What’s the Buzz? How Honey Bees Communicate

Although animated movies may lead us to believe otherwise, insects do not speak English to us or to each other. Many of them, including the honey bee, do not even use their mouths to speak at all. So how do these pollinators talk and relay important information to each other? There are actually several methods that bees use to communicate, and most of them have to do with their body movements rather than mouth movements. 

The Honey Bee Dance

The most complicated yet common method of communication between honey bees is a dance that the female worker bees use to report to one another. The dancing communication takes place only during certain times of the year when the nectar is flowing the most. This is because the main purpose of the dance is to lead other worker bees to the nectar source that one of them found. This dance includes all of the vital information to find this delectable food source, including location, intensity, and taste. The worker bee performs right inside the entrance of the hive on a makeshift “dance floor” that gives space for the audience to get the full scope of her report and directions. 

According to Dr. Karl von Frisch’s research in the early 1970s (which won him a Nobel Prize in 1973), honey bees use the sun as a reference point to give directions to their colony. The worker bee will move her body in the shape of a number eight, pointing to the nectar source using the sun. A bee pointing her body up means the nectar is in line with the sun, while an angle to either side means the nectar is in that direction relative to the sun. The longer the dance goes on, the further away the nectar is. The performer will also share the scent of the nectar with her audience, who can taste it with their antennae to see if they love it too. Many of the worker bees will wait until the dance is over to go check out the nectar, but some will leave the performance early and investigate using little information. This is so that the colony can divide and conquer, and not have to go as one large unit. The ones who leave early may find their own nectar source as well, which would provide even more food for the hive. For the bees who stay to the end of the dance, a vote takes place on whether or not to go check it out by the audience doing their own dance. A higher number of participants and more intense dances means that they definitely want to go. This is also how bees decide where to relocate the hive to; a relocation only happens if the vote is essentially unanimous. Since bees can’t talk, the art of dance is a sufficient way to keep the colony alive and well-fed. 

Buzz-Run

Every family needs an alarm system in place so that the group at large is notified in case of an emergency, and the buzz-run is the honey bees’ version of an alarm. This is a method to notify the whole hive of an emergency, such as the colony being threatened. Certain honey bees who know of the situation will quickly fly through the hive in a zigzag pattern to reach as many bees as possible. The bee will vibrate the whole time to get the attention of the other bees, and tells them to get outside as quick as they can. The special signals that the messengers use tell the swarm where exactly to go. Sometimes, worker bees will use pheromones to lead the swarm in a specific direction to their new home. This is known as streaking. But most of the time, the swarm will just be led by the knowledgable bees who see the path and can fly above and in front of the group to guide them. While honey bees don’t like to relocate very often, it is useful to have this method in place in order to quickly evacuate and move when the time comes. 

Touch

This one is less of a mass communication method and more of a way to perform some of the daily activities necessary for living in a group. For example, bees identify one another using their antennae to feel and get the specific smell or taste of the other bee. Worker bees also get the smell and taste of certain nectar from the original worker’s antennae, as stated before. Bees clean their own antennae often so that they can have as clear an experience as possible when they need to use them. Bees also use their feet to measure the individual combs of the hive to know where they are and how big the surface area actually is. Touch is not utilized in mass announcements, but it does help bees to find their specific friends within the hive. 

Pheromones

While honey bees use their body movements to make announcements and give directions, their pheromones are used for smaller yet important tasks in identification. Pheromones are chemical factors that only members of the same species can smell and identify. Honey bees use these not only to identify their fellow bees, but also to pick out their home hive as a whole. Each hive has its own specific scent, so it is easy for bees to find their way home after a long day of foraging. Within the hive, the queen bee also has her own scent. This serves the purposes of notifying other female bees of her location, preventing them from laying eggs, and acting as a homing beacon for the males to find and mate with her. There is also a special pheromone for danger, so the bees that sense danger can release this scent in addition to the buzz-run and vibrating methods. With the use of pheromones, there is nothing that honey bees cannot communicate with one another. 

Buzzing

To our knowledge, honey bees cannot hear sounds with their “ears” or any kind of hearing appendage. This is why bees use vibrations so frequently, as this is the only sensation they can hear and differentiate between meanings. The buzzing sounds that bees make are audible to us as a sound, but it is a vibration within the swarm. If the buzzing is loud and angry-sounding, the swarm is threatened and stressed. If the buzzing is very quiet, the bees are calm and feeling okay. The queen bee is actually known to produce her own sounds, which is called piping. Even though she will typically get answered from her nymphs, it is unclear to human scientists what she is saying to her bees. Other bees can make piping sounds, but it doesn’t seem like they use it to actively communicate certain messages to one another. 

Vibrations

Similarly, honey bees vibrate their bodies to communicate with their hive. They will fly around the hive while vibrating, interacting with bees from all classes in this way. This is sometimes used to draw the bees’ attention to the dance happening at the entrance regarding nectar or hive relocation. But interestingly enough, this method is not super common for talking with fellow bees. It can be useful since every level of bee understands the meaning, but honey bees tend to favor other methods of communication for faster and more effective communing.

Two of these methods are shaking and trembling by other worker bees. A bee shaking her body means that they need more foragers to seek out nectar and other food sources for the hive. This may be used when the nectar is not as strong and the colony needs more sustenance to live. A honey bee that trembles its body by others is saying that they need more bees to press the nectar they have found. This is so that the pressed nectar can be turned into honey to fulfill their main purpose in life. The more bees who forage and press nectar, the faster the hive can produce food and keep their family going strong. 

Honey bees are important for the environment and general ecosystem, but it is also important that they don’t get too comfortable close to our homes. Pest control has options to remove the problem without damaging the general balance of honey bee life within the ecosystem. Give us a buzz if you hear too much buzzing in your yard. 

Citations

Borst, P. (2018, February 27). Communication among the bees. Bee Culture. Available at https://www.beeculture.com/communication-among-bees/ (Accessed on March 8, 2022). 

Communication. (n.d.). PBS Bees. Retrieved on March 8, 2022, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bees/hivecomm.html 

Jernigan, C.M. (2017, June 13). Bee communication. ASU – Ask a Biologist. Available at https://askabiologist.asu.edu/honey-bee-communication (Accessed on March 8, 2022). 

The language of bees. (n.d.). Perfect Bee. Retrieved on March 8, 2022, from https://www.perfectbee.com/blog/the-language-of-bees