2007 · Mobile

Mobile phones and the vanishing bees: how a scare story was cleared

Last reviewed 5 October 2026

In 2007 a newspaper report suggested mobile phone signals might be behind the mysterious loss of honeybee colonies. The researchers it cited disagreed, and later science pointed to other causes.

Colony collapse disorder

Over the winter of 2006–07 beekeepers in the United States reported that worker bees were disappearing from many hives, leaving the queen, young bees and food behind. The pattern was named colony collapse disorder. Because bees pollinate a large share of food crops, the losses quickly became international news.

The mobile phone theory

In April 2007 a British newspaper reported that radiation from mobile phones might be interfering with bees’ navigation and causing the collapse. The report pointed to a small study at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany.

That study had placed DECT cordless phone base stations, not mobile phones, near a few hives and measured whether bees returned. Its authors said their work was preliminary, had nothing to do with colony collapse disorder and had been misrepresented. Scientists and bee researchers soon said there was no evidence linking mobile phones to the losses, and reports followed that the phones had been cleared.

What the science found

Research since then has found no single cause. The main factors identified are the Varroa mite and the viruses it spreads, other pathogens, poor nutrition from crop monocultures and the effects of pesticides, especially neonicotinoids. The European Union restricted three neonicotinoids in 2013 and banned their outdoor use in 2018.

Some studies have continued to look at electromagnetic fields and insects, but they have not established that phone networks cause colony losses.

Why the story spread

The bees story combined two common worries, new technology and a threatened food supply, and offered a simple explanation for a complex problem. It is now a standard example of how a preliminary study can be stretched in reporting, and of why it pays to check what the original researchers actually measured.