Mobile Phones Not Causing Bees to Drop Dead Mid-Flight
Mobile Phone Signals Kill Bees?
With all the latest buzz (pun intended) on mobile phone signals causing bees to fly as though drunk then fall dead, a researcher who was formerly a biologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology decided to test out this circulating rumor. Daniel Favre left the phones running for up to 20 hours at a time to test if he would be knee-deep in bees and honey by the time he was done with the test.
According to this report from PCMag:
In his experiments, Favre noticed that no swarming took place, even when he let the phones run for up to 20 hours at a time. After the process was concluded, it would take hours for a bee colony to return to a "normal" state, or how the colony looked prior to the cellular experiments.
But are bees dropping dead mid-flight due to a cell phone call? No. Additional research into bees and electromagnetic signals has indicated that the presence of a strong signal over a prolonged period of time can inhibit worker bees' ability to find the hive. However, Favre notes that additional study is needed in this area to prove or disprove the finding.