Cell Phones May Be Killing Off the Bees

The radiation in cell phones may be responsible for the sudden decline in bee population.

Over the past year, the bee population in the U.S. has dropped 30 percent, and other countries have seen similar declines. Bees are important to humans because they produce all of the world's honey and pollinate 90 percent of the planet's commercial crops.

Indian scientists think they've figured out what is killing the busy little buzzers: cell phones. Researchers from Panjab University attached cell phones to a bee hive and powered them up for 30 minutes a day. After three months, the bees had stopped producing honey, and the queen's egg production had halved. 

The reason for this may be because the radiation from the cell phones negatively affects the bees' cryptochrome, a pigment that controls their internal navigation system. In other words, cell phones scramble the bees ability to find their way back to the hive.

If this is the case, it seems a shame cell phones don't also have this deadly effect on mosquitoes.

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