What's that piping sound?

**Mud Songs** · 09-20-2011, 05:03 AM

I heard some piping sounds from one of my hives yesterday and I'm wondering if anyone can take a listen and tell me what they think:

http://mudsongs.org/piping-from-inside-the-hive/

I know that newly emerged queens often pipe away. The hive in question was requeened in July and seems to be a healthy hive. The last time I checked, the queen had plenty of laying room, so she shouldn't be is danger of becoming honey bound. It might not even be a queen piping. We've had our fair share of wasps hanging around the hives lately, and I've witness a few skirmishes. Maybe it's the sound of a bee battling it out with a wasp.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to think.

Thanks,

**KQ6AR** · 09-20-2011, 05:34 PM

Listened to the audio twice, but don't here a queen piping. Just a lot of buzzing.

**Mud Songs** · 09-20-2011, 05:51 PM

You might have to turn up your speakers, but there is some distinctive piping sounds in there. Some other beekeepers got back to me and said a queen piping has a more urgent sound that goes on longer. The piping sound in the audio file is like a series of quick peeps instead. I'm still not sure what it is (it was still going on again today), but it seems unlikely that it's a new queen.

**Beev** · 09-20-2011, 05:53 PM

I could hear it. Ive never heard piping in person, just on other videos, but that's what it sounds like to me. Have you opened the hive to see if there are any queen cells? Maybe they didn't like the new queen and superseded.

**Ted Kretschmann** · 09-20-2011, 06:25 PM

Piping is a challenge sound queens make right before mortal combat. They will even challenge each other while still in the queen cell. It is always fun to have a hundred cage queens on top of the dresser and listen to them pipe at each other. ZEEEEP ZEEP ZEEP ZEEP ZEEP!! Anyways beeks, bees make a little more range of sound than we all realize. A good beekeeper learns to recognize these sounds and can tell just by the sounds the bees make if all is well with the colony There is so much we do know about bees and so much that is still a mystery..... And who knows, maybe the queen did do a little pipe to let everyone else in the hive know "all is well with me"". Good luck and good beekeeping. TED

**Mud Songs** · 09-20-2011, 06:47 PM

I haven't checked the hive for supercedure cells yet. Bad weather and other things I have to do will prevent me from inspecting the hive for another four or five days. If the original queen was superceded, I'm not sure why. Maybe the queen is injured, though she was laying well the last time I checked about two weeks ago. Plenty of fresh brood, plenty of room to lay.

I'm glad I managed to record the sound of the piping. Whatever is going on, at least I'll have a record of it, and I'll know by this weekend what's going on.

**lisalazarus** · 09-20-2011, 08:31 PM

I heard that--I've heard it out of both of my first year hives!

**Ted Kretschmann** · 09-20-2011, 08:57 PM

Mud, do you think you might have rolled the queen doing an inspection?? We run nine frames to prevent that from happening in the brood chamber. Thus we are able to space the frames apart before we pull one to examine. TED

**Mud Songs** · 09-21-2011, 06:33 AM

I don't think I rolled the queen during the last inspection, though I could have. (I'm converting all our brood boxes to 9 frames next spring.) I only pulled a few frames from each of the 2 deeps. I could see the queen wasn't in danger of becoming honey bound, so I left it at that. I didn't spot the marked queen during the inspection. That was 10 days ago.

The hive has two medium honey supers on top that I will remove this weekend. The honey is just about capped. That's when I'll find out what's going on.

I noticed about 10 mins ago the bees in that hive driving out the drones like gang busters. I could still hear the piping, too, more like brief little screams.

It's probably just that time of the year when drones get the boot. Or might it mean something else. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

**Sully1882** · 09-21-2011, 11:41 AM

i am super new to bee keeping and wouldn't know it if I heard it until I knew to look for something. I can hear that bleating sound... kinda like a little lamb in the background is what it sounds like. So that's the queen huh? The little Zeeeeep sounds. Cool. Thanks for sharing!

Sully