Why does a queenless hive sound different?

Without queen pheromone the colony grows agitated: the fundamental hum frequency rises and wanders between 250 and 450 Hz, and irregular tonal 'worker piping' bursts appear as workers react to her absence.

What does the mic distance slider change?

Moving the probe mic farther from the broodnest lowers the signal gain applied to every spectrogram cell, the same way a real microphone placed further from the comb picks up a weaker buzz.

Can sound alone really detect swarming?

Yes — precision-apiculture sensors already classify colony state (queenless, pre-swarm) from audio spectrograms using patterns like the ones modeled here: broadband noise plus sharp queen piping/quacking tones during swarming.

Home▸Entomology & Insect Behaviour▸Acoustic Monitoring: What Hive Sounds Reveal About Colony Health (2D)

🎧 Acoustic Monitoring: What Hive Sounds Reveal About Colony Health (2D)

A 2D spectrogram lab: the same Gaussian frequency-band model behind the 3D hive drives a plain canvas spectrogram and bee-activity panel, so you can scrub through queenright, queenless and swarming colony sounds and watch frequency, amplitude and SNR respond in real time.

Entomology & Insect Behaviour2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

This 2D companion runs the same Gaussian frequency-band model as the 3D hive cutaway, drawn straight onto a plain canvas: a spectrogram panel plots frequency (60–1200 Hz) against a simulated 100-second recording for queenright, queenless and swarming colonies, and a bee-activity panel visualizes agitation and a movable mic marker so mic distance and background noise visibly change detection difficulty, just like a real acoustic hive monitor.

⚙ Under the hood

2D hive-acoustics lab: a Gaussian frequency-band spectrogram model for three colony states, scrubbable in real time, with mic-distance gain and noise-floor mixing driving the dominant-frequency, amplitude and SNR readouts.

acoustic monitoringhive soundscolony healthbioacousticsspectrogramqueenless hive

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install