Question:
Dear Buzz About Bees
Do bees have ears?
- Brad, USA
The short answer is:
No, bees do not have ears, however, they are able to pickup sound, so yes, in a sense they can ‘hear’ but not through the use of ears.
How do we know that bees can detect sound?
Several research experiments have confirmed this.
In 1989, researchers Towne and Kirchner managed to trainbees to leave a feeder in response to a sound signal, and in order to avoid amild electric shock.
Later, in 1991,Kirchner et al trained bees to turn left or right as they entered a feeder,depending on a sound signal.
So if bees don’t have ears, how do bees detect sound?
Photograph, with thanks to Isaias Sanchez
So far as scientists can make out, bees may use:
- The antennae – actually, a very particularpart of each antenna. In honey bees,there are a collection of sensory cells (called the Johnson’s organ) that aresensitive to vibration (remember that sound waves are basically vibrations),and they are found in the second segment (called the pedicel) of each antenna.
- Thelegs – In honey bees, sound vibrations are picked up by organs in the legs,called subgenual organs.
Atthe time of writing this page, it’s not clear how bumble bees or solitary bees pickup sound, although we might guess they pick up sounds in similar ways to honey bees.
How do beesuse sound information?
When honeybees perform their famous waggle dance, a dancing bee waggles her abdomen andvibrates her wings.
Thevibrations and sounds she creates are then detected by other members of thecolony, (Michelsen et al. 1986a; Dreller and Kirchner 1993a; Michelsen 2003),such that she is able to transmit important information to other colony members.
Sound is important in honey bee communication. Honey beesuse a range of piping and buzzing sounds in the nest that are picked up by other bees, and are used to communicate and affect behaviour of the colony.
For example, a small group of experiencedforager bees called 'nest-site scouts' produce a "piping-signal" thatprimes the workers for swarming (Rangel, 2008).
You can read more about this on my page about how and why bees buzz.
Resources:
Thefollowing references are provided for further information:
- Dreller,C. and W.H. Kirchner 1993a. Hearing in honeybees: localization of the auditorysense organ. J. Comp. Physiol. A 173: 275-279.
- Dreller,C. and W.H. Kirchner 1993b. How bees perceive the information in the dancelanguage. Naturwissenschaften 80: 319-321.
- Kirchner,W.H. 1993. Acoustical communication in honeybees. Apidologie 24: 297-307.
- Kirchner,W.H. 1994. Hearing in honeybees: The mechanical response of the bee’s antennato near field sound. J. Comp. Physiol. A 175: 261-265.
- Kirchner,W.H., C. Dreller and W.F. Towne 1991. Hearing in honeybees: Operantconditioning and spontaneous reactions to airborne sound. J. Comp. Physiol. A168: 85-89.
- Towne, W.F. and W.H. Kirchner 1989. Hearing in honeybees: detection of air-particle oscillations. Science 244: 686-688.