Value chain · CLM-1150
In plain terms
Six thousand bees took part, 2,500 of them dosed, and were let go a hundred metres from home; the dosed ones found their hive as often as the undosed. Another set was watched for three weeks afterwards in glass hives and lived as long.
The claim as recorded
After 30 minutes at 3, 6, 9, 25 or 50 mw/cm2 (2.45 GHz CW), adult honey bees "released 100 m from their hives" returned to the apiary at 8.3-8.6 per group of ten against 8.5-8.9 for sham groups and 8.9 for hive controls, on "50 groups of 10 bees each, sampled daily from 5 hives during 10 days", "yielding a total of 6,000 bees" (Table 2.1); and in a 5 x 5 Latin square with "5 treatment levels (3, 6, 9, 25 and 50 mw/cm2), 2 exposure chambers (microwave and sham) plus an additional control held within the laboratory" and "50 bees per treatment group", their survival in glass-walled observation hives over 21 days showed "No significant differences ... in any of these comparisons (p = 0.10)", so that 30-minute exposures at "power densities between 3-50 mw/cm2 do not significantly affect the survival, longevity, or intra-colony mobility of honey bees".
Evidence behind this: T3-two replicated behavioural studies with the design and the significance level stated; 6,000 bees in the homing test, 5 x 5 Latin square in the longevity test.
Scope and limits
NULLS AT THE 0.10 LEVEL WITH STANDARD DEVIATIONS OF 1.1-1.6 PER 10 BEES; a 5 per cent effect on homing would not show. 30-minute exposures; 100 m release, not a flight through a rectenna field; the "memory" the abstract lists is the return to the correct hive, 0.2-0.6 wrong-hive returns per 10 in every row.
What it assumes
Returns to the apiary within the observation period are the measure of orientation and homing, as the table defines it.
Where it comes from
PDF 46 / printed 37, Table 2.1 (crop read): "released 100 m from their hives" (normalised); "All means are based on 50 groups of 10 bees each, sampled daily from 5 hives during 10 days" (normalised); "yielding a total of 6,000 bees" (raw); returned to apiary, microwave / sham: 3 mw/cm2 8.4 +/- 1.6 / 8.5 +/- 1.3; 6, 8.6 +/- 1.3 / 8.7 +/- 1.3; 9, 8.5 +/- 1.4 / 8.9 +/- 1.1; PDF 47 / printed 38: 25, 8.5 +/- 1.4 / 8.7 +/- 1.3; 50, 8.3 +/- 1.2 / 8.6 +/- 1.1; laboratory controls 3.5 +/- 1.5; hive controls 8.9 +/- 1.1 (layer). PDF 54 / printed 46: "5 treatment levels (3, 6, 9, 25 and 50 mw/cm2), 2 exposure chambers (microwave and sham) plus an additional control held within the laboratory. There were 50 bees per treatment group. All microwave exposures were for 30 minutes" (normalised). PDF 63 / printed 55: "No significant differences were found in any of these comparisons (p = 0.10)" (normalised); "power densities between 3-50 mw/cm2 do not significantly affect the survival, longevity, or intra-colony mobility of honey bees" (normalised). Recomputed: the largest treated-minus-sham gap in returns is 0.4 per 10 bees, inside every row's standard deviation of 1.1-1.6; laboratory controls at 3.5 against hive controls at 8.9 is the handling and confinement effect, five times the largest microwave gap.
Basis: bees returned per group of 10 after 30 min at 3-50 mW/cm2 CW and release 100 m from the hive; survival in observation hives over 21 days
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1150
CLM-1150, Energy Aperture, as of 1980-12.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-537
- CLM-1147The 1980 programme's experiments on bees, at strengths from the edge of a rectenna to about twice its centre, found nothing: eggs hatched...CLM-1148Bee eggs, grubs and pupae zapped for half an hour at up to twice the beam-centre strength grew into normal adults at the same rate as...CLM-1149One hive lived for four weeks, a full brood cycle, under the beam strength expected at the edge of a receiving station, and behaved like...CLM-1151Bees kept a full day at up to twice the beam-centre strength (fifty times the beam-edge level), alone or huddled, ate and lived afterwards...CLM-1152Bees flew four hundred metres to a sugar dish sitting in a microwave field nearly twice the beam-centre strength, went in without...CLM-1153The people who ran the bee tests said so themselves: one species, in boxes whose field strength wandered by a third across the tray, with...