Data from: Honey bee inhibitory signaling is tuned to threat severity and can act as a colony alarm signal

Alarm communication is a key adaptation that helps social groups resist
predation and rally defenses. In Asia, the world's largest hornet,
Vespa mandarinia, and the smaller hornet, Vespa velutina, prey upon
foragers and nests of the Asian honey bee, Apis cerana. We attacked
foragers and colony nest entrances with these predators and provide the
first evidence, in social insects, of an alarm signal that encodes graded
danger and attack context. We show that like A. mellifera, A. cerana
possesses a vibrational "stop signal", which can be triggered by
predator attacks upon foragers, and inhibits waggle dancing. Large hornet
attacks were more dangerous and resulted in higher bee mortality. Per
attack at the colony-level, large hornets elicited more stop signals than
small hornets. Unexpectedly, stop signals elicited by large hornets (SS
large hornet) had a significantly higher vibrational fundamental frequency
than those elicited by small hornets (SS small hornet) and were more
effective at inhibiting waggle dancing. Stop signals resulting from
attacks upon the nest entrance (SS nest) were produced by foragers and
guards and were significantly longer in pulse duration than stop signals
elicited by attacks upon foragers (SS forager). Unlike SS forager, SS nest
were targeted at dancing and non-dancing foragers and had the common
effect, tuned to hornet threat level, of inhibiting bee departures from
the safe interior of the nest. Meanwhile, nest defenders were triggered by
bee alarm pheromone and live hornet presence to heatball the hornet. In A.
cerana, the waggle dance, sophisticated recruitment communication that
encodes food location, is therefore matched with an inhibitory/alarm
signal that encodes information about the context of danger and its threat
level.