The next time you have a pesky swarm of bees in your back yard, don’t call the exterminator. According to a recent study, apparently all you have to do is pull out your iPhone.
The calls act as an instinctive warning to leave the hive, but the frequency confuses the bees, causing them to fly erratically. The study found that the bees’ buzzing noise increases ten times when a cell phone is ringing or making a call – aka when signals are being transmitted, but remained normal when not in use.
Link
No, they're not:
http://skepchick.org/2011/05/bees-ccd-and-cellphones-still-no-link/
(Sounded somewhat plausible I must admit.)
The research does seem to show a link between high SAR values and "worker piping" in Bees. Where Skepchick says that the research is flawed because "the author put cell phones on top of an actual hive." The paper itself says: "the conditions employed in the
present experiments have biological significance,
since the sum of the SAR values from the two
mobile phone handsets were always below the 2-
W/kg maximal value recommended for this frequency
(I.C.N.I.R.P 1998)." and recommends "For future experiments, in complement
to the present original study and in order to reach
more “natural” conditions, mobile phone apparatuses
should be placed at various increasing
distances away from the hives."
http://www.kokopelli.asso.fr/documentation/favre.pdf
The experiment is non-conclusive, except that radiation from our cell-phones affects Bee behavior, that much is concluded. Whereas Skepchick's last word is: "Bees are in trouble, but there is nothing here to indicate that your cell phone is the culprit."
Some of us start with what we want to see, and end up there too. I strongly advise getting the news from the horse's mouth.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1709815/why-has-the-epa-allowed-a-bee-killing-pesticide-to-stay-on-the-market