Are Cell Phones Killing Honey Bees?

Over the past year the nation's population of honey bees is quickly growing smaller. The bees are starting to die by the thousands. It is estimated that over a quarter of the nation's colonies have been affected. It seems that the adult honey bees are just disappearing without a trace. Scientists are having problems finding an answer to this because they are not having any luck finding the dead bodies of these bees.

There are many theories as to why this is occurring. Some blames have been placed on dry weather, pesticides, and many other things but nothing has been pinned down yet. The latest of the theories is that cellular telephones are causing the problems.

Cell phones now span the globe and a huge part of the population carries one. Scientists say that the signals from cell phones disrupt the ability of the bees to orient themselves and then they loose their way home and die from lack of nutrition. All cell phones put out a form of radiation and this can confuse the bees greatly. There is not enough knowledge yet of the bee disappearances to make a final decision on what the cause of the problem is. Hopefully with this story now making headlining news articles around the country, more scientists will focus their efforts on the issue and they will be able to narrow down the long list of possible causes.

This is a major problem for the country because certain fruits and vegetables require pollination. Approximately one third of the nation's agricultural crops rely on these bees. This could cause a rise in the prices of these foods.

Also this is really starting to hurt the beekeepers across the nation. Farmers will actually rent hives of bees to pollinate their crops. Thanks to the modern hives of bees they do not have a problem being transported across the nation. Since the bees are disappearing this has been a loss of income for some beekeepers. The value of these pollination services is typically measured in billions of dollars.