Shall We Have Bees or Cell Phones?

By Carol Mell, 6-01-07

	Caption: Beekeeper, Farmer and Chemistry Teacher Roberto Chavez keeps bees in Los Cordovas near Taos, New Mexico. So far, his bees have not disappeared, been killed off by mites or become Africanized.

Three times in one day I heard the buzz about cell phones killing bees. Around Taos, trouble travels fast and this bit chased around like a dog after a skunk.

“What if the world is forced to choose between cell phones and bees?” was the question of the hour. Many Taoseños delight in the thought of a drowsy bee dropping a wrench into the gears of the world economy. Most of us can’t get a cell phone signal anyway.

Every fall I send my kid to school with eight bucks and she returns with a quart of raw honey from Taos High School chemistry teacher Roberto Chavez. With my personal honey pot at stake, I went to his family’s homestead by the Rio Pueblo.

Chavez’s show no sign of Colony Collapse Disorder, the legendary ailment causing bees to disappear on both U.S. coasts and in Europe. He hasn’t detected any mites either, a scourge that has devastated bee populations throughout the world. Chavez hopes his little valley is protected from pests, disease and cell phones but that doesn’t stop him from worrying. 

“I’ve read everything I can find about colony collapse,” Chavez said. “Everything seems to be just somebody’s idea. My parents never opened a chemical can here. Our landscape is mostly wild and we’re so isolated, I’d like to think that with good care our bees will be fine. I’ve dealt with animals all my life, sheep, cows, horses but dealing with bees is more difficult because they are more mysterious.”

According to the New Mexico Extension Entomologist, Carol Sutherland, Chavez has been very lucky not to have problems with killer mites and Africanized bees. Those two problems have reduced the number of New Mexico apiaries by half.

“As far as I know, New Mexico has not reported any problems with Colony Collapse Disorder,” she said, “This is like a Cold Case on TV, no good leads and a lot of mystery. The jury is way, way out on what causes bees to disappear.”

Sutherland gave me something to ponder—a variation on that other rumor, Einstein’s theory that without bees humans would only last four years—bees supply one out of every three bites we take. 

Who can resist stirring up the rumor pot and since scientists don’t know why bees are disappearing I decided to start my own hearsay on the subject.

British researchers showed that bees wouldn’t go near a cell phone placed on a hive. Did those researchers know the bees’ number and special ring tone? I don’t answer survey calls, why should a busy bee?

The cell phone theory supposes that electro-magnetic radiation messes up the bees navigational systems. Could this same phenomenon explain why humans talking on cell phones in cars keep running into each other?

While researching this story, I learned that we lose brain cells from constant cell phone radiation upside our heads and that soon we’ll see thirty and forty-year-olds with dementia. We won’t even need cars then, we’ll just be bumping into whatever is handy like, say, a padded cell wall.

In these troubled times, could it be good honeybees were the first to be taken up in the rapture? Wouldn’t that explain the tribulation of those bad left-behind Africanized bees? 

Researchers also say only worker bees are leaving, abandoning their queen and her eggs. Just like a pack of guys to skip out on responsibility, I say.

What if the workers have gone on strike and are now dipping into beers in Acapulco? Those wouldn’t be the first jobs we’ve sent to Mexico.

If you can’t stand the heat, they say, get out of the kitchen. Maybe, our bees are giving up on humans and have moved on to colonize another planet. It would serve us right if honeybees went AWOL in outer space what with polar bears falling off their floes, whales swimming up rivers, oil and apple prices rising up in defiance and humans bumping into things.

We’ll need all our brain cells we have left to fashion the ark that can carry us out of the mess we’ve made. 

Meanwhile, before senility sets in, I’m going to buy a couple of extra quarts of Chavez honey. I’ll sell those babies on Ebay for a fortune or better yet, I’ll hoard them just to make you all jealous.