sound waves

[Michael Palmer]

Well Mark, I asked Dewey....

NO do not know a reference. I think I heard that they Drum and sing - the drumming is what probably does the movement of the bees - not thier "singing". Bees have NO receptors to "hear" airborne sounds. The waggling dance has sound but they pick it up as vibrations via feet. Beekeepers used to bang on pots etc to get a swarm to land -claiming their clanging noises caused bees to settle - which swarms do (settle) after relatively short flights so if you were an ancient beekeeper following a swarm and you kept banging on your pot the bees would settle and of course you would claim credit for it.


So No Mike sorry I couldn't be of help...I have serious doubts that bees can "hear" any airborne sounds so the singing as you harvest is not likely the factor - they may also be drumming (as I have heard) or the bees may simply move away from sunlight and confusion so opening your log (or clay pipe in case of Eqypt) may simply cause the bees to move away from the light/opening of one end - whether or not the beekeeper "sings"...recognize that the world of beekeeping has many traditions and practices that can best be described as "worship" of bees...offering a nice song is probably in that tradition - respect for your bees by offering them a "song" as you "steal" their riches!!!
Trust all is well. Hope yuo and family have a good holiday season.
Dewey

[Omie]

This reminds me of worm grunting...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKNv6ZrC5mg

[bigbearomaha]

This article suggests that honey bees do have a sort of hearing, based as some have suggested in alternative sense of vibration.

Honey bees can detect the air-particle movements associated with airborne sounds
(Towne and Kirchner, 1989), and they do so using Johnston's organ, a chorodontal
organ in the antennal pedicel (Dreller and Kirchner, 1993a). Air-particle
oscillations cause the long, thin antennal flagellum to vibrate, and Johnston's
organ registers the movements. This sensory system, which is sensitive to air
vibrations up to about 500 Hz, is well suited to detect the 200- to 300-Hz sounds
produced by dancing bees (Kirchner et at., 1991; Kirchner, 1994), and this is
the only natural context, other than its possible use in the control of flight
(Heran, 1959), in which the sensory system is known to be used (Dreller and
Kirchner, 1993b). On these grounds, the ears might be considered "dance detectors."
This would be typical of particle-movement ears in insects, especially
Johnstons' organs, which generally respond best to a limited range of biologically
important frequencies, do not discriminate frequencies well, and usually
seem to be designed for and used in a single behavioral context.

Also, from SETI (yes, that SETI)...

Hearing

Surprising as it may seem, bees are able to hear. They don't hear sounds in the same way as mammals however. Instead they are sensitive to a few specific frequencies of vibrations which are transmitted through the air or the physical structure of the hive. They have three sets of organs for detecting these vibrations. One set is located in the legs. These organs listen for messages transmitted through the honeycomb by the Queen. The other two sets of hearing organs are in the antennae. These function like tuning forks and are only sensitive to certain frequencies. The lower part of the antennae are sensitive to about 20 beats per second. This is the frequency associated with the waggle dance which bees use to communicate the location of food. The higher parts are sensitive to between 250 to 300 beats a second. This is the frequency at which that the wing muscles vibrate when the wings are folded. The Queens use this method of communication to "speak" to the hive and control swarming.

I think there is much more investigation that can be done in this area.

Big Bear

[Michael Palmer]

Well Mark, I asked Dewey....

Another piece of the puzzle....Thanks Ann...

I ran your request for info on Egyptian singing and bees by Ann Harman. I don't have my reference books with me here in Bolivia and I knew Ann would find what we needed.
In Chapter 20 in "The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting" by Eva Crane. she found this:
"The following procedure was used for dividing colonies in both Lower and Upper Egypt according to Melior (1928) but Dr M.M. Mazeed told me in 1988 he found it only in Upper Egypt. It was done during the swarming season at the end of February or in March, in the early morning while the bees were still in the hive. The beekeeper smoked the bees from the back (as when harvesting honey) so that they (and any young queens) were crowded together at the front. Then he put his mouth to the flight entrance at the front and 'called' the bees several times. The call, which was described as kak,kak, or kak, kak, kaak or ee,ee, imitates a sound known as piping, made by young virgin queens; frequencies of the sound are discussed at the end of Section 20.6. Any virgin queens free in the hive or still in their cells were likely to reply to his 'calling,' in which case the beekeeper knew that the colony would swarm unless he took action." Etc.(how they made a divide.)


Then in another section there are comments about calling the queen -- evidently historical -- using a reed because some god called Nut (evidently goddess of the sky) responded to a reed noise; about 700 BC in Hebrew scriptures "...the Lord will whistle...for the bee from Assyria."


