone_radiation.html Nov. 22 2004
The United States Department of Agriculture approvs the importation Australian bees due to an acute shortage of bees to pollinate the almond crop in California.
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/Folder.asp?FolderID=4753&NewsID=469 2005
“In 2005, a group of scientists of the University of Koblenz-Landau headed by Prof. Hermann Stever conducted a pilot study to research the ‘returning behaviour’ of bees as well as the weight and surface development of the comb under the influ-ence of electromagnetic radiation [10].
Four out of eight colonies were exposed to DECT phone base stations which were put into the hive and constantly emitted radiation. “
The report found statistically significant differences in the performance of bees subjected to EM radiation exposure.
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 7 February 2005
Australian bees arrive in California
“A parasitic bee mite has been devastating hives, leaving almond growers scrambling to find enough hives to handle the state's massive crop.”
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/Folder.asp?FolderID=4753&NewsID=469 11 February 2005
According to Business Wire:
“The American Beekeeping Federation estimates that about 50 percent of the honey bee colonies in California have been killed or severely weakened”
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-3668923/Honey-Bee-Pollination-Crisis-Shortage.html In the spring of 2005, many of the migratory beekeepers who work the California almond bloom discovered that their colonies had suffered heavy losses during the winter. Across the country, about one-third of all commercial honeybee colonies died out. The result was a pollinator panic in the Central Valley. Fees for renting beehives shot up from about $48 to as much as $140 per colony, a previously unheard-of amount. Beekeepers traveled from as far away as Florida and North Carolina to service California's almond groves. For the first time in 50 years, U.S. borders were opened to honeybees from New Zealand and Australia. The fate of a $1.2 billion crop -- more than half of all almond production worldwide -- rested on the slender back of the embattled honeybee.
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth06sumbees2.aspgclid=CMPB2smbiY8CFQ4FEgodeQGwuw June 16 2005
USA pollination crisis deepens
“New England's cranberry growers fear there aren't enough bees to pollinate the cranberry blossom. Colony losses of between 40% and 80% are being reported.”
http://turlough.blogspot.com/2005/06/usa-pollination-crisis-deepens.html August 2005
Scientific Review:
“Magnetic orientation and magnetoreception in birds and other animals.”
“A magnetic compass is widespread among animals, magnetic navigation is indicated e.g. in birds, marine turtles and spiny lobsters and the use of magnetic 'sign posts' has been described for birds and marine turtles"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15886990?dopt=Abstract 9 December 2005
The minutes of the annual meeting of UK government and beekeeping organisations records this clear reference to CCD, then referred to as Marie Celeste syndrome.
“Mr Craig reported that beekeepers in Scotland who had been treating varroa infested colonies (usually with Apistan) had been finding hives empty of bees, but not winter stores. Together with these unexplained colony losses (“Marie Celeste” syndrome)there were failures in queen mating. These events were happening particularly in oilseed rape growing areas. Whilst acknowledging that these could possibly be explained by the effects of viruses, for which the varroa mite provides a vector, he was concerned that we might be observing sub-lethal behavioural effects of systemic insecticides such as Imidacloprid, causing disorientation in the bees leading to an inability to return to the hive.”
http://www.defra.gov.uk/hort/Bees/pdf/bees-meeting2005.pdf 2006
Scientific review:
Balmori A. 2006. Efectos de las radiaciones electromagneticas de la telefonia movil sobre los insectos. (The effects of electromagnetic radiation from the mobile phone network on insects.) Ecosistemas. 2006/1
“Teniendo en cuenta los efectos conocidos de las microondas sobre los insectos y en particular sobre las abejas, y habida cuenta de la proliferacion de estaciones base en el campo, es necesario investigar si las radiaciones de telefonia estan incidiendo de alguna manera en estas mortandades. Los resultados deben ser considerados por los apicultores espanoles con el fin de prevenir posibles perdidas economicas.”
[Taking into account the known effects of microwave radiation on insects and , in particular, on bees and considering the proliferation of mobile phone masts in the countryside, it is necesarry to investigate whether the radiation they emit is in some way linked to the die off of bees.The results should be considered by Spanish beekeepers from the point of view of possible economic losses.]
http://www.revistaecosistemas.net/pdfs/396.pdf#search=%22balmori%20Efectos%20de%20las%20radiaciones%20electromagnéticas%20de%20la%20telefonia%20móvil%22 April 2006
The Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry, Environment and Water Management affirms that
“Scientific research has found evidence that electromagnetic fields can have negative effects on bees. “
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 16 July 2006
“Selon les derniers chiffres de l'AFSSA (Agence Francaise de Securite Sanitaire des Aliments) a paraître dans le prochain magazine Valeurs Vertes, les colonies d'abeilles sont en partie decimees dans 14 departements francais. Deux ans apres l'imbroglio politico-mediatique sur les abeilles et l'interdiction de pesticides, les abeilles meurent toujours.”
[According to the latest figures of the AFSSA(French Health and Safety Agency) to be published in the next issue of Valeurs Vertes, bee colonies are in serious decline in 14 departnents. Two years after the media controversy over bees and the banning of pesticides, the bees are still dying.]
http://www.futura-sciences.com/fr/sinformer/actualites/news/t/vie-1/d/les-vraies-causes-de-la-mortalite-des-abeilles_9306/) 8 September 2006
“European researchers have recently provided, for the first time, evidence of a significant decline in wild bee diversity in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands over the past 25 years. The scientists also observed that the loss of this pollinator’s diversity is consistent with the loss of bee-pollinated plants. As many crops are directly dependant on insects for their pollination, the reported decline in the bee population may have severe implications for farming.”
http://biodiversity-chm.eea.europa.eu/stories/story639500 October 2006
According to The Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture CCD was first reported at the beginning of October 2006.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572 December 15, 2006
2006 Penn State University preliminary report
“Fall-Dwindle Disease”:Investigations into the causes of sudden and alarming colony losses experienced by beekeepers in the fall of 2006.
“During the months of October, November, and
December 2006, an alarming number of honey bee
colonies began to die along the East Coast of the United States.”
http://www.doacs.state.fl.us/pi/plantinsp/apiary/fall_dwindle_report.pdf 2007
5 January
Penn State University Report revised with a forword declaring that the name “fall dwindle disease has been changed to Colony Collapse Disorder” and revealing the existence of a CCD working group consisting of members of Bee Alert Technology Inc.,Pennsylvania State University, the Florida and Pennsyvania Departments of Agriculture and the USDA Agricultural Research Service. With regard to the name it explains that “symptom’s similar to those described for this disorder have been described in the past, and the condition has received many different names. These include autumn collapse, May disease, spring dwindle, disappearing disease, and fall dwindle disease. The CCD working group felt none of these names were appropriate for the current condition.”
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf That seems an awful lot of names for something which has only been around for three months.
17 January 2007
Members of the CCD working group, meeting for the first time by conference call, report:
“Subsequent investigations suggest these outbreaks of unexplained colony collapse were experienced by beekeepers for at least the last two years.”
As you can see a different timing is given for the appearance of CCD to that given by both the Penn State report just released and the Federal Department of Agriculture
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/pressReleases/CCDSummaryWG0207.pdf 27th February 2007
Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril
A major article on these “sudden mysterious losses”in the New York Times begins a wave of press coverage worldwide and CCD begins to enter public consciousness.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/business/27bees.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=3aaa0148837b8977&ex=1330232400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss 22 March 2007
“Where have all the bees gone?”
A article in New Scientist gives the following characterisation of CCD which shows just what a good name “Marie Celeste syndrome” was:
“It is a vanishing on the scale of entire cities. Late in 2006, commercial beekeepers in Florida began noticing alarming numbers of their bees had gone missing. Bustling colonies, tens of thousands strong, were emptying in a matter of days. Systematic searches for dead bees around the colonies mostly drew a blank.
“Bustling honeybee colonies, tens of thousands strong, were emptying in only a matter of days”
"Imagine waking one morning to find 80 per cent of the people in your community are just gone," says May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.”
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19325964.500-where-have-all-the-bees-gone.html 29th March 2007
Prepared Testimony of Diana Cox-Foster, Professor Department of Entomology at
The Pennsylvania State University before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture on Colony Collapse Disorder in Honey Bee Colonies in the United States.
Cox-Foster states quite categorically when, according to her, CCD first appeared.
“My expertise is a reason why beekeepers approached me in November 2006 with colonies deaths having unique symptoms. These were the first recognized instances of Colony Collapse Disorder.”
Cox-Foster also announces a new line of investigation “in collaboration with Dr. Ian Lipkin and associates at Columbia University and the Northeast Biodefense Center” aimed at identifying the microbes and viruses associated with CCD colonies through genetic analysis.
"
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/CCDPpt/CoxFosterTestimonyFinal.pdf April 2007.
A Definitive Statement about Bees written for HESE-UK by Dr. rer. nat. Ulrich Warnke, University of Saarland:
“On balance, the consequence of all these investigations is that the orientation and navigation of bees may be disturbed by man-made technical communication fields.”
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/statement_of_dr._warnke.doc 15 April 2007
“Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?”
This article appears in the Independent and is destined to stir up a hornet's nest. It cites the above-mentioned Laudau University study and quotes Dr Jochen Kuhn as saying it could provide a “hint' to a possible cause of CCD.
It also cites reports of CCD from beekeepers throughout Britain although these claims don't impress the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who insist: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/are-mobile-phones-wiping-out-our-bees-444768.html Apr 17, 2007
“The sudden unexplained loss of millions of bees in the Niagara region – up to 90 per cent in some commercial colonies – has prompted Ontario beekeepers to ask experts at the University of Guelph to investigate.”
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/203818 22 April
The official recantation of Dr Kuhn and his research team appears in the International Herald Tribune.
It now appears that this “small study” which “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” was “too small for the results to be considered significant”
The article gives some indication of the kind of pressures which may have been experienced. One of the researchers remarked:
"Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/22/news/wireless23.php 24 April 2007
Marla Spivak, a researcher and bee expert at the University of Minnesota
“dismissed a report that cell phone towers and radio waves may be to blame for the bee's disappearance. The theory has percolated throughout the Internet, despite repeated denunciations by bee researchers”
http://www.startribune.com/business/11222981.html 25 April 2007
The Institute for Science in Society intervenes in the debate with a Press Release “Mobile Phones and Vanishing Bees” in which it gives its view on the Landau team's work:
“Clearly the present findings need to be taken much further, but their significance should not be downplayed for a number of reasons. The findings are compatible with evidence accumulating from investigations on many other species including humans, showing that mobile phone radiation is associated with a range of health hazards including cancers [6] (Drowning in a Sea of Microwaves, SiS 34). Furthermore, bees are known to be extremely sensitive to magnetic and electromagnetic fields, and there have been many suggestions that they could be used as an indicator species for electromagnetic pollution.”
