Bee Colonies Vanish

Large numbers of honeybees in many parts of the US and increasingly in Canada have been vanishing without a trace, and it's beginning to raise concern among more than just beekeepers.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a mysterious condition where beehives are suddenly abandoned by worker bees.

Although scattered CCD-like reports go back several decades, the past couple of months has seen an outbreak resulting in a decrease in the US bee population in some states by as much as 75%.

It is currently not known what causes CCD, but it made more headlines this week when reports of a German study indicated the phenomenon might be triggered by electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones.

While the links between mobile phones and the bees disappearance seem tenuous, bees do use magnetism as one of their primary senses for navigation, as well as for hive building, and their navigation can be disrupted by powerful electromagnetic fields.

But if the phones were to blame, areas dense with cell-phone towers in Europe and elsewhere would likely have seen the phenomenon first. However, CCD developed first in the US across geographically varied states, and only later in Europe. Also, it has only emerged on a mass scale recently, not gradually as areas took up cellular phone technology over the past two decades.Whatever the cause, honeybees are responsible for pollinating a wide variety of fruit and vegetable crops. This leads some to worry about what will become of these crops if there are no bees to do this job.