So it seems it has to do with the piping of virgin queens.


Once again however queen piping although audible to us, is "heard" by bees as substrate vibration. When it starts in a colony with virgin queens in cells it is picked up by others and can be quite a "noise". How a person might imitate this sound (to cause comb vibration) is quite a feat. I suspect the skilled beekeeper was using piping as his swarming forecast method (since frames are not removable in the pipe hives it would be impossible to do this inspection) and his sound imitation did not start the piping - he just listened to those colonies judged to be pretty strong (or the smoke was more important - maybe it is a factor that kicks off piping when cells present?)for piping then made his prediction. Why hasn't this been imitated by others through history? A fellow Woods had a Swarm predictor that used a change in sound by a colony as an indicator of swarming. It not longer is for sale. The problem with both methods of predicting swarming---they both are possible predicto!
!
rs ONLY at the lat moment befroe swarms cast!


Thanks to Ann we both know a lot more now>
Dewey

[deknow]

(quoting dewey caron quoting ann harmon?)A fellow Woods had a Swarm predictor that used a change in sound by a colony as an indicator of swarming. It not longer is for sale.

yes, the apidictor.
http://beedata.com/data2/listen/listenbees.htm

and of course schematics:
http://www.beesource.com/files/apidictor.pdf

but these days, it would be faster to implement this in software.

over on bee-l, jerry bromenshenk has been talking about a project to diagnose various diseases, as well as racial makeup (look for the AHB app for your iphone) by analyzing the sound inside the hive.

i expect that if one wants to understand what the bees are saying, one would have to listen to the smells in the hive.

hey michael, are you in bolivia?

deknow

[Michael Palmer]

hey michael, are you in bolivia?

deknow

Bolivia in the springtime...gosh, I wish. Nope...just here in Vermont with our first little bit of snow of the season.

Imagine...Texas and Louisiana get snow before Vermont. What is this world coming to...

[sqkcrk]

Well Mark, I asked Dewey....

NO do not know a reference. I think I heard that they Drum and sing - the drumming is what probably does the movement of the bees - not thier "singing". Bees have NO receptors to "hear" airborne sounds. The waggling dance has sound but they pick it up as vibrations via feet. Beekeepers used to bang on pots etc to get a swarm to land -claiming their clanging noises caused bees to settle - which swarms do (settle) after relatively short flights so if you were an ancient beekeeper following a swarm and you kept banging on your pot the bees would settle and of course you would claim credit for it.


So No Mike sorry I couldn't be of help...I have serious doubts that bees can "hear" any airborne sounds so the singing as you harvest is not likely the factor - they may also be drumming (as I have heard) or the bees may simply move away from sunlight and confusion so opening your log (or clay pipe in case of Eqypt) may simply cause the bees to move away from the light/opening of one end - whether or not the beekeeper "sings"...recognize that the world of beekeeping has many traditions and practices that can best be described as "worship" of bees...offering a nice song is probably in that tradition - respect for your bees by offering them a "song" as you "steal" their riches!!!
Trust all is well. Hope yuo and family have a good holiday season.
Dewey

So maybe the singing is good for the beekeeper. It keeps him calm and focused, perhaps.
How is Dewey? Enjoying retirement?
Hope you have a good holiday season too. I'm looking forward to seeing Charles in about 6 days.

[gconran]

I wonder if the vibrations of a 'happy / healthy' hive could be duplicated to help reduce the need for smoking? Some type of device to put on the hive when you're ready to do inspections tell the girls that 'all's well', 'just hang loose' until I'm done.

I haven't been able to find references to folks trying that anywhere.

[bigevilgrape]

It is very possible that frequencies could be used to kill mites, or disrupt their behavior in such a way that renders them incapable of reproducing, surviving, etc. Take the link below for an example.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...ing-water.html

It would take a while to narrow down which frequencies affect mites because of the almost (or maybe it is) limitless amounts of frequencies that can be created. But it sure would be worth a try. The military uses frequency generators of some sort for mass crowd control. It supposedly can make you feel sick and for some, lose control of their bladder. Just where does one pick up a frequency maker? I have no clue....that is waaaaay beyond my puny brain. C'mon smart people, do it for me! LOL

Between any two numbers there exists at least one rational number and one irrational number. (I could supply a proof if you really want ) Later rinse repeat and you have yourself an infinate number of frequencies. Now given the confines of humman engenering there are probably a lot fewer freqencies that we could actually recreate.

Edit: actually frequencies probably have to be whole numbers so there goes my brillant use of Real Analysis proofs. However you can still keep adding one to get to the next highest frequency. I'm sure if you go high enough you'll start having human heads explode.