Chris Slade wrote (in part):

>The easiest way to work out how fast a bee beats her wings is to find
>somebody musical who can tell you the note that is produced.  For instance I
>am told (not being musical myself) that the honey bee in normal mode produces
>a note close to middle C which (from memory) is 256 beats per second.

   The frequency he reported seems quite correct.  In our study of bee
sounds, we used an adjustable strobe light shined on a bee with wings
moving.  By adjusting the dial, the wings appear stopped when the strobe
light has the same frequency.

   An audiospectrograph also does well, as we used back in the early 1960s.
Actually bees produce many different sound frequencies, as I reported in a
1964 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN article.  One can see that article as #4 on
http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm

   While I no longer agree with some of the conclusions in that article,
the sound spectrographs remain valid.

                                                        Adrian

Adrian M. Wenner                    (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road                     (805) 893-8062  (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA  93106

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*
*  "When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory,
*  we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when
*  the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted."
*
*                                      --- Claude Bernard, 1865
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