The document is not about WiFi, but rather about the effect of electromagnetic waves in the Hz - GHz region more generally. Currently the most common WiFi frequency is 2.4 GHz.
Looking at tables 2 - 5 from the original document, the articles that I can see that looked at 2.4 GHz are:
Very low absorption of energy at 2.4 GHz, as the wavelength (12.5 cm) is larger than the insects studied (and bees). Above 6 GHz the absorbance begins to increase as the wavelength becomes closer to an insect’s size.
I am not sure if they used 2.4 GHz as I can’t access this article. From the abstract, I can see that when they place bees inside a Faraday cage for 24 hours with a WiFi router on, their short-term memory and food excitability decreases but their long-term memory increases. I can’t comment much on this as I can’t find an open PDF copy.
In this paper they observe that very low power of 2.4 GHz has a strong effect on the fecundity of flies with absurdly significant values. I think that, if the effect is as strong as they claim, it would be extremely easy to observe and we would have massive amounts of evidence for this. I mean that science-fair level experiments (place a WiFi connected phone next to a container with mashed bananas inocculated with a known amount of fruitflies) would be enough to easily replicate this effect. I am… skeptical.
I think that 2.4 GHz is actually rather harmless because it has a relatively small penetrating power through walls and is unlikely to travel very far, its wavelength is larger than bees, and its period of 416 ps is way too fast to interfere with EM-field perception. I think that much lower frequency fields (Hz - KHz) are more likely to interfere with navigation. Even if the higher GHz frequencies are absorbed more strongly, you still might need to have a significantly strong field before it becomes a problem.
I am not sure if they used 2.4 GHz as I can’t access this article. From the abstract, I can see that when they place bees inside a Faraday cage for 24 hours with a WiFi router on, their short-term memory and food excitability decreases but their long-term memory increases. I can’t comment much on this as I can’t find an open PDF copy.
I don’t have access to the article either but the description in the abstract seems deeply flawed to me. Comparing an on vs off wireless router seems to have a lot more differences than just the absence/presence of the wifi radiation. It’s producing heat, noise, light, etc. Being next to blinking LEDs for 24 hours may not be a good thing for bees.
It is not the Honeybee population that has a problem- it’s the „wild“ bees like Bumblebees that die out. It weirds me out that insecticides are seemingly only tested on the species (honeybees) that grew in numbers over the last decades…
I should also clarify that agroecological studies like this get a lot of funding for commerce reasons but do have a lot of implications for biodiversity and rewilding work as obviously healthy, happy environments get more yield. Coral reefs also exhibit similar behaviour with sound.
This is so disheartening. The more into nature photography I get, the more I realise how smart and chill bees are and the more I love them. I hope research like this will lead to better protection, but I don’t have high hopes…
My totally uneducated guess: bees have evolved to be even more attuned to the environment than many other insects. They’re aware of changes that we can’t detect (or haven’t thought to look for). They can sense their environment collapsing. They’re “unhappy” because they can tell that things aren’t right.
I have a bee who visits my morning glories and sunflowers (still have a couple going strong!) that I call Mr. Buzzness
I am pretty sure it’s the same bee because it comes and flies in my face and does a little waggle before going off to the flowers. I’ve been putting a bowl of water out for him and it will use that.
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