IN TUNE WITH THE BEES

protein to help them develop. The nectar from flowers is a source of carbohydrate and what the bees convert into honey.

I am fascinated by the connection between flowers and bees. This first started when my husband Greg bought me an apricot tree one Christmas. We planted it in our front garden against a south-facing wall to catch the maximum amount of sunshine. I was concerned to read that it blossoms in March and that it may be a bit chilly for my bees, living in a hive in the back garden, to fly around to notice the flowers. As the tree wasn’t there the previous summer, how would the bees know we now had an apricot tree? Naturally I had told them – what if that wasn’t enough, or they weren’t listening?! Curiosity had me researching pollination and bees –what did nature do to overcome such situations when there was no one around to tell the bees?

I then came across incredible research that first alerted me to the fact that plants emit an electromagnetic frequency that literally signals to the bees. It felt like a new language was unveiled to me. I could understand how the bumble bee queens awake to the snowdrops blooming and how the red mason bees hatch just as the apple blossoms burst open.

This beautiful rapport amongst nature has been evolving over millions of years, with no assistance from humans, in fact, despite all our attempts to ignore, and now even damage it. Humans have been experimenting with electricity and magnets for over a hundred years, and sadly, these experiments have not been allowing for the disruption they may cause to the evolutionary songs of nature.

Researchers in China found that they can increase plant yields by broadcasting sound waves of certain frequencies. Other researchers have investigated how gene expression can be altered by using different intensities and frequencies of sounds. The acoustic vibrations modify metabolic processes in plants.

If plants are using these frequencies to communicate with each other, it makes sense that they would be communicating, or calling out to the pollinators. We know that birds and many pollinators have an increase of magnetite in their bodies, which helps them negotiate the Earth’s magnetic fields for migration. Natural electromagnetic waves between plants and bees use a continually flowing direct current to allow it to be picked up and followed. Man-made electrical fields use alternating currents that pulse and this disrupts the natural connections between living organisms.

In 2006 the Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management wrote to the National Councillor Dr Andreas Khol after finding that bees produce less honey in strong electromagnetic fields (for instance under power lines) and have increased mortality. In 2007 the University of Koblenz-Landau exposed bees to ‘harmless’ cordless DECT base stations. The bees were marked and released 800 metres away from the hive. It clearly showed that bees struggled to return to the ‘irradiated’ colonies. The most frightening study was by Dr Seinudeen Pattazhy in India. He found that when placing a switched-on mobile phone near a beehive, the entire colony perished within five to ten days. Their orientation was so disrupted by the radio waves emitted by the phone that they couldn’t find their way back to the hive. With no food coming into the hive, the queen and brood soon die, unable to forage for themselves. paulacarnell.com

With a 70% loss in pollinators in recent years, should we perhaps be looking at how nature communicates for survival? Surely if electrical waves create such havoc in trees, plants, animals, birds and insects, there must also be an impact on humans...

I found a wonderful excerpt from a documentary where flowers were exposed to a tuning fork tuned to two notes. The first, which mimicked a bee flying, had no impact on the flower. The second, tuned to middle C, when placed near the flower, created a shower of pollen. The bumble bee that pollinates this specific plant, dislocates her wings on landing on the plant which changes the frequency of her wing muscles, creating the ‘C’ note which releases the pollen. I love that we are learning that the plants and bees are literally singing to each other, and we are too busy and careless to notice. Each plant could be tuned to a different note!

I’ve been watching my apricot blossom over the past several years and have seen bumbles, solitary and honeybees enjoying its nectar. In return, each year our crop of apricots increases as the song of the blossom gets louder with a larger choir of blossom singers!