Dear info@vanishingbees.com

 “Some scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for the mysterious ‘colony collapses’ of the bees. They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and Wi-Fi is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees. Pay particular attention to Vodafone’s current UK marketing campaign ‘Freebees’, the new bee logo for Android Honeycomb and the recent Motorola marketing for the CES Tablet.”

Dear Watcher@blahblahblah.com

Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. I personally was not aware of said campaign. One good look at that graphic and I was horrified, for so many reasons. And here I thought that the Bee Movie with Seinfeld was dumb and dangerous.  

Yes you should be very worried. Not only are the graphics primo cheese-olah (as some of us say in Montreal) but the information conveyed is grossly inaccurate.

Overall, this is a desperate marketing ploy that only adds to the ignorance already warping our society.  Some of us want to wake up our fellow brothers and sisters and others are (sometimes unknowingly) keeping them asleep. Hard to wake someone up when you yourself are a programmed sheep. 

Thanks to your email, I dug around and found several television ads by Vodafone.

The word “Vodafone” used to remind me of the balmy and stunning Amalfi Coast. The first time I heard about this company I was in beautiful Italia. I’d buy Vodafone calling cards and dial up the boyfriend I was hooked to at the time.  

Today, I’ll hear the word Vodafone and think of ugly bees that were poorly animated by a troupe of Swedes and who sound like British Twits and Twats.

There are 50 million pay-as-you-go phones in the UK. So in an attempt to boost sales and outdo some of the other players in the market, like Orange and T-Mobile, the mobile operator created “Freebees (animated bee friends who call their hive members),” and started offering customers free texts, international calls and web access when customers ‘top up’ by £10 or more. (“Top Up” is a saying you don’t hear much here in the United States).

So, let’s get the logic of the advertising agency straight: since some deluded people think cell phones are killing bees, they decided to make money by devising a marketing campaign where social insects (bees) are actually seen using the very objects that are supposedly killing them.   

What am I missing here?  Why keep perpetuating bullshit for a buck? (Vodafone you should take heed of your own graphic and be the ones to PLEASE STOP. ) 

It’s been nearly five years since Colony Collapse Disorder first made headlines in the mainstream, and people still think that electromagnetic radiation is the cause of bee disappearances worldwide.

Now let me say this: bees show us just how interconnected we are. There is no doubt that everything affects everything in some small or big way. Our entire planet is whacked and if you live holistically you understand that the grand design is as complex as it is simple.

Meanwhile, I cannot dispute that the amount of radiation we’re living with these days impacts organisms. I certainly do not put my cell phone to my ear. I opt speaker phone or land line. When I do use the cell, I often get a weird neck pain the following day. Call me crazy, but I’ve tested my theory several times.

Our hive strongly believes that systemic pesticides are at the root of CCD, compromising the immune system of the honey bees. These poisons allow them to fall prey to stresses, virus and pests they would normally be able to handle.

The cell phone hypothesis was first introduced in 2007. It died down and then flared up again back in May when a Dr. Daniel Favre from the Laboratory of Cellular Biotechnology in Switzerland conducted a study with mobile phones, which was then published in the journal Apidologie.  

In his introduction, Favre discusses how honeybees use “magnetoreception” to help navigate their environment. When this “magnetoreception” is interrupted, he claims bees can become lost and fail to return to the hive.

At NO point in the study did any bees collapse due to cell phone treatments. To clarify, Favre stuck an active cell phone inside some beehives, and an inactive phone inside some others as a control. The bees made noises that suggested that an active cell phone inside the hive disturbed them, but an inactive phone did not. He had phones running for up to 20 hours at some points and the worst effect he saw was a prolonged period of time before the piping subsided.

Of course the cell phones disrupted their way of being. Duh!

A British newspaper picked up the story, plastered a salacious and false headline and then a slew of media outlets worldwide picked it up:

Sample headlines: It’s Official Cell Phone are Killing Bees/ Cell Phone signals are really killing bees, study says.

So this is all thanks to lazy reporting and an audience (and that includes you Vodafone) that takes things at face value and lacks the skills to critically analyze. Shitty reporting has become common practice.  

P.S. For those who want to know more about electromagnetic radiation, look into a 40 page brochure by German Biologist Dr Ulrich Warnke. You can download a copy from the Bio Electromagnetic Research Initiative website and read more on this subject.