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Cell phones are harmful(I think)

There has been an increase in the number of thefts of hives across the world and in Germany beekeepers have started fitting GPS tracking devices to their hives.
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Clearly, German beekeepers haven't identified the frequency picked up from the satellites by their GPS devices to have had any effect on the bees. Somewhat ironic considering the subject matter of the main story....
 
Haven't cell phones also been used to detonate IEDs and such?

I think there's a bit of ambiguity in the language of the thread title!

Also, I thought there was pretty strong evidence that colony collapse was correlated with certain pesticide use.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Also, I thought there was pretty strong evidence that colony collapse was correlated with certain pesticide use.
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I'm not sure how strong the evidence is but yes, nicotine-derived pesticides; neonicotinoids, which are used because of their much lower acute toxicity to warm-blooded animals than the nicotine sulfate that is still used by "organic" farmers.
 
It seems to me that this "the bees are disappearing" story came up a couple of years ago and cell phones were mentioned then too. Then the whole issue seemed to just disappear.
 
Yeah, two hives doth not evidence make. Relevant part of the linked article:
Tim Lovett, of the British Beekeepers Association, said that hives have been successful in London where there was high mobile phone use.
"Previous work in this area has indicated this [mobile phone use] is not a real factor," he said. "If new data comes along we will look at it."
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Towlie said:
It seems to me that this "the bees are disappearing" story came up a couple of years ago and cell phones were mentioned then too. Then the whole issue seemed to just disappear.
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Well, there are two main reasons for that. Firstly, it just doesn't make good news. "Bees are still dying out" is not the kind of headline that is going to keep the public's attention for long. It's mentioned in the news every now and then, but without any big breakthroughs it's just not news.

The other reason is that we understand the problem much better than we did to start with. "Bees everywhere dying out because of some mysterious disorder" is a sort of OK headline, if only for a day or so. However, "Bees in some places dying off bit for a variety of reasons, but they're doing just fine elsewhere" is not really the kind of sensational story the media generally like. Because it turns out that bees actually aren't dying off globally, there's been a decline in parts of Europe, North America and Japan, while they've actually increased in numbers elsewhere, including southern Europe in particular. And rather than being a mysterious new disease that's suddenly turned up, it looks like being mainly a combination of a few different infections, and not necessarily the same ones in every region, possibly contributed to by a decline in the genetic diversity of managed hives.

See this paper for example (requires login).
 
Only the white cells are harmful. The red cells are actually beneficial.
 
I would have to see that study replicated on a larger scale to even begin to believe it.

Two data points do not statistical significance make.
 
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