Value chain · CLM-1151
In plain terms
Bees 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 like bees that had not been; in six-hour runs, single thermometer readings inside them and their clusters differed from the sham box's by up to about 7 degrees, in no consistent direction.
The claim as recorded
Adult honey bees confined singly or in clusters and "exposed for 0.5, 6, and 24 hours to 2.45 GHz continuous wave microwave radiation at power densities of 3, 6, 12, 25, and 50" mw/cm2 survived over 21 days and consumed syrup ("ca 30" microlitres per bee per day) with "no significant differences in rate of food consumption for any of the groups, thereby indicating that metabolic functions were normal after microwave exposure"; during 6-hour exposures thorax temperatures were 22-36 C and cluster temperatures 27-36 C in microwave chambers against 23-35 and 25-39 C in sham (Table 6.1, single samples), so "Apparently the clustering of bees does not enhance the absorption of energy to the extent that any effects were noted"; the authors "find no evidence that the longevity or food consumption of honey bees, held singly or in clusters, are affected by exposures (up to 24 hours)" at "1 to 50 mw/cm2, which covers and exceeds the range that is anticipated for use in the SPS system".
Evidence behind this: T3-replicated survival and consumption study with a single-sample temperature table the authors flag as such.
Scope and limits
THE TEMPERATURE TABLE IS ONE SAMPLE PER CELL AND THE 24-HOUR PROBED BEES MOSTLY DIED OF THE PROBE, BY THE AUTHORS' NOTE; it cannot support a statement about heating at 50 mW/cm2 beyond "no effect noted". Confined bees, not flying ones; the abstract's 3-50 range and the conclusion's 1-50 differ by the 1 mW/cm2 level, which belongs to the colony study.
What it assumes
The temperature ranges are what a single probe read once per condition, as note a states.
Where it comes from
PDF 107 / printed 100: "exposed for 0.5, 6, and 24 hours to 2.45 GHz continuous wave microwave radiation at power densities of 3, 6, 12, 25, and 50" (normalised); "No significant differences were found between microwave" (raw) and sham-treated or control bees. PDF 116 / printed 109, Table 6.1 (crop read; 50 row from the layer): ambient 23-30 C across the table, each row narrower: microwave rows 24-25 at 0, 23-24 at 3, 25-26 at 6, 25-26 at 12, 26-27 at 25, 27-30 at 50; sham rows 24-26, 24-26, 25-27, 24-26, 25-28, 28-29; thorax internal, microwave rows, 22-27 at 0, 25-36 at 3, 26-32 at 6, 24-26 at 12, 25-28 at 25, 27-36 at 50; sham rows 25-30, 23-29, 29-30, 26-28, 25-28, 28-35; cluster internal, microwave 28-36, 27-36, 27-35, 27-35, 28-36, 30-36; sham 28-39, 28-35, 30-37, 25-37, 27-35, 31-39; note a "Mortality for the individual bees with internal thoracic probes was high for the 24-hour treatments" and "Each range is based on a single sample" (normalised). PDF 117 / printed 110: "The mean consumption per surviving bee/day was ca 30" (normalised); "There were no significant differences in rate of food consumption for any of the groups, thereby indicating that metabolic functions were normal after microwave exposure" (normalised); "Apparently the clustering of bees does not enhance the absorption of energy to the extent that any effects were noted" (normalised); "We find no evidence that the longevity or food consumption of honey bees, held singly or in clusters, are affected by exposures (up to 24 hours) of 2.45 GHz continuous wave microwaves at selected power densities ranging from 1 to 50 mw/cm2, which covers and exceeds the range that is anticipated for use in the SPS system" (normalised). Recomputed: the widest microwave-over-sham thorax maximum is 7 C (36 against 29 at 3 mw/cm2), not at the highest density; at 50 mw/cm2 the cluster maximum is 36 microwave against 39 sham.
Basis: 0.5, 6 and 24 h at 3, 6, 12, 25 and 50 mW/cm2 CW; 21-day survival; microlitres of syrup per bee per day; C in chamber, thorax and cluster
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1151
CLM-1151, 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-1150Six 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...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...