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MobilePhonesVanishingBees.php Eduardo Pérez de Obanos, veterinary specialist with the Asociación de Apicultores de Nafarroa( Beekeepers Association of Navarra, Spain) comments in the Basque newspaper Gara:
“Lo que me extrana es que desde America hayan dado la voz de alarma ahora, porque es un problema que se viene sufriendo en todo el mundo desde hace varios anos.Es el mismo sindrome que tenemos aqui.”
[What I find strange is that the the Americans should raise the alarm now, since it is a problem from which we have been suffering throughout the world for several years.It is the same syndrome which we have here.]
He goes on to remind us that this “sindrome de despoblamiento de colmenas”(hive desertion syndrome) first appeared in Navarra in the winter of 2000-2001 and that he sees the disappearance of the bees resulting in an almost total “desertification of the ecosystem”
http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20070425/14714/es/Enigmatica/desaparicion/abejas/todo/mundo Apr 26 2007
“Are mobile phones and Wi-Fi to blame for the world's ills?”
Guardian journalists Kate Bevan and Charles Arthur launch puerile attack on Landau study.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/apr/26/mobilephones.guardianweeklytechnologysection Apr 26 2007
“Taiwan stung by millions of missing bees”
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTP16248120070426 6 May 2007
Independent reports that:
“Eastbourne's planning committee has refused permission for a new mast unless and until it is convinced there is no danger to the insects, and Bolton council has launched an investigation into the threat”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/town-rejects-mast-to-save-bees-after-iiosi-report-447686.html 13 May 2007
According to the Independent on Sunday, their articles on possible effects of EM radiation on bees have prompted the government to carry out the review of the mobile phone programme originally planned three years previously.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/health-concerns-over-mobile-phone-masts-prompt-review-448647.html May 14 2007
Large CCD losses reported in Canada. Emergency meeting planned for all involved in the industry.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/agriculture/story.html?id=8d498bea-ddf4-4353-aa17-286e93181c98&k=41584 18 May 2007
The Dundee Courier (Scotland) reports CCD losses in East of Scotland.
According to Helen Kinnes, Secretary for the Beekeepers Association in Tayside and Angus:
“Some beekeepers have had a complete disappearance of the bees in their hives.”
Another beekeeper Marion Lang said:
“Another problem is what we call the Marie Celeste effect, where only a handful of bees are found in an otherwise healthy hive. The bees have just disappeared.”
She goes on to attributes it to EM radiation.
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2007/05/18/newsstory9729248t0.asp 17 June 2007
Speaking to the Daily Herald(USA), VanEngelsdorp, acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania effectively rules out the varroa mite, fungus, GM crops and pesticides. The remaining culprit must be an unknown pathogen.
HYPERLINK "
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/225743/"http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/225743/ June 27 2007
The British Government's National Bee Unit reaffirms the absence of CCD in Britain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/27/society.conservation1 28 June 2007
Writing in Discover Magazine, Josie Glausiusz bizzarely claims that the Landau study “was not, in fact, carried out”.
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/better-planet/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C 16 July 2007
The USDA's Agricultural Research Service dismisses any possible effect of EM radiation on bees alleging that “exposure of bees to high levels of electromagnetic fields is unlikely."
http://www.idahostatesman.com/localnews/story/108102.html 23 July 2007
The Guardian (UK) publishes the following retraction:
“We said in a section at the end of this article entitled Collapsing colonies that cases of entire bee colonies dying out suddenly had been reported in the UK. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs would like to make clear that fears that colony collapse disorder had struck in the UK have so far proved to be unfounded.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jul/23/sciencenews.homesandgardens 12 August 2007
“The bees are OK”
Paul van Westendorp, the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Land's apiculture specialist denies that there is CCD in Canada blaming losses on “lots of rain”
http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/science/story.html?id=43e99709-7ba1-4072-b76a-56095fca69b5 31 August 2007
Widespread bee losses reported in the south of Brasil
http://funverde.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/abelhas-estao-desaparecendo-no-sul-do-brasil/ 6 September 2007
Penn State(CCD working group) report appears in Science Express.(1)
The next day's press reports include one triumphantly and inaccurately entitled “Mobiles cleared of harming bees”.(2) In fact,the investigation did not deal with the EM radiation case, assuming a priori the culpability of some form of pathogen. As Diana Cox-Foster put it the EM radiation thesis was “at very low priority”.(3) The same press report erroneously claimed that the “virus can spread quickly through an entire colony, at which point the infected bees become paralysed and die outside the hive.” The distinguishing feature of CCD is precisely that the bodies of the bees are not found near the hive.
The investigation correlated the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IVAP) with CCD.
An article on the Penn State University website suggested this:
“Timing also may be the key to pinpointing the cause. The United States began allowing importation of bees from Australia in 2004, which coincides with early reports of CCD.” (4)
But Diana Cox-Foster had publicly proclaimed that CCD didn't occur in the USA until the fall of 2006 and so we have a slight adjustment here to fit in with the new hypothesis. However, the relationship between the two events isn't just sequential, it is logical: the bees were being imported because the the local ones were being “decimated”. But the way had been cleared to pin the blame on Australia.
In the course of the investigation all previous hypothesis had been ruled out. As one of the investigators put it: “the only candidate left standing was, in fact, IAPV.''(5)
“Other viruses and Nosema parasites had been suggested as the cause of CCD, but the researchers found that those pathogens appear in both CCD and non-CCD samples.”(6)
(1)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5848/283 (2)
http://www.vnu.co.uk/vnunet/news/2198276/mobiles-cleared-harming-bees Cont.
(3)
http://news.robportal.com/2007/09/07/new-research-suggests-virus-could-be-behind-disappearing-bees/ (4)
http://live.psu.edu/story/25747 (5)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003873009_bees07.html (6)
http://www.psu.edu/ur/2007/bees.htm 7 September 2007
The claim that Australian bees are responsible for CCD in the USA meets with general derision down under. As the head of the Australian Honey Bee Council, Stephen Ware put it:
"I'd certainly call it dodgy...
It's akin to a drowning man throwing off his life preserver and saying, 'the life preserver was why I was drowning'."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/07/2027273.htm 21 September 2007
“Schumer: Ban Australian bees”
“U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Thursday calling for the suspension of Australian bee import”
"
http://www.syracuse.com/articles/news/index.ssf?/base/news-10/11903652572 51740.xml&coll=1&thispage=1 19 September 2007
“FEDERAL Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran has dismissed calls from a US senator for an immediate ban on the export of Australian bees after research suggested they could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of bees in North America.
"There's something fishy going on here," he said about the unwillingness of the co-authors and the journal editors to respond to scientific criticism. "Someone's not telling the truth.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,22442148-12332,00.html?from=public_rss 7 December 2007
Imported Bees Not Source of Virus Associated with Colony Collapse Disorder
“Imported bees not source of virus associated with Colony Collapse Disorder”
An article appearing in the American Bee Journal effectively undermines the Penn state findings citing another study which has established “without question” that the Israeli virus ,IPAV, has been in the United States since at least 2002. It therefore predates the introduction of Australian bees and the official dates for the commencement of CCD.
http://www.farmandranchguide.com/articles/2007/12/08/ag_news/production_news/product14.txt 2008
20 January 2008
The Telegraph reports:
'In London, about 4,000 hives - two-thirds of the bee colonies in the capital - were estimated to have died over last winter. Of the eight colonies inspected so far this year, all have been wiped out.'
'Tim Lovett, the association's president, said: "The situation has become insupportable and the Government is unwilling to take steps to avoid disaster.'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=20CMRTXB314VZQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/earth/2008/01/20/eabees120.xml 26 January 2008
The Independent which first reported scientific evidence of an EM radiation- CCD link now explains the die -off by the heavy rain aided and abetted in arguing this case by British Beekeepers Association president, Tim Lovett. As Lovett explains:
“Bees do not forage when it rains because in the wet weather they lose body temperature, grow sluggish, cannot get back to the hive and eventually die.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/bitter-harvest-honey-supplies-run-short-after-wet-summer-upsets-bees-routine-774292.html 29 January 2008
An article in the Italian paper “La Repubblica” reports the alarm which emerged in the course of a workshop organised by the Italian Environmental Agency(APAT).The "decimation" of the bees is seen " a grave risk to the delicate equilibrium of the ecosystem". CCD is atributed to a variety of causes including contamination by EM radiation.
http://www.repubblica.it/2008/01/sezioni/ambiente/api-moria/api-moria/api-moria.html 30 January 2008
France
“The banning in 2005 of two potent pesticides used on sunflower and corn crops, suspected of killing off the bees, appeared to have stemmed the massive die offs and reversed nearly a decade of declining honey harvests.
But end-of-winter mortality rates have shot up once again, with up to 60 percent of some hives missing in action.'
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=United+Kingdom+%26+Europe&month=January2008&file=World_News2008013015027.xml February 10 2008
The Sun newspaper(UK) reports that “the world may be on the brink of disaster because of a virus that has killed billions of BEES”. It attributes the die-off to IAPV for which it triumphantly proclaims “there is no cure”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article782497.ece 11 February 2008
In an article in the Guardian the British government denies that CCD has reached British shores. Richard Ball, the government's national bee inspector, said: "We do not think CCD is an issue in the UK yet"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/11/conservation.environment `
17 February 2008
1973
“In 1973 Karl von Frisch won the Nobel prize for a series of studies done in the 1940's on the navigational ability of the honeybee. He found that they utilized both a sun angle compass and a polarized light system for navigation. Perhaps more amazing was their ability to communicate the vector and distance of a food source to other workers in the hive by means of a "dance" that used both the sun angle and the gravitational vector. While the sun angle and polarized light were quite efficient they would be absent on cloudy days. However, the bees were still able to navigate with the same precision under those conditions. There obviously had to be a back-up system of some kind available to these animals that was totally independent of these two cues.”
Electromagnetism and Life
http://www.ortho.lsuhsc.edu/Faculty/Marino/EL/EL3/Positional.html 1974
“In 1974, the Russian researchers Eskov and Sapozhnikov found that bees generate electromagnetic signals with a modulation frequency between 180 and 250 Hz when they do their communications dances. (It is important to note that our GSM mobile sys-tem is modulated with 217 Hz). Hungry bees react to those frequencies by erect-ing their antennae [8]. Warnke reported that the communication impulses of the antennae when touched by a fellow bee can be measured with an oscillograph [9].”
