By Teresa von Fuchs
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
There's a new possible culprit in the mysterious death of hundreds of thousands of honeybees in the United States and Europe since last fall: cell phones. U.S. beekeepers have been reporting the loss of 50% to 90% of their bee colonies over the last six months - in a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder - threatening both honey production, and fruit and vegetable pollination.
Now, researchers at Landau University in Germany have found that cell phone radiation could interfere with the bees' internal navigation capabilities. In a limited study, they showed that in some cases, up to 70% of bees exposed to radiation from a cordless phone docking unit placed in their hive later failed to find their way back to the hive.