Abstract
Of the many signals used by honey bees during the process of swarming, two of them—the stop signal and the worker piping signal—are not easily distinguished for both are mechano-acoustic signals produced by scout bees who press their bodies against other bees while vibrating their wing muscles. To clarify the acoustic differences between these two signals, we recorded both signals from the same swarm and at the same time, and compared them in terms of signal duration, fundamental frequency, and frequency modulation. Stop signals and worker piping signals differ in all three variables: duration, 174 ± 64 vs. 602 ± 377 ms; fundamental frequency, 407 vs. 451 Hz; and frequency modulation, absent vs. present. While it remains unclear which differences the bees use to distinguish the two signals, it is clear that they do so for the signals have opposite effects. Stop signals cause inhibition of actively dancing scout bees whereas piping signals cause excitation of quietly resting non-scout bees.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the staff of the Shoals Marine Laboratory for general assistance. This work was supported by Cornell Agriculture Experiment Station grant NYC-191522 (T.D.S), University of California-Riverside grant CA-R*-ENT-6892-H (P.K.V), and U.K. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council grant BB/G02166X/1 (T.S.).
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Communicated by: Sven Thatje
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Schlegel, T., Visscher, P.K. & Seeley, T.D. Beeping and piping: characterization of two mechano-acoustic signals used by honey bees in swarming. Naturwissenschaften 99, 1067–1071 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-012-0990-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-012-0990-5