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🎧 Acoustic Monitoring: What Hive Sounds Reveal About Colony Health

An interactive 3D hive with a simulated microphone: scrub through buzz-frequency spectrograms for queenright, queenless and swarming colonies to see how sound signatures differ.

Entomology & Insect Behaviour3DModerate60 FPS

A 3D hive cutaway with a probe microphone and live-drawn spectrogram lets you scrub through three simulated colony-sound signatures — queenright, queenless and swarming — and watch bee agitation, mic amplitude and frequency respond in real time.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Each colony state has a distinct buzz signature: a steady low hum when queenright, a wandering higher pitch with piping bursts when queenless, and a broadband roar with queen piping/quacking during swarming. Mic distance and background noise change signal clarity, just like real acoustic hive monitors.

🎮 How to Use

Pick a colony state, then scrub or auto-play the spectrogram playhead to sample dominant frequency, amplitude and SNR at any instant. Drag the mic closer to the broodnest or add background noise to see detection get harder.

💡 Did You Know?

Precision-apiculture sensors already classify queen presence and impending swarms from audio alone, giving beekeepers an early warning from a phone app — no hive inspection required.

⚙ Under the hood

Interactive 3D hive with a simulated microphone where scrubbing through buzz-frequency spectrograms for queenright, queenless and swarming states shows how sound signatures differ.

acoustic-monitoringhive-soundscolony-healthbioacousticsbee-behaviorentomology

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install