Articles/Letters
What’s the buzz at the front door?
tens to many details. They can ‘hear’ different purebred species of bees and find that hybrids between Africanised and European bees sound different. They also can ‘hear’ the response of a hive to different kinds of poisons as well as invasions by other insects and even viruses. These chorus numbers prompt texts sent to the mobile phone of the beekeeper.
Story & photo Mary Gardner
T
he soundscape changed. Startled, I looked up from my book. For weeks, I’ve listened to the wind freshening and soughing around the house. But this was a new deep hum, close, at the front door. Cautiously, I stepped outside and stood at the edge of a cloud of honey bees. Against the wind, hundreds were converging on the old cabinet. The buzz had some quality I couldn’t name. Was this the sound of one queen bee satisfied, amplified through the hundreds of workers herding together in their new pozzie? Over the next few hours, a keen beekeeper introduced frames and a box. The swarm settled into the new structure and by evening all were still. The beekeeper took away a silent box. A buzz of questions remained with me. Behind the clutter of human noise, there is the sound of ‘natural quiet’. We’re always hearing it but not often listening. This soundtrack is full of elements such as rain, wind and tree rustle. Voices such as birds, bats, dogs, mice and insects. Bees themselves are involved in a daily songand-dance routine. For gen-
LETTERS continued from page 13
enabling Byron Shire to fund the Bangalow Weir? I am not suggesting that our council print money but suppose that Council issued pre-paid rates tokens – durable, non-forgeable and attractive – with, say, a $10 face value guaranteed redeemable against rate demands for five years; they could be sold into circulation but preferably spent – by part payments to contractors – into circulation. If the notes were known as
Puzzling ‘voice’ erations, beekeepers heard something of this.
Musical text In 1609, George Butler wrote a UK best-seller about beekeeping. He proved the hives were led not by a king bee but a queen. He also interpreted the different sounds of bees as a musical text. But not until the 1940s when Eddie Woods put a microphone into his hives did anyone guess at the extent of the opera in the apiary. Woods, a sound engineer with the BBC, analysed printouts of these recordings. He realised the hive as a whole ‘sang out’ in different ways if they were disturbed or if they were about to swarm. ‘Big Bucks’ and all supportive local businesses displayed signs, ‘We trade in Big Bucks’, these rates tokens would effectively become a debt-free local currency – and bring forward the day when the Bangalow Weir could be funded. This ‘thought bubble’ may well have serious downsides, but it is floated with the conviction that within Byron Shire there surely must be persons of sufficient brainpower and influence who could come together to apply
He heard queens ‘piping’ and ‘quacking’. He patented a monitoring device called an apidictor, which alerts beekeepers that their bees were planning to abandon their current home. In 1962, Adrian Wenner described his soundtracks of bee dances. The famous wagtail movements were accompanied by solo ‘songs’ with rhythmic patterns. The number and timing of the repeats correlated to the distance to a source of food. The dance itself set the angle of the food source in relation to that of overhead sun. Now, specialists at the University of Montana are developing ‘smart hives’. Their hive technology lis-
For all we are learning about these performances, we’re still unsure what exactly produces a bee’s ‘voice’. Is it the flicking of wings, the way air is pushed through its body out of sets of holes under the wings, some mix of both or something else altogether? My query buzzes away on the brisk wind still blowing here. I stretch. At about 3,500 metres above me, winds of the other atmospheric layers race along carrying billions of living insects and spiders. Bees are sometimes among them. All rushing somewhere else. There are also smaller things up there – bacteria, dust, sea salt and other particles. These can trigger the building of ice balls in the clouds. The ‘seeds’ make clouds condense and rain fall. It’s so dry down here. We could use a good soaking.
the lessons of the Guernsey sea walls to the Bangalow Weir impasse. A study committee met for a year before the Guernsey pound was launched. There would be spin-offs from a successful outcome. If the Bangalow Weir situation was ‘sorted’, then Lis-
more Council could adopt a similar scheme to fund the refurbishment for the new art gallery! And then jointly, the two councils could set about the Lismore to Mullumbimby walking/riding/ex-railway track. Colin Cook Bangalow
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The Byron Shire Echo November 5, 2013 15