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Vibrational Behaviour in Honeybees

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Biotremology: Physiology, Ecology, and Evolution

Part of the book series: Animal Signals and Communication ((ANISIGCOM,volume 8))

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Abstract

In the darkness of the nests of the western honeybee, Apis mellifera, communication among colony members is primarily based on chemical and mechanical signals. In this chapter, we review what is known about vibrational communication in honeybees. We first focus on the signals produced by A. mellifera queens and workers and then widen the scope and review the sparse literature on vibrational signalling in Asian honeybee species. In most of the studies on acoustic communication in honeybees, airborne sounds rather than substrate vibrations were recorded, thus our knowledge about the actual generation of substrate vibrations is limited. We then discuss what is known about transmission and perception of substrate vibrations that travel in the nests of honeybees through the wax comb. Finally, we report about attempts to make use of sound and vibration signals for the assessment of the status of managed honeybee colonies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Amongst many new observations and conclusions, Butler discovered that the single individual surrounded by a retinue of worker bees is not a king, a male, as previously generally assumed, but is in fact a female, the queen. It might have made the unthinkable idea of a female monarch easier to consider that just in the period of time in which Butler made his observation the British Empire was ruled by Elizabeth I. Butler observed and carefully described the life cycle of honeybees including the swarming behaviour.

  2. 2.

    Amplitudes are throughout the text, table and figures in this chapters generally peak-to-peak amplitudes.

  3. 3.

    The behaviour reminds the human observer of the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty (Grimm brothers) in which everybody living in the princess” castle freezes immediately and falls asleep for a hundred years when the princess pricks her finger on the needle of the spinning wheel. In honeybees the effect lasts less than a hundred years–bees restart moving after some few seconds.

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Author notes

  1. Felix A. Hager

    Present address: Research and Development, Bayer Crop Science, Monheim, Germany

  2. Kathrin Krausa

    Present address: International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Nairobi, Kenya

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Biology and Biotechnology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Wolfgang H. Kirchner, Felix A. Hager & Kathrin Krausa

Authors
  1. Wolfgang H. Kirchner
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  2. Felix A. Hager
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  3. Kathrin Krausa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wolfgang H. Kirchner .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Science, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, USA

    Peggy S. M. Hill

  2. Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, San Michele all’Adige, Trento, Italy

    Valerio Mazzoni

  3. Department of Organisms and Ecosystems Research, National Institute of Biology (NIB), Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Nataša Stritih-Peljhan

  4. Department of Organisms and Ecosystems Research, National Institute of Biology, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Meta Virant-Doberlet

  5. Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery, Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity, Berlin, Germany

    Andreas Wessel

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Kirchner, W.H., Hager, F.A., Krausa, K. (2022). Vibrational Behaviour in Honeybees. In: Hill, P.S.M., Mazzoni, V., Stritih-Peljhan, N., Virant-Doberlet, M., Wessel, A. (eds) Biotremology: Physiology, Ecology, and Evolution. Animal Signals and Communication, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97419-0_16

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