Bee Facts #102:  Why Do Bees Buzz?  And Aren't Stripes So Last Bee-Season??
In my never-ending search for truth and apiological knowledge, I posed some additional bee-rain teasers to our resident expert and favorite recent Berkeley grad, Xander.  Here's our exchange bee-low.   As an aside, I wonder if he ever gets fed up with people making bee jokes the whole time?  Its completely irresistible (you try to stop yourself the next time all things buzzy come up in conversation) but must be entirely unoriginal and I'm sure he's heard them all! (probably the same as when I worked with the Viagra team back in my old Pfizer days - erection joke?  Heard it.  Yep, heard that one too.  And, yes - ha, ha, stiff neck.  Very good.  *yawn*   Oh, and premature ejaculation jokes? (or PE, to those of us in the know).  Heard all of them too.  Though those ones didn't take quite so long to tell....


Anyway, perhaps on my frequent long flights bee-tween SFO and NYC, I could start a list of bee-related puns (buns?) and see just how creative i can get.  Probably still marginally more fun than watching any in-flight movie with Eddie Murphy in it.  (I saw the really stoopid one with the leaves the other day on a flight to NYC - i didnt bother to plug the headphones in and could still follow the entire story.  Dont think that one will be up for any Oscar's this year...)


Enough pre-bee-amble.  Here are all the answers you've been bee-side yourself waiting for.....


On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 1:28 PM, sazzinthecity wrote:

Hey Xander

Thanks for your reply - that’s fascinating!  Knowing that bees do actually sleep (of a fashion) makes them even more adorable.

So, to pester you with even more questions (and tell me to *ahem* buzz off if you don’t have time to answer these) - why do bees buzz and why are they stripey?  Neither can be for camouflage purposes so what's the evolutionary benefit?  

On Tue, July 24, 2012 7:11 PM, xander wrote:
Hey Sarah!
No worries about the extra questions! Though some bees buzz when they're flying, honey bees generally don't make any noise unless they're at the hive, creating that distinctive sound that lets you know when there's a colony nearby. The noise doesn't serve any purpose of it's own that we know of, but is mostly just an unintended result of the duties that workers tend to carry out in the hive. Hive ventilation and honey dehydration requires workers to move their wings at a frequency that gets the job done without giving the bees any lift, which happens to be at a frequency that resonates through the bee's body. I wouldn't be surprised if there are benefits that we don't know about yet, though!

My understanding is that the stripes are actually to call attention to bees rather than to camouflage them. You know how lots of poisonous snakes and spiders have bold-colored pattern (especially red, yellow, and orange) against deep black? In biology, this is called aposematism; it's a visual language recognized by a wide variety of would-be predators all over the world. Poisonous or venomous insects like honeybees (or yellowjackets, or black widows, or coral snakes, etc) use what is called Mullerian Mimicry that allows folks like us to immediately recognize them as dangerous (we use that same instinctual alert response to certain color patterns when designing everything from caution tape to road signs to fire engines). There are, of course, cheaters, or 'Batesian' Mimics, that use similar color patterns despite being entirely harmless. There's a fun writeup on bee mimics on the U of Illinois website if you're interested. Keep an eye out next time you're in a healthy organic garden with lots of insect life; you're bound to see a few.