The Sound Inside a Swarming Hive

By the time the bees in our backyard had swarmed six times I was getting a little tired of filming them. Each swarm was getting progressively smaller and the action at the entrance as the bees left the hive was getting less dramatic. I decided to try something different for the next swarm. How about trying to record the sound inside the hive during the event? Perhaps the queens would pipe differently or more often in the build to the swarm? It was getting easy to predict when the old hive would swarm. Almost everyday if it was warm and sunny and the queens were piping then the bees would pile out. On the morning of the 3/14, I placed my camera in a ziploc bag with a hole positioned over the microphone, set it recording, and positioned it in the empty super above the main body of the hive. I had three hours of recording time... the bees only waited 40 minutes before they swarmed.....

If you click the 'see...movies>>' link below then you'll see the recordings I took. I'm not suggesting that any of you will want to listen to 50 minutes of noise from inside a hive but it's fun (I think) to sample a little bit here and there. For instance, if you listen to the first video you'll hear the two queens piping, a good sample starts at 00:56. You should turn your speakers up high for this and leave them there. You'll also get a sense of the general hum within the hive on this video. It's a shame youtube doesn't work faster but if you then jump in time through the videos you can get a sense of the build up in noise within the hive. In the middle of the third video you are at the point of peak noise within the hive as the bees go crazy and swarm out of the hive. I wonder what the noise level would have been for the prime swarm nine days before? As the bees leave the hive the noise begins to diminish but later on you hear the two queens piping again. I think they both forgot to leave.... perhaps they both assumed that the other queen was going to go......

25 to 15 minutes before the peak of the swarm:


15 to 5 minutes before the peak of the swarm:


5 minutes before to 5 minutes after the peak of the swarm:


5 to 15 minutes after the swarm:


15 to 25 minutes after the swarm: