Your cell phone and the bees

Despite what the blog links on your Facebook wall have been telling you, cell phones are not killing bees. At least, it’s not something that’s been proven in a Swiss study on the effects cell phones have on honeybees, no matter what the misleading blog and tabloid headlines have said. What the study—“Mobile phone-induced honeybee worker piping” from the bee-science journal Apidologie—actually reports is that the electromagnetic frequencies emitted from cell phones placed next to honeybee hives triggered a worker-bee piping signal. Normally, the piping signal announces the swarming process or indicates a disturbed colony. The study also shows that the bee colony didn’t return to a normal state until several hours after the phones were turned off.

Sources: Apidologie journal, April 13, 2011, and www.pcmag.com.