Piping describes a noise made by queen bees. Adult queens communicate through vibratory signals quacking from virgin queens and tooting from queens free in the colony, collectively known as piping. A piping queen can be a virgin queen, which gives off a series of sounds, frequently before she emerges from her cell. Mated queens may briefly pipe after being released in a hive. The piping sound is variously described as a children's trumpet tooting and quacking. It is quite loud and can be clearly heard outside the hive. The piping sound is created by the flight motor without movement of the wings. The vibration energy is resonated by the thorax. More than one queen may be in a single hive as a result of supercedure or swarming. Multiple Queen cells are prepared in both cases and five days after sealing the queen cell the developing queen can pipe. In the case of swarming, the queens will usually be virgins that remain after the primary swarm has left with the old queen. When the first virgin queen emerges from her queen cell she quickly tries to find and kill other queens, hatched or still inside their queen cells. It is postulated that the piping is a form of battle cry announcing to competing queens and the workers their willingness to fight. It may also be a signal to the worker bees which queen is the most worthwhile to support.

The piping sound is a G sharp or A natural. The adult queen pipes for a two-second pulse followed by a series of quarter-second toots.

Africanized bees queens produce more bouts of piping and more vigorous piping.

External links

• Audio file of piping queens
• SOUND COMMUNICATION IN HONEYBEES accessed 05/2005
• The Feminin' Monarchi', Or the History of Bees by Charles Butler, 1634, London; accessed 05/2005
• The "piping" and "quacking" of queen bees
• Listen to the bees by Rex Boys, 1999; The Cottage GL20 7ER; accessed 05/2005
• Bees Gone Wild Apiaries, accessed 05/2005
• THE AFRICAN HONEY BEE: Factors Contributing to a Successful Biological Invasion Stanley Scott Schneider, Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman,Deborah Roan Smith, Annual Rev. Entomology 2004. 49:351–76; accessed 05/2005
• Reproductive conflict in the honey bee Nicolas Châline, PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, September 2004, accessed 05/2005

Bees