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 1976
Ulrich Warnke publishes a report “Effects of electric charges on honeybees.” It included the finding that “Bees in strong electric field became aggressive, stinging each other to death; communication was disturbed....Bees left the hive if they could.”
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/warnke_bee_world_76.pdf 1980
Journal of Experimental Biology 86,1-8 (1980) publishes a report on
“Orientation of Demagnetized Bees” which concludes that
“The orientation of honey bee dances is affected by the earth's magnetic field.”
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/1/1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Orientation+of+demagnetized+bees%2C&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT 1982
State University of New York publishes
Electromagnetism and Life
Robert O. Becker and Andrew A. Marino
This provides the theoretical foundations for the interaction between electro-magnetism and life, an interaction which had previously, and, to some extent, still is, presumed not to exist. In it, a chapter is dedicated to the role of EM radiation in the navigation of bees and other creatures. He opens with this summary:
“It is clear that the existence of the biological cycle phenomenon is dependent upon the living subject having precise knowledge of its position on the earth. Since it also appears that the earth's electromagnetic field is the most important single signal for this function, it seems likely that it is similarly involved in the migrational and direction-finding abilities of many animals. This possibility has been confirmed by recent studies.”
Concluding with this warning:
“From all the foregoing reports it is obvious that the present normal earth magnetic field is an important parameter of the environment for living things. Changes in the fields in the past have been shown to exert evolutionary pressure and possibly even to have been associated with biogenesis. All living things are at present intimately tied to various aspects of the earth's field, and it seems quite possible that even more dramatic findings will be reported in the future. It must be kept in mind that the relationship is a subtle one, in contrast to the more obvious parameters of the environment. Since the present relationship between living things and the electromagnetic environment is the result of several billions of years of development, the question of the biological effects of abnormal electromagnetic parameters introduced into the environment by man's activities becomes of some importance.”
Positional and Navigational Aids. Section of Chapter 3.
http://www.ortho.lsuhsc.edu/Fac ulty/Marino/EL/ELTOC.html 1990
Sharp decline in number of commercial bee colonies in US begins. Between 1990 and 1996 one quarter are lost
http://www.pmac.net/birdbee.htm 1992
According to a statement from the French parliament in 2007 the unexplained die-off of bees in France dates from 1992.
“Messieurs les Députés, la surmortalité inexpliquée des abeilles (et inexplicable si l’on dédouane avec expertise le Gaucho et le Régent) existe depuis 1992. Pourquoi donc avoir attendu 15 années avant de proposer la constitution d’une commission d’enquête???”
[Gentlemen, the unexplained die-off of bees...has been with us since 1992. Why then have we waited 15 years to set up a commission of enquiry?]
Cited in “Pesticides. Révélations sur un scandale français” by Nicolino et Veillerette
http://www.liberterre.fr/gaiasophia/agriculture/pollinisateurs/requiem01.html 1995
The decline in bee colonies accelerates in France.
“En France, un tiers des colonies meurent chaque annee depuis 1995 et 1.500 apiculteurs, amateurs et professionnels, cessent leur activite ce qui menacerait au total 5.000 emplois. (2007)”
[In France a third of colonies have died in every year since 1995 and 1,500 beekeepers, amateur and professional,have ceased their activities threatening a total of 5000 jobs.]
http://www.consoglobe.com/ac-environnement_1736_fin-des-abeilles-fin-du-monde.html 1996
Something of a panic takes hold in the USA with the publication of this work:
Our Forgotten Pollinators: Protecting the Birds and Bees
By Mrill Ingram, Gary Nabhan and Stephen Buchmann
PANNA, San Francisco, CA
http://www.pmac.net/birdbee.htm "A pollination crisis is flaring," write authors Stephen Buchman and Gary Nabhan. "It threatens rare, endangered plants as well as the common ones that keep people clothed and fed... At risk is every plant crop that depends on pollination for reproduction: one in three mouthfuls of the food people eat."
Albion Monitor July 28, 1996
http://www.monitor.net/monitor 1997
A French study in 2006 cites a stream of publications and articles from 1997 showing “a weakening and abnormal mortality rate amongst bee colonies in France”.
Le deperissement de l’abeille domestique, Apis
mellifera L., 1758 (Hymenoptera : Apidae) : faits et
causes probables
http://www.fsagx.ac.be/zg/Publications/pdf%20zoologie/1551-1600/1585.pdf 29 December 1997
“The honeybees are being decimated' according to a report by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. She also refers to Rachel Carson's prediction of a “silent spring”.
http://www.democracynow.org/1997/12/29/forgotten_pollinators_americas_bees 1998
The insights of Becker's theories and, more immediately those of Dr. Phil Callahan find a commercial outlet in the use, by a student of the latter,Tom Dykstra, of EM radiation to kill off pests, by, for example, ”disrupting the insects mating cycle through amplified low-level energies”
Callahan Theories in Action — Battling Pests with Electromagnetics
http://www.acresusa.com/tapes/closeup.asp?prodid=558&catid=49&pcid=3 1999
This is the year of the first confirmed reference I can find to what is now called CCD, referred to in Spanish as “sindrome de despoblamiento de las colmenas”(hive desertion syndrome). It comes in Spain's major scientific report into CCD published in 2007, which states categorically:
“Nuestro equipo comenzo a investigar el origen de este síndrome ya a finales de 1999”
[Our team began to investigate the origin of this syndrome at the end of 1999]
El despoblamiento de las colmenas en España.
http://apitrack.com/informaciontecnica/higesnoscemaceranae122006_es_open.htm 2000
Winter: CCD starts in northern Spain
“La desaparicion de millones de abejas sin dejar rastro no afecta solo a Estados Unidos, sino que es un fenomeno generalizado en casi todo el mundo. En Euskal Herria comenzo a detectarse en el invierno de 2000-2001.”
[The disappearance of millions of bees without trace doesn't only affect the USA; it is a general phenomena almost everywhere. It was first observed in Euskal Herria(Spanish Basque country) in the winter of 2000-2001.]
http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20070425/14714/es/Enigmatica/desaparicion/abejas/todo/mundo 2001
A scientific study “Magnetite-based magnetoreception 2001” affirms the “sensitivity to electric fields and their role in navigation across wide range of species.”
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~jkirschvink/pdfs/COINS.pdf 2002
29 January, 2002
Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists organized and hosted a workshop at Calgary Alberta which concluded:
“Beekeepers in Canada are experiencing an increasing incidence of unexplained and substantial colony mortality”
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/folder.asp?FolderID=4971 May 25, 2002 - Researchers try to unravel cause of bee die-off(National Post, Canada)
“Honeybees have been dying in alarming numbers around the world since the mid-1990s. More recently, the problem has surfaced in North America, where the honeybee is not an indigenous creature, but was imported from Europe many decades ago.
Beekeepers in the Maritimes announced two years ago that they, too, were suffering high losses among their hives. While a 5% to 10% annual loss of bees is expected in the industry, beekeepers in P.E.I. and New Brunswick began reporting mortality rates of between 30% and 90%. Similar complaints have since emerged in Nova Scotia and Southern Ontario.
Dr. Kemp, a UPEI botanist, was enlisted by the provincial government to find out what is killing Canada's bees.”
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/folder.asp?FolderID=4979 7 August 2002
“The National Beekeepers' Association UNAAPI said the country was witnessing a silent "slaughter of bees" and that Italian honey production
would plummet by at least 50% in 2002.”
http://www.mieliditalia.it/herald.htm 2003
14 October 2003
“Bee losses in France 2003”
“Until recently, the normal death rate for bees during the winter months was one in 10.Now, says Vincent Clair of the French National Bee Surveillance Unit, the death rate is six in 10.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3178400.stm September 2003
“Experiences of Beekeepers”
Prof. em. Dr. Ferdinand Ruzicka, who is a beekeeper himself and has contributed to a variety of beekeeping journals, has assembled a wealth of experiences from his own observa-tions and questionnaires to other beekeepers. He says: “The problems only appeared since several transmitters have been in-stalled in the immediate proximity to my hives.” After this event, he published a ques-tionnaire in the Beekeeping Journal „Der Bie-nenvater“ 2003/9 : The qu estion whether a mobile phone transmitter was within a 300m radius of the hives was answered affirmatively in all 20 replies. The question whether the bees displayed more aggressive behaviour after the in-stallation than before was answered af-firmatively by 38% of the respondents.
The question whether the bees showed a greater inclination to swarm after the in-stallation was answered affirmatively by 25% of the respondents.
The last question regarding unexplained colony collapse was answered affirma-tively by 63% of the respondents. According to Ruzicka’s observations, the bee colonies are so weakened by the mobile tele-communications radiation that they become more prone to various diseases, a fact that can also contribute to colony collapse. This is because bees are considered to be very fragile creatures, just like butterflies whose numbers have also dramatically fallen during the last few years. However, according to Dr Ruzicka, 15 years ago, bee colonies were able to deal with a much higher degree of Varroa mite infestation than they are able to cope with today.
"
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 2004
Mora, C. V., Davison, M., Wild, J. M., and M. M. Walker. 2004. Magnetoreception and its trigeminal mediation in the homing pigeon. Nature 432: 508-511
http://www.scq.ubc.ca/the-compasses-of-birds/ 15th March, 2004
This is an extract from an article which appeared in the German press.
“After retiring, and now at the age of 76, Mr. Vogel has enjoyed 15 successful years of honey production. He was housing his bee colonies inside an old wooden truck and until a year ago the beekeeper had four bee colonies in hives behind wooden planks on the truck.
This winter Mr. Vogel witnessed the disappearance of all four of his bee hives. The bees had met a tragic and mysterious fate.
Siegfried Vogel believes microwave radiation from mobile phone masts is responsible for the loss of his bees. Vogel explained that the microwave radiation is coming onto his property from four directions. There are three mobile phone masts in Selbitz, three more in Sellanger, and recently a new mast was erected in Leupoldsgrün, adding to an increasing level of ambient background microwave radiation infecting the area.
Our newspaper tested the mobile phone reception in this area and found it to be "good" to "very good."
Vogel offers as evidence - that mobile phone masts have caused the demise of his bee colonies - the fact that his son's colonies, which were placed behind aluminum shielding, have survived. (Aluminum is known to block microwave radiation.)
