Читать книгу Bees Make the Best Pets - Jack Mingo - Страница 7

THE KEY OF BEE NATURAL

Adult bees, when they're inside the hive, make the sound of 190 vibrations per second, or a note halfway between the F# and G below middle C on the piano. That's not so interesting. What is fascinating, though, is this: when they fly, the tone bees make is—as it should be—B (248 vibrations per second).

If bees fly in B natural, what note do they sting in?

Bee sharp. What note when they hit the

windshield? Bee flat.

More Bee Sounds (Last Word, I Promise)

Oddly, winter is the time when a beehive is most in tune. Most of the bees that winter over are fully grown female workers bunched together for warmth. During that time relatively few new bees are hatched. In the warmer parts of the year, a hive is made up of not just adult females, but also male drones, young females, and bees of all ages doing different jobs; each of those jobs create different sounds. Newly hatched females are full-sized, but their wings do not become fully hardened into flight-worthy tools until the age of nine days. When they fan their floppy new wings for warmth and ventilation, the lack of wind resistance means their wings fan faster than the adults' wings, making a higher tone. Meanwhile, the oversized drones have bigger wings that flap more slowly, creating a lower tone. The guard bees, protecting the hive from bears and beekeepers, fly fast in a beeline buzz bomb, in order to have the most impact when they give a warning thump and then a sting; this creates a higher, more insistent tone. Perhaps the time to imagine you can hear Christmas carols is in the summer, when there are more notes to choose from.

THE MOST PREVALENT NOTES

Very young bee fanning: C#–D

Adult guard bee attacking: C–C#

Adult bee flying: B

6-day old bee fanning: A–A#

Adult bee fanning: F#–G

Drone flying (loud, like a bronx cheer): Discordant flat low G