This is the beginning stub for comments on the Acoustic Analysis Project. I am seeking any technical contributions with respect to analytical tools, solar power for computers that continuously monitor sounds, low power Windows computers, microphones, field recorders, …you get the idea. I also welcome comments, suggestions, pointers, whatever.
January 4, 2023 at 4:50 am
Hello all,
I am working on honeybee colony sound for my PhD project. Is there anyone who has honeybee colony audio recordings? No matter these recordings are from healthy or weak colony you just know what species it is, and where it is located? and what kind of vegetation/or agriculture is around the apiary etc? Moreover, what was the temperature during recording sound, if data available.
If we can collaorate please let me share your email on my email address: 2011ag4010@uaf.edu.pk
November 11, 2020 at 9:37 am
Thanks for writing your thoughts and progress – very interesting!
I’d like to recommend another free audio analysis tool called SoX: http://sox.sourceforge.net/Docs/Features
It is free, multi platform and can produce spectrograms and apply filters.
Using the spectrogram data you could isolate specific frequencies, if I understand correctly what you aim for, right?
The pickup option you mentioned in the comments also sounds really good. I’d love to read if you try something of that kind.
Good luck,
Yonatan
June 24, 2020 at 5:30 am
Hi there,
So cool to see that so many of us are interested in the sound of bees. I’m looking for recordings, from different hives, at different time, with different bees. Do you know if there is a website where I can find some ?
Thanks !
August 11, 2017 at 7:43 pm
Craiglm,
This is a good question. Actually, I expected them to smooth over the fine bronze cloth in a week or so with propolis. It must have lasted a year.
Thanks,
Tom
June 22, 2017 at 2:30 pm
Hi Beehacker, could you give an update on the propolis status? Did the bees ever cover up the cloth? If so, how long did it last?
July 1, 2014 at 5:37 am
Hi there,
If someone has long time audio recordings of what’s happening into a hive (or ready to make some), I’am ready to help building real time sound recognition patterns… and may be built latter a cheap sound recognition device that can continuously monitor hive activity.
Any beekeeper/hacker interested?
Best
Boris
June 18, 2014 at 4:25 pm
It would be important to differentiate between “normal” sound patterns in a healthy, active colony and the audio within a “disturbed” hive (eg. queenless, overcrowded, stressed, diseased).
Does anyone know of a software program that can analysis two recordings at once and derive a scaled divergence between the two?
Thanks.
March 1, 2014 at 5:45 am
I am planing to use Android tablet with and microphone inside the hive (mic part of hands-free). Maybe another analyzer could be better but this one will be good enough for some time. Program options allow following and recording of sounds in different ways suitable for later referencing
August 7, 2013 at 9:18 pm
The best microphone is a microphone inside the hive. Otherwise, you are going to pick up birds, cars, planes, shoes crunching on leaves and many things that you do not even notice when you are there. I got a simple crystal mic from a cheap desktop microphone. Most of them are built into webcams now but you should be able to find a standalone microphone. They are cheap – $15 or less. I ripped it out of it’s stand and was left with a crystal microphone, a wire about 3 feed long, and a mini plug which fit perfectly into the Zoom. It does not have the fidelity of microphones built into the Zoom but it should be able to reach down below 200 Hz or more.
August 7, 2013 at 12:34 am
How is that zoom H1 working for you behacker. and what type of external mic do you use with it?
April 20, 2013 at 9:59 pm
Would it be best if everyone making recordings was using the same mic/recording setup? Otherwise it may add difficulties in compensating for frequency response of various makes/models of mics? MonarchWatch.org was doing a garden temperature recording project where they supplied everyone with one-wire thermochrons to use, along with a little mounting bracket and instructions, so data collection would be fairly uniform. My bees won’t be in for a couple of weeks so I’m preparing hive bodies and frames now, and have to scrounge for some electret mics I have somewhere… I’ve used the Parallax Propellor a fair amount and also have some Arduinos to play with.
January 18, 2013 at 8:08 pm
The following is an abstract from Proceedings of American Bee Research Conference, Hershey, PA, 2013
Seccomb, R.A., C.B. Henderson,& J.J. Bromenshenk. AUDIBLE CUES TO STRESS IN HONEY BEE COLONIES. Bee Alert Technology, Inc., 1620 Rogers Street Suite 1, Missoula, MT 59802
Investigation into honey bee response to sublethal exposure to airborne toxicants showed that honey bee colonies produce unique and characteristic sound profiles when exposed to different toxicants. Furthermore sonograms from different classes of toxicant were distinct and could be statistically differentiated at near 100% correct classification. Using these findings we explored whether other stressors of honey bee colonies induce similar identifiable sonographic profiles. We collected recordings of samples from free-flying colonies having verified conditions that included queenless and Africanized colonies as well as CCD, foul brood, small hive beetle, Nosema, and Varroa infections. Each of these conditions produced similar, unique sonographic profiles. We have developed an artificial neural network algorithm that uses these sonographic profiles to quickly assess the presence of these conditions. Using a microphone probe to make a 30 second recording, our instrument correctly identifies the presence of these conditions and the intensity of the infection with better than 85% reliability. Prototypes of our device are being tested in the field to further refine and improve the instrument’s reliability in advance of its release for general use.
