Jul 18, 2009

Colony Collapse Disorder


Millions of Bees Die - Are Electromagnetic Signals To Blame?
Bees in the US are dying of some unknown cause - millions of them are leaving their hives and do not come back. What is happening? The problem has got a name - colony collapse disorder - but no apparent cause.
Bee hive - Image credit: EnviroZine
Some years back, France and other European countries had a similar, if less severe die-off of honey bees. At the time Gaucho, a poisonous seed treatment chemical produced by Bayer, was blamed, the die-off has continued in Europe, although at a comparatively slower pace.
The situation in the US seems even more severe than what happened in Europe, and certainly the onset is more sudden. According to The Independent, millions of honey bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die, leaving beekeepers facing ruin and US agriculture under threat.
"Across the country, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, honey bee colonies have started to die off, abruptly and decisively. Millions of bees are abandoning their hives and flying off to die (they cannot survive as a colony without the queen, who is always left behind).
Some beekeepers, especially those with big portable apiaries, or bee farms, which are used for large-scale pollination of fruit and vegetable crops, are facing commercial ruin - and there is a growing threat that America's agriculture may be struck a mortal blow by the loss of the pollinators. Yet scientists investigating the problem have no idea what is causing it."
On one of my weekly news grabs, I linked an article on the mysterious die-off of honey bees, and a reader commented, suggesting that emissions of GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network, might be to blame. Here is what he had to say:
After reading several articles on the disappearance of the honeybee, the thought occurred that this appears to be happening only in the US. A Google search turned up nothing on this phenomenon in any other country, including Canada and Mexico.
Why only the US? Also, why are nonsensical excuses being offered up by the pseudo-scientific community for the demise of the bee?
Researchers have dubbed the syndrome the "colony collapse disorder." They say the bees presumably are dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or disoriented and eventually dying from exposure to the cold. Or, it could just be that the bees are stressed out. Give me a break!
Tired bees? Dying from weather exposure? Stressed out bees? Disoriented?
Just imagine a tired bee for a moment. When’s the last time you saw a tired bee?
Dying from weather exposure? Weather cold enough to kill bees in their hives would also decimate other insect populations. No report on that, huh?
Stressed out bees? What, all of a sudden bees get stressed out? What about bees in other countries? They don’t seem to be having a problem at all.
Disoriented bees? Ah, well this is a possibility. But what would make them disoriented? Perhaps it is the 250 HZ signals being pumped out of GWEN stations all over America. This signal makes people angry, so that they support the administrations idea of going after Iran and violence in general. It works great for mass manipulation of opinion. Unfortunately, the same signal will induce a misdirection of up to 10 degrees in the navigation ability of the honeybee. They go away from the hive and never come back because they can no longer find it. That’s why it’s only happening in the US.
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this is that US media has never ventured to question why it is only happening here. Somebody must have told them to clam up on this issue or the current crop of US reporters got their degrees in journalism out of a Cracker Jack box.
Now what the hell are GWEN stations, you might want to ask, and what could they have to do with the catastrophic die-off of honey bees...

GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network, is a military communications network, consisting of some 300 transmitters dotting the whole of the continental United States. Each tower is 300-500 feet high. The stations are from 200 to 250 miles apart, so that a signal can go from coast to coast from one station to another. The official purpose is "to ensure adequate communication between command authorities and land-based strategic nuclear forces in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States mainland." But others say a hidden use of the system may be "electromagnetic mind-altering technology" by the use of ELF or Extremely Low Frequency waves.
According to a 1982 Air Force review of biotechnology, ELF has a number of potential military uses, including "dealing with terrorist groups, crowd control, controlling breaches of security at military installations, and antipersonnel techniques in tactical warfare." The same report states:
"Electromagnetic systems would be used to produce mild to severe physiological disruption or perceptual distortion or disorientation. They are silent, and counter-measures to them may be difficult to develop."
Robert O. Becker, M.D., in his book "Crosscurrents: The Perils of Electropollution" said:
"GWEN is a superb system, in combination with cyclotron resonance, for producing behavioral alterations in the civilian population. The average strength of the steady geomagnetic field varies from place to place across the United States. Therefore, if one wished to resonate a specific ion in living things in a specific locality, one would require a specific frequency for that location. The spacing of GWEN transmitters 200 miles apart across the United States would allow such specific frequencies to be 'tailored' to the geomagnetic-field strength in each GWEN area."
The bees seem to be playing the role that canary birds had in the mines, warning us of impending desaster. Are these insects, by their unprecedented behavior of flying off without returning to their hives, showing that something insidious is going on?
According to a message from Paul Doyon, electromagnetic waves may well have the capacity of disorienting not only bees but a number of flying creatures. Here is a specific instance involving bees he quotes:
At Cornell Univ. honeybees in a hive relocated into a new building became disoriented. After extensive research ruled out other causes, someone noticed the hive was next to the building's electric transformer. The bees were confused by 60 hz magnetism strong enough to interfere with homing and communication to gather nectar and pollen. (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/RofD4.html)
In Germany, a study of honeybees irradiated with DECT mobile phone base station radiation found that only few of the irradiated bees returned to the hive, and that they required more time to return than the non irradiated bees. Also, the weight of the honeycombs of the irradiated bees was found to be smaller than those in the hives of non irradiated bees. (Stever H, Kuhn J, Otten C, Wunder B, Harst W. Verhaltensaenderung unter elektromagnetischer Exposition. Pilotstudie. Institut fuer Mathematik. Arbeitsgruppe Bildungsinformatik. Universitaet Koblenz-Landau; 2005. http://agbi.uni-landau.de/materialien.htm)


1 comments:

Being and Quirkiness said...

This is an excellent post. I'm on the same wave lenght, so to speak :D