Do Bees React to Earthquakes?
By Drew Maywald
The Gold Coast Regional Beekeepers has a teaching apiary of five hives. The hives are used at every GCRB meeting to teach members about beekeeping. We extract the honey from the hives and donate it to the Veterans Support group Men’s Shed, to raise funds for their activities and members.
At our club meeting on Saturday August 16, 2025, we went into all the hives to check for space to prevent the hives swarming. All was going well and the bees were their usual docile selves. Around 9:45 am a couple of members noticed that bees were gathering on the metal fence nearby and all members present reported that the bees had suddenly become very grumpy.
It was most unusual because it was like turning on a switch. The bees in all 5 hives had changed from being quite calm and docile to suddenly being very aggressive. Several members were stung and many members had clumps of bees on their bee suits, veils and clothing which were difficult to remove. Many of the bees flew around members and chased them even when they were 50 metres from the hives. Some bees even flew around members when they went inside the lunchroom for the second part of our meeting. In fact there were so many bees in the lunchroom we had to spray them with fly spray.
Even our most experienced members could not explain why the bees, from all 5 hives, had suddenly become so aggressive. It was later that morning when I got home that I was told that there had been a 5.6 earthquake west of Gympie some 300 kilometres north of the Gold Coast. This earthquake was felt in Brisbane and towns in Northern NSW.
After some research we discovered that earthquakes do affect bees. Bees have the ability to sense impending earthquakes and may exhibit unusual behaviour before, during, and after the event. According to the National Geographic, bees are known to leave their hives in a panic when an earthquake is sensed. This behaviour is often observed as a response to the seismic waves or other pre-earthquake phenomena.
Can Bees Predict Earthquakes?
While there's no established scientific link between bees and earthquakes, some anecdotal evidence and research suggest bees might exhibit unusual behavior before seismic events. Specifically, some reports indicate bees leaving their hives in panic prior to earthquakes. One theory suggests that bees might detect changes in the Earth's electromagnetic field or ground vibrations before an earthquake, leading to their agitated behaviour.
Bees are extremely sensitive to change in the environment including changes in air pressure, humidity and vibration. Ancient Greeks reported bees leaving their hives and swarming moments before an earthquake struck. During the solar eclipse in March 2015, honeybee flight patterns were observed to parallel with the fast-changing sunlight levels. Honeybees have been shown to react to solar winds which disable their solar compass leading to disoriented bees that can no longer find their way home. Furthermore, bees have often been observed returning to their hive long before a severe weather event or storm occurs.
There is enough evidence on the sensitivity of bees to earthquakes that a not-for-profit group in Germany, “we4bee,” is fitting sensors in hundreds of hives that detect changes in bee behaviour as a predictor of earthquakes and other severe weather events. The idea is that bees may be able to detect subtle changes in the Earth's magnetic field or vibrations caused by seismic activity, which in turn changes their behaviour. See the link at the foot of the article for more information about we4bee and its research.
Bees communicate through vibrations.
Experienced beekeepers know that bees use vibrations to communicate within their hive. For example, if you lift a frame out of the hive quickly and knock it against the other frames, you will suddenly have lots of bees buzzing aggressively around you. Similarly try knocking on the side of a hive and see what happens. When bees perform the waggle dance in the hive they do so in a darkened hive and it is through the vibrations of a bee performing the waggle dance that she communicates with the other bees in the hive.
Bees hate vibration and tremors, so the shaking and vibrations of the ground that occur in earthquakes cause them to become less docile, leave their hives, and cause them to become disoriented, restless, and very agitated.
This is exactly what we experienced at Gold Coast Regional Beekeepers on August 16, 2025, but it was made much worse for us as we had all 5 hives open when the earthquake occurred. Interestingly other members who couldn’t attend our meeting, were checking their hives at the same time and had the same aggressive behaviour from their bees. It was a most unusual and rare event that affected bees in all five hives, and distressed many of our members, and one experience that I do not want to repeat.
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