Bees don't just buzz, they toot and quack!

It's not only ducks that quack - queen honeybees also make "tooting and quacking" noises, according to scientists.

Using highly sensitive vibration detectors the researchers at Nottingham Trent University decoded the sounds made by honeybee queens.

In a hive, queen bees are different to the other worker bees. Queens grow in special eggs and are fed with royal jelly, given to them by the worker bees.

There can be several eggs with several queens growing inside them, and the scientists worked out that each queen will make a quacking noise when they're ready to hatch.

Once the queen emerges from her egg, her quacks turn to toots announcing her arrival to the other bees as well as a warning not to let the other queens hatch.

If two queens hatch at the same time, they will often fight to the death!

Once hatched a queen will swarm with several other bees to create a new colony.

Dr Martin Bencsik, from Nottingham Trent University, who led this study, described the tooting and quacking of these "wonderful animals" as "extraordinary".

"You can hear the queens responding to each other," he said.

"It has been assumed that the queens were talking to other queens - possibly sizing one another up vocally to see who is strongest.

The queens are not talking to each other, explained Dr Bencsik: "It's communication between the queen and the worker bees - an entire society of tens of thousands of bees trying to release one queen at a time.

"Quacking queens are purposefully kept captive [in their eggs] by the worker bees - they will not release the quacking queens because they can hear the tooting.

"When the tooting stops, that means the queen would have swarmed [split the colony to find a new nest] and this triggers the colony to release a new queen."

Dr Bencsik said bee society was "absolutely splendid" to observe.

"All decisions are group decisions," he said.

"It's the worker bees that decide if they want a new queen or not."

With honeybees under threat of extinction, beekeepers and the hives they provide are crucial for their survival. The scientists hope their research will help beekeepers to know when hives need to be left alone before a colony is about to split off and swam to find a new nest.