Honeybee hearing range in hertz

A Honeybee picks up everything from 10 Hz (the deepest) to 500 Hz (the highest), and hears best around 265 Hz.

Yes: it picks up rumbles so deep you would, at most, feel them in your chest, down to about 10 Hz. Your floor is 20 Hz. It does miss the highs you can hear, though: above about 0.5 kHz there is nothing left for it.

Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Honeybee starts to hear each sound. We take that curve and apply it to your recording like a giant equaliser: we turn up the pitches the animal hears beautifully and turn down or remove the ones that simply don't exist for it. The result gets close to what it would notice... but it still arrives through your ears.

Hertz count how many times per second a sound vibrates. Few vibrations = low (the rumble of thunder, about 30 Hz). Many vibrations = high (a microwave beeping, about 3,000 Hz). And ‘1 kHz' is just shorthand for 1,000 Hz. You hear, roughly, from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz.

Sounds so deep your ears no longer register them: below about 20 Hz. Rather than hearing them, you'd feel a tremor in your chest, like a heavy lorry going past. Elephants and pigeons do sense them, even from miles away.