COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER is not a phrase familiar to people outside the beekeeping community, but it should move to the center of public attention very soon.
The phrase describes a phenomenon that is affecting bee populations in the United States and other nations around the world. What is happening is this: Bees leave a hive to gather pollen, but never return. Deprived of food, the queen and the remaining bees in the hive die.
The problem, which apparently began in the United States, has now spread to Europe. Half of America’s states have been affected, with domesticated bee losses ranging up to 70 percent in some areas.
This has agricultural scientists worried and soon consumers may share that concern. Bees are essential to the pollination and production of many food and forage crops. One bee expert estimated that every third bite of food taken by human beings is the result, in some way, of work done by bees.
Several recent news stories about the problem have quoted Albert Einstein as having said that if the bees died, “man would have only four years of life left.” The origin of the quotation is in dispute. Einstein may have never said or written it, but that doesn’t matter. It does not take an Einstein to recognize that the loss of such a useful species could wreak havoc with food production worldwide.
Scientists are scrambling to find the cause of the disorder. It seems likely that something is interfering with the bees’ ability to navigate from hive to field or orchard and back again. They get lost and they die.
Research is concentrating on possible parasites, viruses or environmental changes that could be killing the bees, but a solid answer has yet to emerge.
But one possibility raised this week must be causing trembling and nausea in boardrooms around the world.
A British newspaper, The Independent, reported that a small study at Landau University in Germany produced a provocative result. The researcher found that bees refused to return to their hives when mobile phones were placed nearby. The radio frequencies emitted by the phones may have interfered with the bees’ navigation system.
Could the tool that has transformed communications worldwide be responsible for a serious threat to the world’s food supply? It has yet to be proven, but it is possible.
If cell phones do turn out to be the culprit, humanity might have to make a choice between constant communication and food on the table.
It would not take an Einstein to figure that one out, either.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor