Biomechanical properties of non-flight vibrations produced by bees

Bees use thoracic vibrations produced by their indirect flight muscles for powering wingbeats in flight, but also during mating, pollination, defence, and nest building. Previous work on non-flight vibrations has mostly focused on acoustic (airborne vibrations) and spectral properties (frequency domain). However, mechanical properties such as the vibration's acceleration amplitude are important in some behaviours, e.g., during buzz pollination, where higher amplitude vibrations remove more pollen from flowers. Bee vibrations have been studied in only a handful of species and we know very little about how they vary among species. Here, we conduct the largest survey to date of the biomechanical properties of non-flight bee buzzes. We focus on defence buzzes as they can be induced experimentally and provide a common currency to compare among taxa. We analysed 15,000 buzzes produced by 306 individuals in 65 species and six families from Mexico, Scotland, and Australia. We found a strong ass..., The data set was generated by using a piezo-electric accelerometer pressed against the thorax of the bee. The bee was induced to produce defensive buzzes and the resulting vibration signal was acquired using a DAQ and a computer. Each file was then used to extract individual buzzes using custom scripts in R (see example code). The duration, frequency, and amplitude was then calculated for each buzz. The dataset also contains bee site information and species identity., , # Biomechanical properties of non-flight vibrations produced by bees

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4tmpg4fkg](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4tmpg4fkg)

The data set was generated by using a piezo-electric accelerometer pressed against the thorax of the bee. The bee was induced to produce defensive buzzes and the resulting vibration signal was acquired using a DAQ and a computer. Each file was then used to extract individual buzzes using custom scripts in R (see example code). The duration, frequency, and amplitude were then calculated for each buzz. The dataset also contains bee site information and species identity.

## Description of the data, code, and file structure

There are three files in this set (two on Dryad, one in Zenodo). One file (Zenodo) provides an example of R code (requires seewave package) used to extract the buzz properties from a time series object containing the bee's buzzes (e.g., accelerometer data generated by the user and captured as a time series in a text f...