I have been wondering how a queen bee reacts when she hears another queen piping. I thought: surely some bee scientist has done exactly that: record the piping sound and play it back to bees to see what happens. I did some limited googling and couldn’t find any scientific paper that dealt with exactly that- though I am going to assume it’s out there and I used the wrong key words. It just seems a no brainer: what self respecting bee scientist wouldn’t want to see how a queen reacts to anothers piping?
Has anyone heard of such a study? I was just musing and wondering if the queen hears piping does she scuttle over to investigate? If she does- could a small device be used to attract her for observation, marking, etc? I emailed ‘the scientific beekeeper’ Randy Oliver in the USA to ask if he read any such research- he said he couldn’t recall- but that he once had a friend who was interested in the same idea and was looking into patenting a queen bee piping trap… but he never followed up on what became of it.
Hi Jack, the way I see it, if a queen bee heard another queen bee piping, she would certainly go & investigate with the view of preparing to do battle. If you want more queen bees, just make more splits. The more splits you do, the more queens you can make. Keep all of your brood frames A1 with worker comb & it just snow balls.
Can you please send me the recording you did? I have a device called the “Apivox” http://www.apivoxauditor.com/book--eng-for-sale.html which listens to be’s and can tell you from studies what different sounds are actually telling us including piping. It actually works well with recordings.
The developer is working on his website right now so a person could send in recordings and get them analyzed as a teaser to sell the device. The app is only US$30, but more than happy to run the test off of my device right now for you. I’m more curious than anything else on how well it works. And also to hear a known piping sound and seeing what the device says it’s saying. More than happy to videotape the experience on my side to you could see how the device performs and then provides the information I will send you a personal note so you can have my email address to send me the sound recording