You know how the combination of cell phones and transportation can be pretty bad for humans? Well, it turns out that it might be a fatal combo for bees as well. A new study by researcher Daniel Favre at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has found that the wireless signals emitted by cell phones cause worker bees to become so disoriented that they eventually die.
Why, you ask? Well, Favre’s team tested bees’ reactions to a nearby cellphone in 83 different experiments and found that the honeybees made 10 times more noise when a cell phone made or received a call than they did when the phone was in off or standby mode. This noise, often referred to as "worker piping," usually functions as a signal for the bees to leave their hive. But, when the reaction is falsely triggered by a cell phone, the bees became tragically befuddled.
Favre’s report explains: “Worker piping in a bee colony is not frequent, and when it occurs in a colony, that is not in a swarming process, no more than two bees are simultaneously active…The induction of honeybee worker piping by the electromagnetic fields of mobile phones might have dramatic consequences in terms of colony losses due to unexpected swarming.”
There you have it. Bad news bees.
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