My wife told me this morning that I need to get my priorities straight, and she wasn't talking about the usual stuff. She said she wants to know why cellular phones are killing honeybees and what our industry plans to do about.

I had heard that bee populations were dying off, or more specifically that bees leaving the hive to do the Lord's work pollinating the planet were, like lunchtime drinkers or the extremely elderly, becoming disoriented and never finding their way back. According to a report on Good Morning America, which I swear I don't usually watch, cell phone signal radiation could be the cause.

Several other reports trace this theory to a study by researchers at Germany's Landau University. But, in the ABC report, the only expert quoted as supporting the theory was George Carlo, the man the cellular industry loves to hate. Carlo, the chairman of his very own Science and Public Policy Institute, helped revive the supposed cell phone-brain tumor link in recent years after the industry and phone users seemed to have forgotten about it. Only recently have new studies--like last month's report from the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Helsinki--emerged which claim to prove there is no link. That is, unless you count intense usage over more than 10 years with the phone pressed to the same side of the head the whole time--the Helsinki study was less confident about the absence of a link under those circumstances. But how many of us does that cover? Wait, don't answer that.

I don't know whether there is a link between cell phones and brain cancer, cell phones and drunken bees or the CIA and JFK, but the cellular industry shouldn't worry too much about this latest conspiracy theory. If anything it's an opportunity to promote more usage of texting and content applications so that little bee carcasses aren't falling all around you as you continue into a second hour of talking to your best friend on the phone.

Short of that, but what are we supposed to do? Unbuild the world's wireless networks? Stop using our cell phones? We didn't stop when someone said we might get brain tumors, so my guess is that if there is a link to bee decline, the bees don't stand a chance.

E-mail me at doshea@telephonyonline.com.