Do bees buzz to communicate with each other

Why do bees buzz?

Sometimes buzzing is just the sound of bees at work, and sometimes bees use buzzing and other noises to guide their nest mates The sounds are not vocalizations, nor are they defensively directed against predators. The bees vibrate their bodies and their wing muscles in different ways and the vibrations resonate through the hive.

They cool the hive and help dehydrate the honey by beating their wings, which makes a buzzing sound. Bees buzz less in hot weather because they beat their wings more slowly to reduce the risk of overheating themselves. Queen honey bees announce a threat to the nest by making quacking noises. They are also said to toot. Quacking and tooting noises are together described as queen piping: these noises are produced by rapid contractions of the bee's thoracic muscles and occur without wing movement. The sounds are transmitted by being reflected from the beeswax substrate.

How do bees communicate?

A honey bee's survival depends on social recognition and communication with other bees in the colony, so it is natural that bees are expert communicators, using sight, touch, movement, chemical signals, and, although they do not have ears, a sensitivity to certain vibrations that they feel with their legs and antennae.

They communicate about finding food, avoiding or ejecting predators, and about conditions within the hive. There may be a surplus or a shortage of food, overcrowding, a need to start building more comb, or a queen who has stopped laying eggs - each of these situations requires a group response that has to be orchestrated.

Nobel prize–winning research by Karl von Frisch revealed that bees do different "dances" in order to tell the other bees where they have located a good nectar source. Their specific movements indicate the direction and distance of the nectar source from the hive. Sound and vibrational signals exchanged by honey bees during the performance of waggle dances have been studied extensively and recorded. The dances have been analyzed using a microphone and a laser vibrometer, and a great deal has been learned about this direct, symbolic, movement-related form of transferring information.

Kristen Pastor and Thomas Seeley studied bees that follow waggle dancers and make brief piping signals, apparently trying to beg for nectar from the dancers. They found that none of the dancers gave nectar to the bees that piped them, but the piping did seem to stimulate some of the waggle dancers to stop dancing.

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