Are mobile phones wiping out bee populations?

This is the sort of story I usually leave in the capable hands of Professor Hex (who first drew it to my attention), but I'm beginning to think that this theory may have some substance. As you know, the bee population has suffered a sudden and mysterious decline. That's a serious matter: No bees = no pollination = no crops.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

Here is an earlier paper by Dr. Kuhn: "How Electromagnetic Exposure can influence Learning Processes -- Modelling Effects of Electromagnetic Exposure on Learning Processes." Yes, there are bees in it. Kuhn addresses the sticky issue of non-thermal effects of electromagnetic radiation, which always leads to pooh-poohing and over-confident harrumphing. But for 40-or-so years, a number of researchers have sounded the we-don't-know-what-we're-messing-with note.

From Kuhn's paper:

In addition to the well known theory of Karl von Frisch that honey bees communicate through waggle dances on the honeycomb, Nieh and Tautz discovered that dancing makes the honeycombs vibrate... The frequencies of these vibrations are set in between 200 Hz and 300 Hz. As the honeycombs vibrate the information can be transported to honey bees which are located far away from the vibrating source. With the GSM-mobile-phones sending their information with a pulsed signal, we must consider the pure sending frequencies of 900 MHz and 1800 MHz as well as the pulsing frequency of 217 Hz. The frequency of the pulse corresponds to that of the waggle dance of the honey bee and so the dancing area could be resonantly stimulated by this pulsed frequency...

Oh boy. The term "waggle dance" leaves Kuhn open for ridicule by the professional harrumphers.

Bee open-minded.