I have heard for some time that bee colonies around the US have been dying off, and nobody knew the reason why. They call it CCD - Colony Collapse Disorder. As you can imagine, beekeepers are all worked up over it, but most folks didn't pay much attention. After all, what's at stake? Honey prices?
Well, mister smarty-pants, I'll have you know that most of the world's crops depend on bees for pollination. No bees, no crops.
A new study reported in the The Independent has suggested a cause for the disappearance - cell phones. The theory is that the RF signal from a cellular phone interferes with the bee's ability to navigate. The study showed that bees won't return to a hive if an active cell phone is nearby.
The real scary part is the prospect that, in order to survive, society is going to have to abandon wireless communications. In comparison, kicking our addiction to oil will seem like child's play. Yet, unless an alternative solution is found, that might be what we are facing. The article in The Independent provides an old quotation to underscore the seriousness of the problem:
Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".Zoinks!
Stevie Joe Parker
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