Bad news for bees
Bad news for bees
The bad news for bees is that their numbers are dropping.
And the bad news for humans is that declining bee populations creates challenges for our agricultural industry and contributes to loss of biodiversity.
One of the stressors impacting the health of bee colonies is electromagnetic pollution, as we’ve seen in previous posts. Here are two more studies about this, published recently.
Study 1
Researchers from Italy examined hives located in three different situations for a year. One was exposed to pesticides, another to pesticides plus electromagnetic fields from a high-voltage powerline and the third, the control, to neither of these stresses.
The authors found that ‘both stress (chemical and electromagnetic) caused negative impacts on exposed colonies, due to disease appearance (American foulbrood), mortality in the underbaskets and behavioral alterations (queen changes, excess of drone brood deposition and honey storage).’
The worst affected hives were those exposed to both pesticides and electromagnetic fields, with three out of four hives failing to survive. ‘The overall results clearly indicate that the multi-stress conditions were able to induce biochemical, physiological and behavioural alterations which severely threatened bee colony survival,’ the authors concluded.
Lupi, D. et al, ‘Combined Effects of Pesticides and Electromagnetic-Fields on Honeybees: Multi-Stress Exposure,’ Insects 2021, 12, 716.
Study 2
In a separate study, researchers from four countries examined the effects of exposing bees to magnetic fields from electrical sources and the toxic chemical clothianidin.
They found that exposure to magnetic fields alone caused an increase in wingbeat frequency and reduced learning the proboscis extension reflex.
They believed that some bees were more vulnerable to the exposure than others.
‘If the impacts of ELF EMFs [extra low frequency electromagnetic fields] on important cognitive and locomotory behaviours in pollinators translate to field scenarios, then where the effects of neonicotinoids are reduced, ELF EMFs may become a greater factor as an environmental stressor of pollinators,’ the authors concluded.
Shepherd, S et al, ‘Sublethal neonicotinoid exposure attenuates the effects of electromagnetic fields on honey bee flight and learning’ Environmental Advances, Vol. 4, July 2021, 100051;
Live safer
Want to make your home and family safer? Book our new online course, Your Electromagnetic-safe Home and find out what you can do to protect yourself and your family now and into the future. You can see more here.
What you can do
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Plant bee-attracting, flowering plants on your garden and verge.
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Reduce your use of mobile phones. Every time you use a mobile phone you contribute to the electromagnetic radiation travelling from phone tower to phone tower as well as exposing yourself and the people near you.
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Book a phone consultation to find answers to your questions here.
What else you can do