Hive Accoustics
Testing How Sound Travels Inside a Hive
Before testing microphones in a colony full of bees, we needed to better understand how sound behaves inside the hive itself.
Using an empty Langstroth hive, microphones were positioned in four locations: opposite sides of a frame, at the top center of the hive, and low near the hive entrance. Controlled sounds were then introduced from different locations within the hive.
Test sounds included white noise, ambient environmental sounds, and recordings of queen piping, both alone and combined with background noise. The closed hive allowed us to compare how microphone location and distance from the sound source affected what was actually recorded.
This wasn't intended to recreate the complex acoustic environment of thousands of bees. It answered a simpler engineering question first: Does where we put the microphone change what we hear?