Since all their bee colonies were equally protected from cold weather with polystyrene insulation in the trailer, Siegfried Vogel concludes that the aluminium surrounding his sons beehives must be shielding them from the radiation from mobile phone masts.”
Werner Rost
http://www.laleva.org/eng/2007/04/protecting_bees_from_mobile_phone_radiation.html Nov. 22 2004
The United States Department of Agriculture approvs the importation Australian bees due to an acute shortage of bees to pollinate the almond crop in California.
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/Folder.asp?FolderID=4753&NewsID=469 2005
“In 2005, a group of scientists of the University of Koblenz-Landau headed by Prof. Hermann Stever conducted a pilot study to research the ‘returning behaviour’ of bees as well as the weight and surface development of the comb under the influ-ence of electromagnetic radiation [10].
Four out of eight colonies were exposed to DECT phone base stations which were put into the hive and constantly emitted radiation. “
The report found statistically significant differences in the performance of bees subjected to EM radiation exposure.
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 7 February 2005
Australian bees arrive in California
“A parasitic bee mite has been devastating hives, leaving almond growers scrambling to find enough hives to handle the state's massive crop.”
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/Folder.asp?FolderID=4753&NewsID=469 11 February 2005
According to Business Wire:
“The American Beekeeping Federation estimates that about 50 percent of the honey bee colonies in California have been killed or severely weakened”
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-3668923/Honey-Bee-Pollination-Crisis-Shortage.html In the spring of 2005, many of the migratory beekeepers who work the California almond bloom discovered that their colonies had suffered heavy losses during the winter. Across the country, about one-third of all commercial honeybee colonies died out. The result was a pollinator panic in the Central Valley. Fees for renting beehives shot up from about $48 to as much as $140 per colony, a previously unheard-of amount. Beekeepers traveled from as far away as Florida and North Carolina to service California's almond groves. For the first time in 50 years, U.S. borders were opened to honeybees from New Zealand and Australia. The fate of a $1.2 billion crop -- more than half of all almond production worldwide -- rested on the slender back of the embattled honeybee.
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth06sumbees2.aspgclid=CMPB2smbiY8CFQ4FEgodeQGwuw June 16 2005
USA pollination crisis deepens
“New England's cranberry growers fear there aren't enough bees to pollinate the cranberry blossom. Colony losses of between 40% and 80% are being reported.”
http://turlough.blogspot.com/2005/06/usa-pollination-crisis-deepens.html August 2005
Scientific Review:
“Magnetic orientation and magnetoreception in birds and other animals.”
“A magnetic compass is widespread among animals, magnetic navigation is indicated e.g. in birds, marine turtles and spiny lobsters and the use of magnetic 'sign posts' has been described for birds and marine turtles"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15886990?dopt=Abstract 9 December 2005
The minutes of the annual meeting of UK government and beekeeping organisations records this clear reference to CCD, then referred to as Marie Celeste syndrome.
“Mr Craig reported that beekeepers in Scotland who had been treating varroa infested colonies (usually with Apistan) had been finding hives empty of bees, but not winter stores. Together with these unexplained colony losses (“Marie Celeste” syndrome)there were failures in queen mating. These events were happening particularly in oilseed rape growing areas. Whilst acknowledging that these could possibly be explained by the effects of viruses, for which the varroa mite provides a vector, he was concerned that we might be observing sub-lethal behavioural effects of systemic insecticides such as Imidacloprid, causing disorientation in the bees leading to an inability to return to the hive.”
http://www.defra.gov.uk/hort/Bees/pdf/bees-meeting2005.pdf 2006
Scientific review:
Balmori A. 2006. Efectos de las radiaciones electromagneticas de la telefonia movil sobre los insectos. (The effects of electromagnetic radiation from the mobile phone network on insects.) Ecosistemas. 2006/1
“Teniendo en cuenta los efectos conocidos de las microondas sobre los insectos y en particular sobre las abejas, y habida cuenta de la proliferacion de estaciones base en el campo, es necesario investigar si las radiaciones de telefonia estan incidiendo de alguna manera en estas mortandades. Los resultados deben ser considerados por los apicultores espanoles con el fin de prevenir posibles perdidas economicas.”
[Taking into account the known effects of microwave radiation on insects and , in particular, on bees and considering the proliferation of mobile phone masts in the countryside, it is necesarry to investigate whether the radiation they emit is in some way linked to the die off of bees.The results should be considered by Spanish beekeepers from the point of view of possible economic losses.]
http://www.revistaecosistemas.net/pdfs/396.pdf#search=%22balmori%20Efectos%20de%20las%20radiaciones%20electromagnéticas%20de%20la%20telefonia%20móvil%22 April 2006
The Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry, Environment and Water Management affirms that
“Scientific research has found evidence that electromagnetic fields can have negative effects on bees. “
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 16 July 2006
“Selon les derniers chiffres de l'AFSSA (Agence Francaise de Securite Sanitaire des Aliments) a paraître dans le prochain magazine Valeurs Vertes, les colonies d'abeilles sont en partie decimees dans 14 departements francais. Deux ans apres l'imbroglio politico-mediatique sur les abeilles et l'interdiction de pesticides, les abeilles meurent toujours.”
[According to the latest figures of the AFSSA(French Health and Safety Agency) to be published in the next issue of Valeurs Vertes, bee colonies are in serious decline in 14 departnents. Two years after the media controversy over bees and the banning of pesticides, the bees are still dying.]
http://www.futura-sciences.com/fr/sinformer/actualites/news/t/vie-1/d/les-vraies-causes-de-la-mortalite-des-abeilles_9306/) 8 September 2006
“European researchers have recently provided, for the first time, evidence of a significant decline in wild bee diversity in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands over the past 25 years. The scientists also observed that the loss of this pollinator’s diversity is consistent with the loss of bee-pollinated plants. As many crops are directly dependant on insects for their pollination, the reported decline in the bee population may have severe implications for farming.”
http://biodiversity-chm.eea.europa.eu/stories/story639500 October 2006
According to The Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture CCD was first reported at the beginning of October 2006.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572 December 15, 2006
2006 Penn State University preliminary report
“Fall-Dwindle Disease”:Investigations into the causes of sudden and alarming colony losses experienced by beekeepers in the fall of 2006.
“During the months of October, November, and
December 2006, an alarming number of honey bee
colonies began to die along the East Coast of the United States.”
http://www.doacs.state.fl.us/pi/plantinsp/apiary/fall_dwindle_report.pdf 2007
5 January
Penn State University Report revised with a forword declaring that the name “fall dwindle disease has been changed to Colony Collapse Disorder” and revealing the existence of a CCD working group consisting of members of Bee Alert Technology Inc.,Pennsylvania State University, the Florida and Pennsyvania Departments of Agriculture and the USDA Agricultural Research Service. With regard to the name it explains that “symptom’s similar to those described for this disorder have been described in the past, and the condition has received many different names. These include autumn collapse, May disease, spring dwindle, disappearing disease, and fall dwindle disease. The CCD working group felt none of these names were appropriate for the current condition.”
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf That seems an awful lot of names for something which has only been around for three months.
17 January 2007
Members of the CCD working group, meeting for the first time by conference call, report:
“Subsequent investigations suggest these outbreaks of unexplained colony collapse were experienced by beekeepers for at least the last two years.”
As you can see a different timing is given for the appearance of CCD to that given by both the Penn State report just released and the Federal Department of Agriculture
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/pressReleases/CCDSummaryWG0207.pdf 27th February 2007
Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril
A major article on these “sudden mysterious losses”in the New York Times begins a wave of press coverage worldwide and CCD begins to enter public consciousness.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/business/27bees.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=3aaa0148837b8977&ex=1330232400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss 22 March 2007
“Where have all the bees gone?”
A article in New Scientist gives the following characterisation of CCD which shows just what a good name “Marie Celeste syndrome” was:
“It is a vanishing on the scale of entire cities. Late in 2006, commercial beekeepers in Florida began noticing alarming numbers of their bees had gone missing. Bustling colonies, tens of thousands strong, were emptying in a matter of days. Systematic searches for dead bees around the colonies mostly drew a blank.
“Bustling honeybee colonies, tens of thousands strong, were emptying in only a matter of days”
"Imagine waking one morning to find 80 per cent of the people in your community are just gone," says May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.”
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19325964.500-where-have-all-the-bees-gone.html 29th March 2007
Prepared Testimony of Diana Cox-Foster, Professor Department of Entomology at
The Pennsylvania State University before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture on Colony Collapse Disorder in Honey Bee Colonies in the United States.
Cox-Foster states quite categorically when, according to her, CCD first appeared.
“My expertise is a reason why beekeepers approached me in November 2006 with colonies deaths having unique symptoms. These were the first recognized instances of Colony Collapse Disorder.”
Cox-Foster also announces a new line of investigation “in collaboration with Dr. Ian Lipkin and associates at Columbia University and the Northeast Biodefense Center” aimed at identifying the microbes and viruses associated with CCD colonies through genetic analysis.
"
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/CCDPpt/CoxFosterTestimonyFinal.pdf April 2007.
A Definitive Statement about Bees written for HESE-UK by Dr. rer. nat. Ulrich Warnke, University of Saarland:
“On balance, the consequence of all these investigations is that the orientation and navigation of bees may be disturbed by man-made technical communication fields.”
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/statement_of_dr._warnke.doc 15 April 2007
“Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?”
This article appears in the Independent and is destined to stir up a hornet's nest. It cites the above-mentioned Laudau University study and quotes Dr Jochen Kuhn as saying it could provide a “hint' to a possible cause of CCD.
It also cites reports of CCD from beekeepers throughout Britain although these claims don't impress the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who insist: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/are-mobile-phones-wiping-out-our-bees-444768.html Apr 17, 2007
“The sudden unexplained loss of millions of bees in the Niagara region – up to 90 per cent in some commercial colonies – has prompted Ontario beekeepers to ask experts at the University of Guelph to investigate.”
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/203818 22 April
The official recantation of Dr Kuhn and his research team appears in the International Herald Tribune.
