Joe Hemmens summarized some of Eddie Woods' conclusions about the
frequency of bee sounds and included the following comment:

>In an article written by Eddie Woods in New Scientist published
>circa 1950 he gives the worker bee wing beat frequency as 250
>beats per second plus or minus 1.5 percent.

   Earlier on this network, Barry Birkey wrote (in part):

>Dr. Adrian Wenner has done a significant amount of work in bee sounds and
>you can read an article of his at:

   http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/sci1964.htm

   That article (item #4) has sound spectrograms (sonograms) of various bee
sounds.  Although a flying bee does produce a sound of about 250 cps, a
swarm moving through the air has a much higher frequency --- as experienced
beekeepers well know.

   Queens that "pipe" produce two distinctly different sounds.  When a
free-roaming queen "toots" , she may emphasize a fundamental frequency of
about 400 cps and a harmonic of about 1200 cps.  Those still kept in their
cells by workers "quack," and emphasize several harmonics while so doing.

   One can see sonograms of those and other bee sounds in that article on
the web site.

   Eddie Woods incorrectly concluded that queens produced their piping
sounds by use of their spiracles.  James Simpson of the Rothamstead
Experimental Station showed that not to be the case --- as summarized in
that web site article.

                                                Adrian

Adrian M. Wenner                    (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road                     (805) 893-8062  (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA  93106  [http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm]

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*    "To have one's opinions prefabricated can be a source of great
*   comfort and relief.  It relieves one of the responsibility of
*   choice."
*                                          Murray Levin, 1971
*
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