Bee Communication

Would a recording from Hive A affect Hive B?

Wenner recorded a jarred hive from the point of jarring to its return to normal.

When the hive is jarred, the collective reaction of hundreds of guarding bees is heard as a sharp, loud buzz. This is followed shortly by a "piping" of workers throughout the hive, which consists of faint beeps at half-second intervals, the sound being a complex one with a fundamental frequency of 500 cycles per second. The piping goes on for several minutes. Apparently it serves to soothe the hive; it has been found that a recording of such piping, played to the hive, will quickly quiet the disturbed bees.

Simpson and Greenwood created an artificial sound of the queen bee piping, a sound used to prepare the hive for an immanent departure. Then they played the recording to other hives.

When the vibrations were applied to four hives containing very small colonies with unmated queens less than one week old, all four colonies swarmed, leaving no bees in their hives. Sixteen slightly larger colonies, also containing queens a few days old, were divided into two groups of eight. One group received vibrations and five of the colonies in it swarmed, each leaving a proportion of its bees in its hive. The other eight colonies did not receive vibrations and none of them swarmed.

Would the recorded collective sound of Hive A effect Hive B? Yes.

First I’ll review the concepts of “natural” and “resonant” frequency. Let’s turn to physics to explain frequency behavior.

… [Two tuning] forks are connected by the surrounding air particles. As the air particles surrounding the first fork (and its connected sound box) begin vibrating, the pressure waves which it creates begin to impinge at a periodic and regular rate of 256 Hz upon the second tuning fork (and its connected sound box). The energy carried by this sound wave through the air is tuned to the frequency of the second tuning fork. Since the incoming sound waves share the same natural frequency as the second tuning fork, the tuning fork easily begins vibrating at its natural frequency. This is an example of resonance - when one object vibrating at the same natural frequency of a second object forces that second object into vibrational motion. (glenbrook)

In my theory, the hive acts as the sound box and the bees as the tuning forks.

Is the sound produced by wing-vibration a language?

In Wenner’s article, “Sound Communication in Honey Bees”, he answers three important questions regarding language:

i. Is wing-vibration language?                                                                                                                                 A close analysis of these sounds and the circumstances of their emission now provides the strongest evidence that bees use sound to convey specific messages.

ii. How is the sound produced?                                                                                                                                It appears, therefore, that wing vibration is responsible at least for amplification, and probably for production, of the bee's sounds.

iii. How do bees “hear”? 
[O]bservations indicate that the bees receive sound through their legs from the vibrating structure on which they stand. Quite possibly they have receiving organs for sound on their legs below the knee. There is also evidence that they receive sound through their antennae.

To Read the Full Version of BHB Research Paper with Footnotes Click HERE