It now appears that this “small study” which “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” was “too small for the results to be considered significant”
The article gives some indication of the kind of pressures which may have been experienced. One of the researchers remarked:
"Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/22/news/wireless23.php 24 April 2007
Marla Spivak, a researcher and bee expert at the University of Minnesota
“dismissed a report that cell phone towers and radio waves may be to blame for the bee's disappearance. The theory has percolated throughout the Internet, despite repeated denunciations by bee researchers”
http://www.startribune.com/business/11222981.html 25 April 2007
The Institute for Science in Society intervenes in the debate with a Press Release “Mobile Phones and Vanishing Bees” in which it gives its view on the Landau team's work:
“Clearly the present findings need to be taken much further, but their significance should not be downplayed for a number of reasons. The findings are compatible with evidence accumulating from investigations on many other species including humans, showing that mobile phone radiation is associated with a range of health hazards including cancers [6] (Drowning in a Sea of Microwaves, SiS 34). Furthermore, bees are known to be extremely sensitive to magnetic and electromagnetic fields, and there have been many suggestions that they could be used as an indicator species for electromagnetic pollution.”
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MobilePhonesVanishingBees.php Eduardo Pérez de Obanos, veterinary specialist with the Asociación de Apicultores de Nafarroa( Beekeepers Association of Navarra, Spain) comments in the Basque newspaper Gara:
“Lo que me extrana es que desde America hayan dado la voz de alarma ahora, porque es un problema que se viene sufriendo en todo el mundo desde hace varios anos.Es el mismo sindrome que tenemos aqui.”
[What I find strange is that the the Americans should raise the alarm now, since it is a problem from which we have been suffering throughout the world for several years.It is the same syndrome which we have here.]
He goes on to remind us that this “sindrome de despoblamiento de colmenas”(hive desertion syndrome) first appeared in Navarra in the winter of 2000-2001 and that he sees the disappearance of the bees resulting in an almost total “desertification of the ecosystem”
http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20070425/14714/es/Enigmatica/desaparicion/abejas/todo/mundo Apr 26 2007
“Are mobile phones and Wi-Fi to blame for the world's ills?”
Guardian journalists Kate Bevan and Charles Arthur launch puerile attack on Landau study.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/apr/26/mobilephones.guardianweeklytechnologysection Apr 26 2007
“Taiwan stung by millions of missing bees”
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTP16248120070426 6 May 2007
Independent reports that:
“Eastbourne's planning committee has refused permission for a new mast unless and until it is convinced there is no danger to the insects, and Bolton council has launched an investigation into the threat”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/town-rejects-mast-to-save-bees-after-iiosi-report-447686.html 13 May 2007
According to the Independent on Sunday, their articles on possible effects of EM radiation on bees have prompted the government to carry out the review of the mobile phone programme originally planned three years previously.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/health-concerns-over-mobile-phone-masts-prompt-review-448647.html May 14 2007
Large CCD losses reported in Canada. Emergency meeting planned for all involved in the industry.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/agriculture/story.html?id=8d498bea-ddf4-4353-aa17-286e93181c98&k=41584 18 May 2007
The Dundee Courier (Scotland) reports CCD losses in East of Scotland.
According to Helen Kinnes, Secretary for the Beekeepers Association in Tayside and Angus:
“Some beekeepers have had a complete disappearance of the bees in their hives.”
Another beekeeper Marion Lang said:
“Another problem is what we call the Marie Celeste effect, where only a handful of bees are found in an otherwise healthy hive. The bees have just disappeared.”
She goes on to attributes it to EM radiation.
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2007/05/18/newsstory9729248t0.asp 17 June 2007
Speaking to the Daily Herald(USA), VanEngelsdorp, acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania effectively rules out the varroa mite, fungus, GM crops and pesticides. The remaining culprit must be an unknown pathogen.
HYPERLINK "
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/225743/"http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/225743/ June 27 2007
The British Government's National Bee Unit reaffirms the absence of CCD in Britain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/27/society.conservation1 28 June 2007
Writing in Discover Magazine, Josie Glausiusz bizzarely claims that the Landau study “was not, in fact, carried out”.
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/better-planet/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C 16 July 2007
The USDA's Agricultural Research Service dismisses any possible effect of EM radiation on bees alleging that “exposure of bees to high levels of electromagnetic fields is unlikely."
http://www.idahostatesman.com/localnews/story/108102.html 23 July 2007
The Guardian (UK) publishes the following retraction:
“We said in a section at the end of this article entitled Collapsing colonies that cases of entire bee colonies dying out suddenly had been reported in the UK. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs would like to make clear that fears that colony collapse disorder had struck in the UK have so far proved to be unfounded.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jul/23/sciencenews.homesandgardens 12 August 2007
“The bees are OK”
Paul van Westendorp, the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Land's apiculture specialist denies that there is CCD in Canada blaming losses on “lots of rain”
http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/science/story.html?id=43e99709-7ba1-4072-b76a-56095fca69b5 31 August 2007
Widespread bee losses reported in the south of Brasil
http://funverde.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/abelhas-estao-desaparecendo-no-sul-do-brasil/ 6 September 2007
Penn State(CCD working group) report appears in Science Express.(1)
The next day's press reports include one triumphantly and inaccurately entitled “Mobiles cleared of harming bees”.(2) In fact,the investigation did not deal with the EM radiation case, assuming a priori the culpability of some form of pathogen. As Diana Cox-Foster put it the EM radiation thesis was “at very low priority”.(3) The same press report erroneously claimed that the “virus can spread quickly through an entire colony, at which point the infected bees become paralysed and die outside the hive.” The distinguishing feature of CCD is precisely that the bodies of the bees are not found near the hive.
The investigation correlated the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IVAP) with CCD.
An article on the Penn State University website suggested this:
“Timing also may be the key to pinpointing the cause. The United States began allowing importation of bees from Australia in 2004, which coincides with early reports of CCD.” (4)
But Diana Cox-Foster had publicly proclaimed that CCD didn't occur in the USA until the fall of 2006 and so we have a slight adjustment here to fit in with the new hypothesis. However, the relationship between the two events isn't just sequential, it is logical: the bees were being imported because the the local ones were being “decimated”. But the way had been cleared to pin the blame on Australia.
In the course of the investigation all previous hypothesis had been ruled out. As one of the investigators put it: “the only candidate left standing was, in fact, IAPV.''(5)
“Other viruses and Nosema parasites had been suggested as the cause of CCD, but the researchers found that those pathogens appear in both CCD and non-CCD samples.”(6)
(1)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5848/283 (2)
http://www.vnu.co.uk/vnunet/news/2198276/mobiles-cleared-harming-bees Cont.
(3)
http://news.robportal.com/2007/09/07/new-research-suggests-virus-could-be-behind-disappearing-bees/ (4)
http://live.psu.edu/story/25747 (5)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003873009_bees07.html (6)
http://www.psu.edu/ur/2007/bees.htm 7 September 2007
The claim that Australian bees are responsible for CCD in the USA meets with general derision down under. As the head of the Australian Honey Bee Council, Stephen Ware put it:
"I'd certainly call it dodgy...
It's akin to a drowning man throwing off his life preserver and saying, 'the life preserver was why I was drowning'."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/07/2027273.htm 21 September 2007
“Schumer: Ban Australian bees”
“U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Thursday calling for the suspension of Australian bee import”
"
http://www.syracuse.com/articles/news/index.ssf?/base/news-10/11903652572 51740.xml&coll=1&thispage=1 19 September 2007
“FEDERAL Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran has dismissed calls from a US senator for an immediate ban on the export of Australian bees after research suggested they could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of bees in North America.
"There's something fishy going on here," he said about the unwillingness of the co-authors and the journal editors to respond to scientific criticism. "Someone's not telling the truth.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,22442148-12332,00.html?from=public_rss 7 December 2007
Imported Bees Not Source of Virus Associated with Colony Collapse Disorder
“Imported bees not source of virus associated with Colony Collapse Disorder”
An article appearing in the American Bee Journal effectively undermines the Penn state findings citing another study which has established “without question” that the Israeli virus ,IPAV, has been in the United States since at least 2002. It therefore predates the introduction of Australian bees and the official dates for the commencement of CCD.
http://www.farmandranchguide.com/articles/2007/12/08/ag_news/production_news/product14.txt 2008
20 January 2008
The Telegraph reports:
'In London, about 4,000 hives - two-thirds of the bee colonies in the capital - were estimated to have died over last winter. Of the eight colonies inspected so far this year, all have been wiped out.'
'Tim Lovett, the association's president, said: "The situation has become insupportable and the Government is unwilling to take steps to avoid disaster.'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=20CMRTXB314VZQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/earth/2008/01/20/eabees120.xml 26 January 2008
The Independent which first reported scientific evidence of an EM radiation- CCD link now explains the die -off by the heavy rain aided and abetted in arguing this case by British Beekeepers Association president, Tim Lovett. As Lovett explains:
“Bees do not forage when it rains because in the wet weather they lose body temperature, grow sluggish, cannot get back to the hive and eventually die.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/bitter-harvest-honey-supplies-run-short-after-wet-summer-upsets-bees-routine-774292.html 29 January 2008
An article in the Italian paper “La Repubblica” reports the alarm which emerged in the course of a workshop organised by the Italian Environmental Agency(APAT).The "decimation" of the bees is seen " a grave risk to the delicate equilibrium of the ecosystem". CCD is atributed to a variety of causes including contamination by EM radiation.
http://www.repubblica.it/2008/01/sezioni/ambiente/api-moria/api-moria/api-moria.html 30 January 2008
France
“The banning in 2005 of two potent pesticides used on sunflower and corn crops, suspected of killing off the bees, appeared to have stemmed the massive die offs and reversed nearly a decade of declining honey harvests.
But end-of-winter mortality rates have shot up once again, with up to 60 percent of some hives missing in action.'
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=United+Kingdom+%26+Europe&month=January2008&file=World_News2008013015027.xml February 10 2008
The Sun newspaper(UK) reports that “the world may be on the brink of disaster because of a virus that has killed billions of BEES”. It attributes the die-off to IAPV for which it triumphantly proclaims “there is no cure”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article782497.ece 11 February 2008
In an article in the Guardian the British government denies that CCD has reached British shores. Richard Ball, the government's national bee inspector, said: "We do not think CCD is an issue in the UK yet"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/11/conservation.environment `
17 February 2008
1973
“In 1973 Karl von Frisch won the Nobel prize for a series of studies done in the 1940's on the navigational ability of the honeybee. He found that they utilized both a sun angle compass and a polarized light system for navigation. Perhaps more amazing was their ability to communicate the vector and distance of a food source to other workers in the hive by means of a "dance" that used both the sun angle and the gravitational vector. While the sun angle and polarized light were quite efficient they would be absent on cloudy days. However, the bees were still able to navigate with the same precision under those conditions. There obviously had to be a back-up system of some kind available to these animals that was totally independent of these two cues.”
