Honey Bee Sensory Superpowers: Sound

Most of a honey bee's social life unfolds in the darkness of the hive. While vision is crucial for navigation outside, it has little to no role (as far as we know!) with interactions in the hive. For a long time, it was believed honey bees relied on chemical communication using pheromones (more later in a future post). However, more recent discoveries have shown that bees also exist in a world of sound and vibrations, adding another dimension to their communication.

Substrate and Airborne Vibration Detection

Honey bees detect sound vibrations using two specialized sensory organs: the subgenual organ and Johnston’s organ.

The subgenual organ is located in the tibia just below the knee (see photo below) and enables bees to perceive substrate vibrations. These are vibrations that are transmitted through solid materials, which is most often their wax comb. The comb's structure plays a role in how far these vibrations can travel, with its molded hexagonal shape potentially enhancing sound transmission.

Bees detect sound vibrations through Johnston’s organ, located at the base of their antennae (see photo below). This organ contains tiny sensory hairs called sensilla, which sense airborne vibrations by detecting how sound waves cause the antennae to move. With the help of over 300 nerves, Johnston’s organ converts these vibrations into nerve impulses, which are then sent to the brain for processing.

Vibroacoustic Signals

Honey bees rely on vibroacoustic signals, which combine both vibration (vibro) and sound waves (acoustic). This kind of signal captures the combined effect of both sound and physical movement within a system (their hive). Worker bees use body movements, wing vibrations, high-frequency muscle contractions, and direct contact with the comb or other bees to produce these signals. Vibroacoustic sound plays a crucial role in foraging and maintaining colony organization.

One type of vibroacoustic signal is called squeaking. Worker bees sometimes produce brief squeaking sounds, which are substrate vibrations travelling through the comb. To generate this substrate vibration, a worker bee presses her thorax against the comb and contracts her wing muscles, sending vibrations through the wax. It has been said that one purpose of these signals is to help quiet the colony to allow for the effective transmission of more important messages (say from the queen herself).

Returning foragers use vibroacoustic signals during the waggle dance, which is a vital form of communication that pinpoints the location of the best foraging spots to other foragers in the vicinity of the dance. As the forager dances, she generates low-frequency substrate vibrations (as low as 12 Hz), which other bees detect through the comb using their subgenual organs in their legs. Sometimes the dancing bee also emits pulsed signals, where the number of pulses corresponds to the distance to the food source, ensuring precise communication about the best foraging locations (more later in a future post about bee dances).

The last common worker bee sound is the whooping signal. Workers produce this when they experience sudden disturbances, such as bumping into each other or reacting to an external force outside the hive. Though this signal is often outside the range of human hearing, many beekeepers (including us at Buddha Bee) insist they can sense these cute, startled reactions!

Queen Piping

One of the most unique sounds in a hive is the piping of a virgin queen, typically heard in spring after a colony swarms (or is split by a beekeeper) and is undergoing a requeening event. It is important to note that while piping is most often performed by virgin queens, mated queens can engage in piping too. These sounds result from rapid thoracic muscle contractions, which transmit both substrate vibrations through the wax comb and audible airborne sound waves, spreading the message throughout the hive. This piping sound consists of two distinct notes: tooting and quacking. The first virgin queen to emerge from her cell produces tooting sounds, while unhatched queens respond with quacking.

In the chaos of requeening, it seems risky for an unhatched queen to respond to the tooting of an emerged virgin queen, as the latter is highly aggressive and seeks to eliminate rivals. Tooting helps the emerged queen gather followers and encourage them to not allow other virgins to hatch simultaneously (although as a beekeeper you might see 5+ virgins running around all at once in a really large hive). But why do unhatched quacking queens respond instead of staying silent? One theory suggests quacking prompts worker bees to protect the unhatched queens, preventing immediate attack from the tooter. Workers are also known to feed the quacking queens through small openings in the wax of their capped cell in the few hours before they themselves hatch.

Often, the first queen to emerge (or even first few) departs with a secondary (virgin) swarm, allowing one or more quackers to hatch, take over the tooting role, and repeat the cycle. Eventually, workers permit a single tooting queen to eliminate the remaining quacking queens, sometimes even assisting in the process. It is important for a colony to rear many new virgin queens to ensure the highest chance that one of them successfully “takes the throne.”

Honey Bee Buzz

The most recognizable honey bee sound is, of course, their buzz! The familiar hum we all know comes from the rapid movement of their wings during flight, which generates vibrations in the air. Honey bees beat their wings around 200 times per second, allowing them to fly at speeds of 15–20 MPH. With such rapid motion, it’s no surprise that their wings produce a constant, audible buzz.

Interestingly, the frequency of honey bee buzzing—typically between 200 and 250 Hz—has been shown to have a calming effect on humans. This gentle, consistent vibration in the musical key of C can help lower cortisol levels, reduce stress, and even promote relaxation, much like the soothing effects of white noise or meditation frequencies.

But what about when you’re inspecting a hive and a guard bee starts buzzing more aggressively around your veil? Honey bees also use their buzz as a warning signal, making themselves sound more threatening to potential intruders. As a beekeeper, you quickly learn to read a hive’s temperament and recognize when guard bees are alarmed. Moving slowly and deliberately helps minimize disturbance and keeps the colony calm.

There is ongoing debate about whether honey bees use their wing vibrations to communicate with one another. When a guard bee emits a louder, more urgent buzz, do other bees respond to the sound itself, the release of alarm pheromones, or a combination of both? While the exact role of buzzing in honey bee communication remains uncertain, it is possible that they use it as yet another way to convey information within the colony.

Sources:

https://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/pdf/1993/03/Apidologie_0044-8435_1993_24_3_ART0009.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoU-94kmf14

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7711573/

https://www.beeculture.com/a-closer-look-sound-generation-and-hearing/

https://www.gfadk.com/blog/buzzing-bees-emit-a-healing-vibrational-frequency