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May 10th, 2014 
Awake Goy EU believes it is a particular pesticide that is causing bee colony collapse.
I’m NOT convinced. The strongest rebuttal of this view is that in Australia (with relatively poor mobile coverage in rural areas) bees are doing well espite use of the SAME pesticides that are allegedly killing bees in Europe:
“There has also been no sign of CCD in Australia, despite most of Australia’s canola, sorghum, chickpea, sunflower and pulse seeds being treated with neonics manufactured by chemical giants Bayer and Syngenta, commonly sold as Guacho, Provado, Hombre, Cruiser, Actara and Samurai.” [Source: EU ban raises fears of crop spray restriction, Sue Neales, The Australian May 3, 2013]
And of course, there is a lot of other evidence. I’ve not checked original sources, but as you’ll note from the few extracts I’ve noted below, the story about insecticides DOES NOT ADD UP.
This blog post cuts and pastes from various sources. It follows from my previous blog post here (do read it first to understand the risks of microwave radiation from mobile phone towers).
Facts
In the last decade, the honey bee population world-wide has taken a huge dive—billions of bees have died for unknown reasons [Source]
Unusually high rates of CCD were first noted in the US about ten years ago. Then reports from Europe began coming in. Soon it was from many different countries, with India now reporting with more and more urgency about its high occurrence, especially in certain Indian states. [Source]
There is a worrying downward trend in hive numbers in Britain, down from one million a century ago to 250,000 today, with similar declines in the USA. [Source]
What’s the cause?
there seems to be no unifying cause to colony collapse globally [Source]
That’s of course not true. There are two main hypotheses (Sanjeev: others simply don’t make any sense).
1) Microwaves?
steepest declines in bee population had been reported in the US and Europe, where cell phone use has been greater than other parts of the world
research in several different countries finds that the proximity to a hive of either a cell phone or a cell tower causes the hive to lose most of its worker bees–and in many cases, to collapse, sometimes within a surprisingly short period of time.
Researchers at both the Panjab University in Chandigarh, India, and at the Landau University in Switzerland fitted cell phones to the beehive and activated them intermittently to see what would happen. All have seen a direct link between the cell phones and the decline of the bee population.
What is it that actually happens to the bees when their hive is near a cell phone or cell tower? Sainuddereen Pattazhy, researcher and dean in the department of Zoology at SN College, Punahur, explains:
“The navigation skill of the worker bees is dependent on the earth’s magnetic properties. The electromagnetic waves emitted by the mobile phones and relay towers interfere with the earth’s magnetism, resulting in the loss of the navigation capacity of the bee. Then it fails to come back.”
When the worker bees become disoriented and fail to find their way back to their hive, then the queen, the eggs, and the immature bees are left to die. No one seems to know exactly what ends up happening to all the disoriented worker bees.
Although he does add:
“Also the radiation causes damage to the nervous system of the bee and it becomes unable to fly.”
What’s interesting is they also find with the hives they’ve put near cell phones, that parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the hive and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.”
“One of the monks who has been a bee keeper at the abbey for 40 years explained how, until numerous cell phone towers were constructed on the back of their property, he had been collecting 100 gallons of honey a week.
“But as the use of cell phones expanded, all of his bees died within a few weeks, until he discovered a small area near the base of a hill where he could not get service. Once he moved his hives to that that particular area, the bees once again began to thrive and reproduce.”
[Source]
“One study of particular interest in the report is the survey of two berry farms in similar habitats in western Massachusetts. At one farm, where there are no cell phone towers, there are abundant signs of wildlife: e.g. migrating and resident birds, bats, small and large mammals, and insects including bees. However, at the other farm with a cell-phone tower located adjacent to the berry patch, there are virtually no signs of wildlife: tracks, scat, feathers, etc. Here the berries on bush go uneaten by birds and insects – while the ripened berries that have fallen to the ground are going uneaten by animals: turkey, fox, and other wildlife.”
[Source]
“In one experiment, it was found that when a mobile phone was kept near a beehive it resulted in a collapse of the colony in 5 to 10 days,” says Favre, “with the worker bees failing to return home, leaving the hives with just queens, eggs, and hive-bound immature bees.”
[Source]
Insectidies?
See this.
A group of pesticides called neonicatinoids have been blamed for extensive colony collapse. These chemicals were banned in France, but colony losses have continued there. So it is unlikely that these chemicals themselves are causing colony collapse. [Source]
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