Electromagnetism and Life
http://www.ortho.lsuhsc.edu/Faculty/Marino/EL/EL3/Positional.html 1974
“In 1974, the Russian researchers Eskov and Sapozhnikov found that bees generate electromagnetic signals with a modulation frequency between 180 and 250 Hz when they do their communications dances. (It is important to note that our GSM mobile sys-tem is modulated with 217 Hz). Hungry bees react to those frequencies by erect-ing their antennae [8]. Warnke reported that the communication impulses of the antennae when touched by a fellow bee can be measured with an oscillograph [9].”
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 1976
Ulrich Warnke publishes a report “Effects of electric charges on honeybees.” It included the finding that “Bees in strong electric field became aggressive, stinging each other to death; communication was disturbed....Bees left the hive if they could.”
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/warnke_bee_world_76.pdf 1980
Journal of Experimental Biology 86,1-8 (1980) publishes a report on
“Orientation of Demagnetized Bees” which concludes that
“The orientation of honey bee dances is affected by the earth's magnetic field.”
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/1/1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Orientation+of+demagnetized+bees%2C&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT 1982
State University of New York publishes
Electromagnetism and Life
Robert O. Becker and Andrew A. Marino
This provides the theoretical foundations for the interaction between electro-magnetism and life, an interaction which had previously, and, to some extent, still is, presumed not to exist. In it, a chapter is dedicated to the role of EM radiation in the navigation of bees and other creatures. He opens with this summary:
“It is clear that the existence of the biological cycle phenomenon is dependent upon the living subject having precise knowledge of its position on the earth. Since it also appears that the earth's electromagnetic field is the most important single signal for this function, it seems likely that it is similarly involved in the migrational and direction-finding abilities of many animals. This possibility has been confirmed by recent studies.”
Concluding with this warning:
“From all the foregoing reports it is obvious that the present normal earth magnetic field is an important parameter of the environment for living things. Changes in the fields in the past have been shown to exert evolutionary pressure and possibly even to have been associated with biogenesis. All living things are at present intimately tied to various aspects of the earth's field, and it seems quite possible that even more dramatic findings will be reported in the future. It must be kept in mind that the relationship is a subtle one, in contrast to the more obvious parameters of the environment. Since the present relationship between living things and the electromagnetic environment is the result of several billions of years of development, the question of the biological effects of abnormal electromagnetic parameters introduced into the environment by man's activities becomes of some importance.”
Positional and Navigational Aids. Section of Chapter 3.
http://www.ortho.lsuhsc.edu/Fac ulty/Marino/EL/ELTOC.html 1990
Sharp decline in number of commercial bee colonies in US begins. Between 1990 and 1996 one quarter are lost
http://www.pmac.net/birdbee.htm 1992
According to a statement from the French parliament in 2007 the unexplained die-off of bees in France dates from 1992.
“Messieurs les Députés, la surmortalité inexpliquée des abeilles (et inexplicable si l’on dédouane avec expertise le Gaucho et le Régent) existe depuis 1992. Pourquoi donc avoir attendu 15 années avant de proposer la constitution d’une commission d’enquête???”
[Gentlemen, the unexplained die-off of bees...has been with us since 1992. Why then have we waited 15 years to set up a commission of enquiry?]
Cited in “Pesticides. Révélations sur un scandale français” by Nicolino et Veillerette
http://www.liberterre.fr/gaiasophia/agriculture/pollinisateurs/requiem01.html 1995
The decline in bee colonies accelerates in France.
“En France, un tiers des colonies meurent chaque annee depuis 1995 et 1.500 apiculteurs, amateurs et professionnels, cessent leur activite ce qui menacerait au total 5.000 emplois. (2007)”
[In France a third of colonies have died in every year since 1995 and 1,500 beekeepers, amateur and professional,have ceased their activities threatening a total of 5000 jobs.]
http://www.consoglobe.com/ac-environnement_1736_fin-des-abeilles-fin-du-monde.html 1996
Something of a panic takes hold in the USA with the publication of this work:
Our Forgotten Pollinators: Protecting the Birds and Bees
By Mrill Ingram, Gary Nabhan and Stephen Buchmann
PANNA, San Francisco, CA
http://www.pmac.net/birdbee.htm "A pollination crisis is flaring," write authors Stephen Buchman and Gary Nabhan. "It threatens rare, endangered plants as well as the common ones that keep people clothed and fed... At risk is every plant crop that depends on pollination for reproduction: one in three mouthfuls of the food people eat."
Albion Monitor July 28, 1996
http://www.monitor.net/monitor 1997
A French study in 2006 cites a stream of publications and articles from 1997 showing “a weakening and abnormal mortality rate amongst bee colonies in France”.
Le deperissement de l’abeille domestique, Apis
mellifera L., 1758 (Hymenoptera : Apidae) : faits et
causes probables
http://www.fsagx.ac.be/zg/Publications/pdf%20zoologie/1551-1600/1585.pdf 29 December 1997
“The honeybees are being decimated' according to a report by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. She also refers to Rachel Carson's prediction of a “silent spring”.
http://www.democracynow.org/1997/12/29/forgotten_pollinators_americas_bees 1998
The insights of Becker's theories and, more immediately those of Dr. Phil Callahan find a commercial outlet in the use, by a student of the latter,Tom Dykstra, of EM radiation to kill off pests, by, for example, ”disrupting the insects mating cycle through amplified low-level energies”
Callahan Theories in Action — Battling Pests with Electromagnetics
http://www.acresusa.com/tapes/closeup.asp?prodid=558&catid=49&pcid=3 1999
This is the year of the first confirmed reference I can find to what is now called CCD, referred to in Spanish as “sindrome de despoblamiento de las colmenas”(hive desertion syndrome). It comes in Spain's major scientific report into CCD published in 2007, which states categorically:
“Nuestro equipo comenzo a investigar el origen de este síndrome ya a finales de 1999”
[Our team began to investigate the origin of this syndrome at the end of 1999]
El despoblamiento de las colmenas en España.
http://apitrack.com/informaciontecnica/higesnoscemaceranae122006_es_open.htm 2000
Winter: CCD starts in northern Spain
“La desaparicion de millones de abejas sin dejar rastro no afecta solo a Estados Unidos, sino que es un fenomeno generalizado en casi todo el mundo. En Euskal Herria comenzo a detectarse en el invierno de 2000-2001.”
[The disappearance of millions of bees without trace doesn't only affect the USA; it is a general phenomena almost everywhere. It was first observed in Euskal Herria(Spanish Basque country) in the winter of 2000-2001.]
http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20070425/14714/es/Enigmatica/desaparicion/abejas/todo/mundo 2001
A scientific study “Magnetite-based magnetoreception 2001” affirms the “sensitivity to electric fields and their role in navigation across wide range of species.”
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~jkirschvink/pdfs/COINS.pdf 2002
29 January, 2002
Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists organized and hosted a workshop at Calgary Alberta which concluded:
“Beekeepers in Canada are experiencing an increasing incidence of unexplained and substantial colony mortality”
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/folder.asp?FolderID=4971 May 25, 2002 - Researchers try to unravel cause of bee die-off(National Post, Canada)
“Honeybees have been dying in alarming numbers around the world since the mid-1990s. More recently, the problem has surfaced in North America, where the honeybee is not an indigenous creature, but was imported from Europe many decades ago.
Beekeepers in the Maritimes announced two years ago that they, too, were suffering high losses among their hives. While a 5% to 10% annual loss of bees is expected in the industry, beekeepers in P.E.I. and New Brunswick began reporting mortality rates of between 30% and 90%. Similar complaints have since emerged in Nova Scotia and Southern Ontario.
Dr. Kemp, a UPEI botanist, was enlisted by the provincial government to find out what is killing Canada's bees.”
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/folder.asp?FolderID=4979 7 August 2002
“The National Beekeepers' Association UNAAPI said the country was witnessing a silent "slaughter of bees" and that Italian honey production
would plummet by at least 50% in 2002.”
http://www.mieliditalia.it/herald.htm 2003
14 October 2003
“Bee losses in France 2003”
“Until recently, the normal death rate for bees during the winter months was one in 10.Now, says Vincent Clair of the French National Bee Surveillance Unit, the death rate is six in 10.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3178400.stm September 2003
“Experiences of Beekeepers”
Prof. em. Dr. Ferdinand Ruzicka, who is a beekeeper himself and has contributed to a variety of beekeeping journals, has assembled a wealth of experiences from his own observa-tions and questionnaires to other beekeepers. He says: “The problems only appeared since several transmitters have been in-stalled in the immediate proximity to my hives.” After this event, he published a ques-tionnaire in the Beekeeping Journal „Der Bie-nenvater“ 2003/9 : The qu estion whether a mobile phone transmitter was within a 300m radius of the hives was answered affirmatively in all 20 replies. The question whether the bees displayed more aggressive behaviour after the in-stallation than before was answered af-firmatively by 38% of the respondents.
The question whether the bees showed a greater inclination to swarm after the in-stallation was answered affirmatively by 25% of the respondents.
The last question regarding unexplained colony collapse was answered affirma-tively by 63% of the respondents. According to Ruzicka’s observations, the bee colonies are so weakened by the mobile tele-communications radiation that they become more prone to various diseases, a fact that can also contribute to colony collapse. This is because bees are considered to be very fragile creatures, just like butterflies whose numbers have also dramatically fallen during the last few years. However, according to Dr Ruzicka, 15 years ago, bee colonies were able to deal with a much higher degree of Varroa mite infestation than they are able to cope with today.
"
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 2004
Mora, C. V., Davison, M., Wild, J. M., and M. M. Walker. 2004. Magnetoreception and its trigeminal mediation in the homing pigeon. Nature 432: 508-511
http://www.scq.ubc.ca/the-compasses-of-birds/ 15th March, 2004
This is an extract from an article which appeared in the German press.
“After retiring, and now at the age of 76, Mr. Vogel has enjoyed 15 successful years of honey production. He was housing his bee colonies inside an old wooden truck and until a year ago the beekeeper had four bee colonies in hives behind wooden planks on the truck.
This winter Mr. Vogel witnessed the disappearance of all four of his bee hives. The bees had met a tragic and mysterious fate.
Siegfried Vogel believes microwave radiation from mobile phone masts is responsible for the loss of his bees. Vogel explained that the microwave radiation is coming onto his property from four directions. There are three mobile phone masts in Selbitz, three more in Sellanger, and recently a new mast was erected in Leupoldsgrün, adding to an increasing level of ambient background microwave radiation infecting the area.
