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Is WiFi really the problem for bee-keepers? or is it Varroa mites?

Researchers have suggested that one possible explanation for "Colony Collapse Disaster" or CCD - where bees desert their hives - might be cellular radio, or WiFi. Some wireless experts are sceptical about the number of hives located near hotspots, and so for one possible alternative solution, it might be worth studying how big the bees are, and how long it takes them to fill a honeycomb cell with honey. Quote from Red Ice Creations:

I am quite involved with many alternative agriculture groups, and I received this email from a trusted friend...you might want to check it out for your news section.

And here is the full story, verbatim, reproduced with acknowledgements to Red Ice, who got it in turn from Sharon Labchuk - a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island.

Labchuck is on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, "and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list," she claims.

Labchuck says that the problem with the big commercial guys "is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies."

Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site at Bushfarms where Michael Bush spelled out his own theory:

Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I'm happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won't hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.

Bush goes on: "This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I've gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter.

How much difference between natural and "normal"? Keep in mind that "normal" foundation is 5.4 mm and natural cell is between 4.6 mm and 5.0 mm.

Volume of cells

...according to 19th century expert Baudoux (from ABC XYZ of Bee Culture 1945 edition pg 126):

So if you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural. Badout started making bigger bees as long ago as 1890 but of course, he didn't fumigate his hives agains Varroa or Tracheal mites, and he didn't have antibiotics, either.

"By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems," wrote Bush. "One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells."

And, he adds: "Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry."

It might be a solution to the vanishing bee problem, as he suggests: it might also be that people putting WiFi hotspots in remote fields are causing it. Which should we take more seriously?

"It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent) it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time," opines Bush.

"We've been pushing them too hard," Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. "And we're starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances."

Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it's all of the above... and maybe it's low-level wireless transmissions. Or maybe, not?

More research, please!