<P> Piping describes a noise made by virgin and mated queen bees during certain times of the virgin queens' development . Fully developed virgin queens communicate through vibratory signals: "quacking" from virgin queens in their queen cells and "tooting" from queens free in the colony, collectively known as piping . A virgin queen may frequently pipe before she emerges from her cell and for a brief time afterwards . Mated queens may briefly pipe after being released in a hive . </P> <P> Piping is most common when there is more than one queen in a hive . It is postulated that the piping is a form of battle cry announcing to competing queens and the workers their willingness to fight . It may also be a signal to the worker bees which queen is the most worthwhile to support . </P> <P> The piping sound is a G ♯ (aka A ♭). The adult queen pipes for a two - second pulse followed by a series of quarter - second toots . The queens of Africanized bees produce more vigorous and frequent bouts of piping </P> <P> The surviving virgin queen will fly out on a sunny, warm day to a "drone congregation area" where she will mate with 12 - 15 drones . If the weather holds, she may return to the drone congregation area for several days until she is fully mated . Mating occurs in flight . The young queen stores up to 6 million sperm from multiple drones in her spermatheca . She will selectively release sperm for the remaining 2--7 years of her life . </P>

How does a worker bee become a queen