Our newspaper tested the mobile phone reception in this area and found it to be "good" to "very good."
Vogel offers as evidence - that mobile phone masts have caused the demise of his bee colonies - the fact that his son's colonies, which were placed behind aluminum shielding, have survived. (Aluminum is known to block microwave radiation.)
Since all their bee colonies were equally protected from cold weather with polystyrene insulation in the trailer, Siegfried Vogel concludes that the aluminium surrounding his sons beehives must be shielding them from the radiation from mobile phone masts.”
Werner Rost
http://www.laleva.org/eng/2007/04/protecting_bees_from_mobile_phone_radiation.html Nov. 22 2004
The United States Department of Agriculture approvs the importation Australian bees due to an acute shortage of bees to pollinate the almond crop in California.
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/Folder.asp?FolderID=4753&NewsID=469 2005
“In 2005, a group of scientists of the University of Koblenz-Landau headed by Prof. Hermann Stever conducted a pilot study to research the ‘returning behaviour’ of bees as well as the weight and surface development of the comb under the influ-ence of electromagnetic radiation [10].
Four out of eight colonies were exposed to DECT phone base stations which were put into the hive and constantly emitted radiation. “
The report found statistically significant differences in the performance of bees subjected to EM radiation exposure.
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 7 February 2005
Australian bees arrive in California
“A parasitic bee mite has been devastating hives, leaving almond growers scrambling to find enough hives to handle the state's massive crop.”
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/Folder.asp?FolderID=4753&NewsID=469 11 February 2005
According to Business Wire:
“The American Beekeeping Federation estimates that about 50 percent of the honey bee colonies in California have been killed or severely weakened”
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-3668923/Honey-Bee-Pollination-Crisis-Shortage.html In the spring of 2005, many of the migratory beekeepers who work the California almond bloom discovered that their colonies had suffered heavy losses during the winter. Across the country, about one-third of all commercial honeybee colonies died out. The result was a pollinator panic in the Central Valley. Fees for renting beehives shot up from about $48 to as much as $140 per colony, a previously unheard-of amount. Beekeepers traveled from as far away as Florida and North Carolina to service California's almond groves. For the first time in 50 years, U.S. borders were opened to honeybees from New Zealand and Australia. The fate of a $1.2 billion crop -- more than half of all almond production worldwide -- rested on the slender back of the embattled honeybee.
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth06sumbees2.aspgclid=CMPB2smbiY8CFQ4FEgodeQGwuw June 16 2005
USA pollination crisis deepens
“New England's cranberry growers fear there aren't enough bees to pollinate the cranberry blossom. Colony losses of between 40% and 80% are being reported.”
http://turlough.blogspot.com/2005/06/usa-pollination-crisis-deepens.html August 2005
Scientific Review:
“Magnetic orientation and magnetoreception in birds and other animals.”
“A magnetic compass is widespread among animals, magnetic navigation is indicated e.g. in birds, marine turtles and spiny lobsters and the use of magnetic 'sign posts' has been described for birds and marine turtles"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15886990?dopt=Abstract 9 December 2005
The minutes of the annual meeting of UK government and beekeeping organisations records this clear reference to CCD, then referred to as Marie Celeste syndrome.
“Mr Craig reported that beekeepers in Scotland who had been treating varroa infested colonies (usually with Apistan) had been finding hives empty of bees, but not winter stores. Together with these unexplained colony losses (“Marie Celeste” syndrome)there were failures in queen mating. These events were happening particularly in oilseed rape growing areas. Whilst acknowledging that these could possibly be explained by the effects of viruses, for which the varroa mite provides a vector, he was concerned that we might be observing sub-lethal behavioural effects of systemic insecticides such as Imidacloprid, causing disorientation in the bees leading to an inability to return to the hive.”
http://www.defra.gov.uk/hort/Bees/pdf/bees-meeting2005.pdf 2006
Scientific review:
Balmori A. 2006. Efectos de las radiaciones electromagneticas de la telefonia movil sobre los insectos. (The effects of electromagnetic radiation from the mobile phone network on insects.) Ecosistemas. 2006/1
“Teniendo en cuenta los efectos conocidos de las microondas sobre los insectos y en particular sobre las abejas, y habida cuenta de la proliferacion de estaciones base en el campo, es necesario investigar si las radiaciones de telefonia estan incidiendo de alguna manera en estas mortandades. Los resultados deben ser considerados por los apicultores espanoles con el fin de prevenir posibles perdidas economicas.”
[Taking into account the known effects of microwave radiation on insects and , in particular, on bees and considering the proliferation of mobile phone masts in the countryside, it is necesarry to investigate whether the radiation they emit is in some way linked to the die off of bees.The results should be considered by Spanish beekeepers from the point of view of possible economic losses.]
http://www.revistaecosistemas.net/pdfs/396.pdf#search=%22balmori%20Efectos%20de%20las%20radiaciones%20electromagnéticas%20de%20la%20telefonia%20móvil%22 April 2006
The Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry, Environment and Water Management affirms that
“Scientific research has found evidence that electromagnetic fields can have negative effects on bees. “
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/papers/bigbeedeath_0407.pdf 16 July 2006
“Selon les derniers chiffres de l'AFSSA (Agence Francaise de Securite Sanitaire des Aliments) a paraître dans le prochain magazine Valeurs Vertes, les colonies d'abeilles sont en partie decimees dans 14 departements francais. Deux ans apres l'imbroglio politico-mediatique sur les abeilles et l'interdiction de pesticides, les abeilles meurent toujours.”
[According to the latest figures of the AFSSA(French Health and Safety Agency) to be published in the next issue of Valeurs Vertes, bee colonies are in serious decline in 14 departnents. Two years after the media controversy over bees and the banning of pesticides, the bees are still dying.]
http://www.futura-sciences.com/fr/sinformer/actualites/news/t/vie-1/d/les-vraies-causes-de-la-mortalite-des-abeilles_9306/) 8 September 2006
“European researchers have recently provided, for the first time, evidence of a significant decline in wild bee diversity in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands over the past 25 years. The scientists also observed that the loss of this pollinator’s diversity is consistent with the loss of bee-pollinated plants. As many crops are directly dependant on insects for their pollination, the reported decline in the bee population may have severe implications for farming.”
http://biodiversity-chm.eea.europa.eu/stories/story639500 October 2006
According to The Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture CCD was first reported at the beginning of October 2006.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572 December 15, 2006
2006 Penn State University preliminary report
“Fall-Dwindle Disease”:Investigations into the causes of sudden and alarming colony losses experienced by beekeepers in the fall of 2006.
“During the months of October, November, and
December 2006, an alarming number of honey bee
colonies began to die along the East Coast of the United States.”
http://www.doacs.state.fl.us/pi/plantinsp/apiary/fall_dwindle_report.pdf 2007
5 January
Penn State University Report revised with a forword declaring that the name “fall dwindle disease has been changed to Colony Collapse Disorder” and revealing the existence of a CCD working group consisting of members of Bee Alert Technology Inc.,Pennsylvania State University, the Florida and Pennsyvania Departments of Agriculture and the USDA Agricultural Research Service. With regard to the name it explains that “symptom’s similar to those described for this disorder have been described in the past, and the condition has received many different names. These include autumn collapse, May disease, spring dwindle, disappearing disease, and fall dwindle disease. The CCD working group felt none of these names were appropriate for the current condition.”
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf That seems an awful lot of names for something which has only been around for three months.
17 January 2007
Members of the CCD working group, meeting for the first time by conference call, report:
“Subsequent investigations suggest these outbreaks of unexplained colony collapse were experienced by beekeepers for at least the last two years.”
As you can see a different timing is given for the appearance of CCD to that given by both the Penn State report just released and the Federal Department of Agriculture
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/pressReleases/CCDSummaryWG0207.pdf 27th February 2007
Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril
A major article on these “sudden mysterious losses”in the New York Times begins a wave of press coverage worldwide and CCD begins to enter public consciousness.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/business/27bees.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=3aaa0148837b8977&ex=1330232400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss 22 March 2007
“Where have all the bees gone?”
A article in New Scientist gives the following characterisation of CCD which shows just what a good name “Marie Celeste syndrome” was:
“It is a vanishing on the scale of entire cities. Late in 2006, commercial beekeepers in Florida began noticing alarming numbers of their bees had gone missing. Bustling colonies, tens of thousands strong, were emptying in a matter of days. Systematic searches for dead bees around the colonies mostly drew a blank.
“Bustling honeybee colonies, tens of thousands strong, were emptying in only a matter of days”
"Imagine waking one morning to find 80 per cent of the people in your community are just gone," says May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.”
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19325964.500-where-have-all-the-bees-gone.html 29th March 2007
Prepared Testimony of Diana Cox-Foster, Professor Department of Entomology at
The Pennsylvania State University before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture on Colony Collapse Disorder in Honey Bee Colonies in the United States.
Cox-Foster states quite categorically when, according to her, CCD first appeared.
“My expertise is a reason why beekeepers approached me in November 2006 with colonies deaths having unique symptoms. These were the first recognized instances of Colony Collapse Disorder.”
Cox-Foster also announces a new line of investigation “in collaboration with Dr. Ian Lipkin and associates at Columbia University and the Northeast Biodefense Center” aimed at identifying the microbes and viruses associated with CCD colonies through genetic analysis.
"
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/CCDPpt/CoxFosterTestimonyFinal.pdf April 2007.
A Definitive Statement about Bees written for HESE-UK by Dr. rer. nat. Ulrich Warnke, University of Saarland:
“On balance, the consequence of all these investigations is that the orientation and navigation of bees may be disturbed by man-made technical communication fields.”
http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/statement_of_dr._warnke.doc 15 April 2007
“Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?”
This article appears in the Independent and is destined to stir up a hornet's nest. It cites the above-mentioned Laudau University study and quotes Dr Jochen Kuhn as saying it could provide a “hint' to a possible cause of CCD.
It also cites reports of CCD from beekeepers throughout Britain although these claims don't impress the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who insist: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/are-mobile-phones-wiping-out-our-bees-444768.html Apr 17, 2007
“The sudden unexplained loss of millions of bees in the Niagara region – up to 90 per cent in some commercial colonies – has prompted Ontario beekeepers to ask experts at the University of Guelph to investigate.”
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/203818 22 April
The official recantation of Dr Kuhn and his research team appears in the International Herald Tribune.
