More Piping

I managed to get a clearer recording today from inside the new hive.....



So what is piping?? According to wikipedia, piping collectively describes the noises made by virgin queens (and sometimes mated queen bees). When the virgin queen is still in her swarm cell she make a sound that is called "quacking". After she emerges the sound she makes changes and it is called "tooting". Apparently a virgin queen may frequently pipe before she emerges from her cell and for a brief time afterwards, and piping is most common when there is more than one queen in a hive. It is thought 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.

So, queens make a sound that's called piping. When they pipe they are either tooting or quacking, depending on whether they are inside their swarm cells or not . I'm presuming these are the two sounds you can hear in the video. An emerged queen signals her presence by tooting and then queens still in their cells reply with a quacking sound. The reply really does sound like quacking to me. Not so sure about the tooting. I think I can definitely hear two queens quacking in the reply..... but we know there are at least a dozen swarm cells in the new hive, so who knows what's really happening in there.