January 2, 2013 at 11:37 pm
Hello,
May i suggest to you the Appidictor ?
http://www.beesource.com/build-it-yourself/apidictor/
April 11, 2012 at 11:48 am
Just saw this on BBC’s site:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16114890
(“Bee hive hums recorded to monitor insects’ health”, 1 February 2012)
And the associated company’s site is here:
http://www.arnia.co.uk/press_release.asp
Now, I just hope that this field will not be cross-mined
with a lots of silly patents…
But, I see some possibilities for non-commercial “crowd-sourcing” regarding this,
if many experienced bee-keepers could collect sound-files from their
nests, together with their expert assessment of the “current situation
in the nest” (collected into a public database), then maybe that would
help in devising and fine-tuning an open-source “bee-soundgram analysis” software?
March 6, 2012 at 3:05 am
Hi there,
I used an iphone app. to listen to the bees at 250 hz and above 3,000 hz.
Here is the link
I like your setup with the condenser microphone. I only just now realized there is a Part 2 to the bee hacker acoustical study. I look forward to following your progress. I was thinking about programming a microcontroller to record some sounds too. I let you know if I continue that route but either way I’ll record it in Instructables. Thanks for the information! -tom
July 18, 2011 at 5:06 pm
Hello to everybody!
I am also very interested in the project and think that can contribute a bit. So does any of you already have some sound recordings which need further analysis and some kind of classification/pattern recognition in order to detect some of interesting bee behaviors? David, could you send me your e-mail, please?
Thanks in advance for your understanding.
Best regards,
Drago[ljub] (dragoljubgajic@gmail.com)
December 27, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Hi There,
I’m an electronics engineer doing a similar project. My motivation is on automated species detection and detecting the early signs of swarming. I find it’s easier to do sound recordings and analyse them later on a PC using Audacity or Matlab. Alternatively I’m sure you’ll find an IPhone/Android app for spectrum analysis.
If you want to build a real-time spectrum device, I would consider an arrangement of analogue filter banks, comparators and LEDs. Quite doable for an amateur.
For your information, I have found, the dominant frequency is approximately 220-240Hz followed by the first harmonic at 440 – 480Hz. According to literature this corresponds to the wing-beat frequency which varies depending on whether the bee is flying or stationary. Moreover, accordingly to unconfirmed reports, a newly hatched bee will have a higher wing-beat frequency due to incomplete forming of the wings.
Queen piping is an interesting sound; I have recordings which place in the 400Hz – 4KHz range. Sounding much like a duck.
Good Luck
David
December 9, 2010 at 1:18 am
Hi,
I just joined the site.
Thank you for the nice article about the apidictor. I am experimenting with it even though it is winter and there are no young bees in the hive.
I use my cell phone to register the sound of the bees by sticking it under the hive. The hive has a mesh bottom so the bees are readily heard. Then I transfer the sound file to my PC and analyze it via Audacity, an open source sound editor program.
There is a distinct dip at the 200-300 Hz. freq. at all my hives. It will be very interesting to see how this range develops next summer.
Best regards
Kamil
November 19, 2010 at 2:59 pm
I put the screened box with microphone and sensors at the top of the deep hive body. My thinking is that this is where the winter cluster will gravitate assuming that there is not another hive body or super above it. I am also entertaining the idea of a probe with a microphone on the end. This would allow me to unplug holes in the hive body and insert it where I think the bee are.
A totally different approach is to ignore vibrations in the air altogether. There seems to be more evidence that bees generate and pick up vibrations when their little bee feet are planted on the comb. Jürgen Tautz (The Buzz About Bees – great book) claims that if the wax in comb becomes too warm, it reduces the bee’s ability to communicate because the vibrations are not transmitted as well across a softer wax media. The point of all of this is that you could nail an acoustic pickup to the frame and probably get a pretty good signal. So many things to try….
November 19, 2010 at 2:09 pm
When I thought of doing this acoustic monitoring, I placed a stethoscope on my hives and could not hear much of anything. An internal mike might be better, but the question in my mind is what the results would mean–if your mike is in the cluster, it would be quite noisy, but if the cluster was in the next super, it would be quite quiet so where would you be?