It now appears that this “small study” which “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” was “too small for the results to be considered significant”
The article gives some indication of the kind of pressures which may have been experienced. One of the researchers remarked:
"Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/22/news/wireless23.php 24 April 2007
Marla Spivak, a researcher and bee expert at the University of Minnesota
“dismissed a report that cell phone towers and radio waves may be to blame for the bee's disappearance. The theory has percolated throughout the Internet, despite repeated denunciations by bee researchers”
http://www.startribune.com/business/11222981.html 25 April 2007
The Institute for Science in Society intervenes in the debate with a Press Release “Mobile Phones and Vanishing Bees” in which it gives its view on the Landau team's work:
“Clearly the present findings need to be taken much further, but their significance should not be downplayed for a number of reasons. The findings are compatible with evidence accumulating from investigations on many other species including humans, showing that mobile phone radiation is associated with a range of health hazards including cancers [6] (Drowning in a Sea of Microwaves, SiS 34). Furthermore, bees are known to be extremely sensitive to magnetic and electromagnetic fields, and there have been many suggestions that they could be used as an indicator species for electromagnetic pollution.”
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MobilePhonesVanishingBees.php Eduardo Pérez de Obanos, veterinary specialist with the Asociación de Apicultores de Nafarroa( Beekeepers Association of Navarra, Spain) comments in the Basque newspaper Gara:
“Lo que me extrana es que desde America hayan dado la voz de alarma ahora, porque es un problema que se viene sufriendo en todo el mundo desde hace varios anos.Es el mismo sindrome que tenemos aqui.”
[What I find strange is that the the Americans should raise the alarm now, since it is a problem from which we have been suffering throughout the world for several years.It is the same syndrome which we have here.]
He goes on to remind us that this “sindrome de despoblamiento de colmenas”(hive desertion syndrome) first appeared in Navarra in the winter of 2000-2001 and that he sees the disappearance of the bees resulting in an almost total “desertification of the ecosystem”
http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20070425/14714/es/Enigmatica/desaparicion/abejas/todo/mundo Apr 26 2007
“Are mobile phones and Wi-Fi to blame for the world's ills?”
Guardian journalists Kate Bevan and Charles Arthur launch puerile attack on Landau study.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/apr/26/mobilephones.guardianweeklytechnologysection Apr 26 2007
“Taiwan stung by millions of missing bees”
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTP16248120070426 6 May 2007
Independent reports that:
“Eastbourne's planning committee has refused permission for a new mast unless and until it is convinced there is no danger to the insects, and Bolton council has launched an investigation into the threat”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/town-rejects-mast-to-save-bees-after-iiosi-report-447686.html 13 May 2007
According to the Independent on Sunday, their articles on possible effects of EM radiation on bees have prompted the government to carry out the review of the mobile phone programme originally planned three years previously.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/health-concerns-over-mobile-phone-masts-prompt-review-448647.html May 14 2007
Large CCD losses reported in Canada. Emergency meeting planned for all involved in the industry.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/agriculture/story.html?id=8d498bea-ddf4-4353-aa17-286e93181c98&k=41584 18 May 2007
The Dundee Courier (Scotland) reports CCD losses in East of Scotland.
According to Helen Kinnes, Secretary for the Beekeepers Association in Tayside and Angus:
“Some beekeepers have had a complete disappearance of the bees in their hives.”
Another beekeeper Marion Lang said:
“Another problem is what we call the Marie Celeste effect, where only a handful of bees are found in an otherwise healthy hive. The bees have just disappeared.”
She goes on to attributes it to EM radiation.
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2007/05/18/newsstory9729248t0.asp 17 June 2007
Speaking to the Daily Herald(USA), VanEngelsdorp, acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania effectively rules out the varroa mite, fungus, GM crops and pesticides. The remaining culprit must be an unknown pathogen.
HYPERLINK "
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/225743/"http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/225743/ June 27 2007
The British Government's National Bee Unit reaffirms the absence of CCD in Britain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/27/society.conservation1 28 June 2007
Writing in Discover Magazine, Josie Glausiusz bizzarely claims that the Landau study “was not, in fact, carried out”.
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/better-planet/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C 16 July 2007
The USDA's Agricultural Research Service dismisses any possible effect of EM radiation on bees alleging that “exposure of bees to high levels of electromagnetic fields is unlikely."
http://www.idahostatesman.com/localnews/story/108102.html 23 July 2007
The Guardian (UK) publishes the following retraction:
“We said in a section at the end of this article entitled Collapsing colonies that cases of entire bee colonies dying out suddenly had been reported in the UK. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs would like to make clear that fears that colony collapse disorder had struck in the UK have so far proved to be unfounded.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jul/23/sciencenews.homesandgardens 12 August 2007
“The bees are OK”
Paul van Westendorp, the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Land's apiculture specialist denies that there is CCD in Canada blaming losses on “lots of rain”
http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/science/story.html?id=43e99709-7ba1-4072-b76a-56095fca69b5 31 August 2007
Widespread bee losses reported in the south of Brasil
http://funverde.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/abelhas-estao-desaparecendo-no-sul-do-brasil/ 6 September 2007
Penn State(CCD working group) report appears in Science Express.(1)
The next day's press reports include one triumphantly and inaccurately entitled “Mobiles cleared of harming bees”.(2) In fact,the investigation did not deal with the EM radiation case, assuming a priori the culpability of some form of pathogen. As Diana Cox-Foster put it the EM radiation thesis was “at very low priority”.(3) The same press report erroneously claimed that the “virus can spread quickly through an entire colony, at which point the infected bees become paralysed and die outside the hive.” The distinguishing feature of CCD is precisely that the bodies of the bees are not found near the hive.
The investigation correlated the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IVAP) with CCD.
An article on the Penn State University website suggested this:
“Timing also may be the key to pinpointing the cause. The United States began allowing importation of bees from Australia in 2004, which coincides with early reports of CCD.” (4)
But Diana Cox-Foster had publicly proclaimed that CCD didn't occur in the USA until the fall of 2006 and so we have a slight adjustment here to fit in with the new hypothesis. However, the relationship between the two events isn't just sequential, it is logical: the bees were being imported because the the local ones were being “decimated”. But the way had been cleared to pin the blame on Australia.
In the course of the investigation all previous hypothesis had been ruled out. As one of the investigators put it: “the only candidate left standing was, in fact, IAPV.''(5)
“Other viruses and Nosema parasites had been suggested as the cause of CCD, but the researchers found that those pathogens appear in both CCD and non-CCD samples.”(6)
(1)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5848/283 (2)
http://www.vnu.co.uk/vnunet/news/2198276/mobiles-cleared-harming-bees Cont.
(3)
http://news.robportal.com/2007/09/07/new-research-suggests-virus-could-be-behind-disappearing-bees/ (4)
http://live.psu.edu/story/25747 (5)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003873009_bees07.html (6)
http://www.psu.edu/ur/2007/bees.htm 7 September 2007
The claim that Australian bees are responsible for CCD in the USA meets with general derision down under. As the head of the Australian Honey Bee Council, Stephen Ware put it:
"I'd certainly call it dodgy...
It's akin to a drowning man throwing off his life preserver and saying, 'the life preserver was why I was drowning'."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/07/2027273.htm 21 September 2007
“Schumer: Ban Australian bees”
“U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Thursday calling for the suspension of Australian bee import”
"
http://www.syracuse.com/articles/news/index.ssf?/base/news-10/11903652572 51740.xml&coll=1&thispage=1 19 September 2007
“FEDERAL Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran has dismissed calls from a US senator for an immediate ban on the export of Australian bees after research suggested they could be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of bees in North America.
"There's something fishy going on here," he said about the unwillingness of the co-authors and the journal editors to respond to scientific criticism. "Someone's not telling the truth.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,22442148-12332,00.html?from=public_rss 7 December 2007
Imported Bees Not Source of Virus Associated with Colony Collapse Disorder
“Imported bees not source of virus associated with Colony Collapse Disorder”
An article appearing in the American Bee Journal effectively undermines the Penn state findings citing another study which has established “without question” that the Israeli virus ,IPAV, has been in the United States since at least 2002. It therefore predates the introduction of Australian bees and the official dates for the commencement of CCD.
http://www.farmandranchguide.com/articles/2007/12/08/ag_news/production_news/product14.txt 2008
20 January 2008
The Telegraph reports:
'In London, about 4,000 hives - two-thirds of the bee colonies in the capital - were estimated to have died over last winter. Of the eight colonies inspected so far this year, all have been wiped out.'
'Tim Lovett, the association's president, said: "The situation has become insupportable and the Government is unwilling to take steps to avoid disaster.'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=20CMRTXB314VZQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/earth/2008/01/20/eabees120.xml 26 January 2008
The Independent which first reported scientific evidence of an EM radiation- CCD link now explains the die -off by the heavy rain aided and abetted in arguing this case by British Beekeepers Association president, Tim Lovett. As Lovett explains:
“Bees do not forage when it rains because in the wet weather they lose body temperature, grow sluggish, cannot get back to the hive and eventually die.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/bitter-harvest-honey-supplies-run-short-after-wet-summer-upsets-bees-routine-774292.html 29 January 2008
An article in the Italian paper “La Repubblica” reports the alarm which emerged in the course of a workshop organised by the Italian Environmental Agency(APAT).The "decimation" of the bees is seen " a grave risk to the delicate equilibrium of the ecosystem". CCD is atributed to a variety of causes including contamination by EM radiation.
http://www.repubblica.it/2008/01/sezioni/ambiente/api-moria/api-moria/api-moria.html 30 January 2008
France
“The banning in 2005 of two potent pesticides used on sunflower and corn crops, suspected of killing off the bees, appeared to have stemmed the massive die offs and reversed nearly a decade of declining honey harvests.
But end-of-winter mortality rates have shot up once again, with up to 60 percent of some hives missing in action.'
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=United+Kingdom+%26+Europe&month=January2008&file=World_News2008013015027.xml February 10 2008
The Sun newspaper(UK) reports that “the world may be on the brink of disaster because of a virus that has killed billions of BEES”. It attributes the die-off to IAPV for which it triumphantly proclaims “there is no cure”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article782497.ece 11 February 2008
In an article in the Guardian the British government denies that CCD has reached British shores. Richard Ball, the government's national bee inspector, said: "We do not think CCD is an issue in the UK yet"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/11/conservation.environment `
Colin Buchanan
e-mail:
colonsay3@hotmail.com
Homepage:
http://www.endofempire.org
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