North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Anton Callaway <marillen@earthlink.net>]

We need to have cell phones inside beehives because that's the only way to 
hear the latest buzz.  ;)

Sign 'em up for the family plan... They're social insects!

Anton
Too much coffee this morning.  ;)


-----Original Message-----
>From: Road's End Farm <organic87@frontiernet.net>
>Sent: May 15, 2011 9:16 AM
>To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Subject: Re: [NAFEX] civilization vs honeybees
>
>
>On May 15, 2011, at 8:06 AM, Alan Haigh wrote:
>
>> Thought folks might find this interesting.
>> http://www.fastcompany.com/1752894/are-cell-phones-killing-all-the- 
>> bees
>
>
>Now this has hit yet another list that I'm on; although I note that  
>the article posted on this list is a little more sensible than the one  
>that showed up on the others. Favre is correct that the next step in  
>his experiment would be to put the phones at increasing distances from  
>the hives. Until and unless he shows significant disturbance on the  
>part of the bees as a reaction to cell phones that are as far from the  
>hives as cell phone usually are in practice, he doesn't, in my  
>opinion, have anything worth writing home about; although I agree that  
>it would be useful for him to do that. I don't know why he didn't  
>start with phones outside the hives in the first place, as to the best  
>of my knowledge nobody other than Favre is trying to make long phone  
>calls to the inside of beehives; unless possibly he wanted really  
>badly to come up with something that looked like a positive result.
>
>
>This is apparently the study being referred to:
>
>Mobile phone-induced honeybee worker piping
>http://www.kokopelli.asso.fr/documentation/favre.pdf
>
>What it appears to show is that, if you put a cell phone inside a  
>beehive and keep the phone in a state of receiving a call for extended  
>periods of time, the bees will make disturbed noises.
>I can't tell from this study whether the bees were disturbed by the  
>cell phone, or by the continuous sound of the radio "constantly  
>playing the France info program" over the cell phone inside the hive,  
>as I can't tell whether the radio signal which was used to keep the  
>phone active was audible to the bees. There didn't seem to be a  
>control that had the radio itself, or a recording of the radio show,  
>within a hive.
>Even if it was the phone in itself, it would still only apply if the  
>phone was actually inside a beehive.
>
>
>
>-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
>Fresh-market organic produce, small scale
>
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