Charles Butler (1571–1647) has been called the Father of English Beekeeping. [1] Among his many discoveries was that the colony was governed by a queen bee, the benefits of bees for fruit production and swarm catching. Another startling discovery was the “music” sang by bees. These were tones emitted from within the hive by bees. In 1623 “Butler transliterated the tones and included the Bees’ Madrigal”: a musical score about the sound an emerging queen emits – piping – and the relationship to the actual sound made by a young virgin queen. A sample of this musical is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2eonteQEps.
Hundreds of years later, research was able to decipher the origin of these tones. “Toots” and “quacks” came from queen honeybees. [2] Combined, they form “piping.” While the exact message of toots and quacks are unknown, their context is for the preparation of swarming. Toots cause a delay of emergence of confined queens. A tooting signal is produced by a queen who has emerged from her cell and quacking signals made by queens confined in their cells.” If a swarm is eminent, the new queen toots while worker bees confine other queens in their cell, feeding them through a small slit. (Should the colony decide not to swarm, the free queen kills the remaining queens who have not emerged from their cell.) The toots and quacks are heard as a collection of pulses, aka “syllables”. These pulses vary in length and frequency, varying between 300 Hz and 500 Hz. The purpose of this piping is for local communication within the nest. A sampling is available at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Hb3YM9H_edY.
Another study [3] found a second form of piping was used to signal the liftoff of a swarm to its final destination. This would be a cluster who has left the original nest and is hanging on to a branch or other material. The piping bees, aka Pipers, consists mostly, perhaps all, of scout bees. They excitedly make their way through the swarm cluster and pause every second or so to emit a pipe. Each pipe is a blast of sound that lasts approximately a half second. The pipe frequency rises from 100-200 Hz to 200-250 Hz. What is the purpose of this piping? It is a signal to the swarm cluster to prepare for liftoff! (Along with the piping, two other signals include a shaking or vibration signal and “buzz runners”.) The researchers [3] indicated this piping was “reminiscent of the revving of a Formula One racing car’s engine.” Others have described the sound as that of “bleeping sheep.”
A third form of piping has been labeled as a “begging signal” or “stop signal” [3]. It is acoustically different from other forms of piping. The sounds are short blips lasting just a tenth of a second at a frequency of 300-400 Hz. The sound is produced by tremble dancers in response to nest mates performing a waggle dance. Its effect is to inhibit – stop – waggle dancers from continuing: “stop waggle dancing!” When a nectar source is no longer viable for foragers, the stop signal is intended to cause foragers to look for other sources.
How does the honey bee emit these piping sounds? Some observers [3] have described it: the piper presses her thorax to the comb, lifts her abdomen, raises her wings and spreads them slightly (making an angle of about 40 degrees), and vibrates her wings to emit a loud sound.
Except for piping during a swarm cluster, normally worker piping is associated with the disturbance of a colony or when a colony is queenless. However, in 1996 researchers [4] discovered piping in undisturbed, queenright colonies – yet another form of piping communication among nest mates! They found these pipers wandered throughout the hive for up to 2.5 hours, stopping every few seconds to emit a pipe, which lasted about 1 second at a frequency of 330-430 Hz. Another unusual fact of this piping is that not all of the pipers were foragers: “two had been foraging and one had been unloading water collectors.” The information being passed along by the pipers and how it is processed by receivers is unknown and yet to be deciphered by researchers, though is may serve as a “foraging-related signal”.
Finally (and unrelated to beekeeping), music lovers may be curious how these piping frequencies translate to musical notes: https://mixbutton.com/mixing-articles/music-note-to-frequency-chart/
References
- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Butler_(beekeeper)
- [2] “The tooting and quacking vibration signals of honeybee queens: a quantitative analysis”: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00603817
- [3] “Worker piping in honey bee swarms and its role in preparing for liftoff”: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00359-001-0243-0
- [4] “Worker piping associated with foraging in undisturbed queenright colonies of honey bees”: https://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/abs/1996/01/Apidologie_0044-8435_1996_27_1_ART0002/Apidologie_0044-8435_1996_27_1_ART0002.html
- [5] “Piping, Tooting, Quacking…and now Whooping – Sounds from the Hive”: https://bluetoad.com/publication/?m=5417&i=573828&view=articleBrowser&article_id=3330185&ver=html5