Insect Sound Library

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What’s inside

Bee sounds

14 long takes — up to 9 minutes each — recorded at active beehives containing more than 10,000 bees. Tiny DPA 4060 omni microphones were placed inside the wooden hive containers, while Sennheiser MKH 8040 mics captured detailed worker-bee passes at the entrance and between containers. A few takes were captured further away for a more distant garden perspective, plus a very close take of bees aggressively defending the hive while the beekeeper removed a honeycomb.

Fly sounds

19 fly-swarm recordings featuring different species and a wide range of swarm densities and activity levels, from minimal background buzz to thick chaotic swarms. Recordings range from 1 to 6 minutes in length. In addition, 51 individual fly sounds (single insects, several species) are included — flying and landing in a controlled environment.

Cricket & cicada sounds

Cicadas captured outdoors in remote pine forests in Greece (Boetia), and crickets recorded in a controlled studio environment. The library contains chirping sounds of individuals, pairs and small groups at various tempos and intensities — including seamless loops.

Mosquito sounds

Recorded in an insectary laboratory, covering swarms of different sizes as well as single insects in isolation. Also included: seamless loops of continuous, designed mosquito wing-buzz sounds for use as game-engine loops or attached to moving sound emitters.

Designed insect sounds (universal)

To complement the recordings we synthesized continuous wing-buzz sounds for species where a clean recording wasn’t practical. These designed sounds are extremely useful for matching complex flight paths to picture, or as game-engine loops attached to a moving emitter. They cover bees, flies, mosquitoes, bugs, moths, wasps and fantasy creatures, plus a wide variety of insect fly-bys in different speeds and flavours — making Insects & Swarms one of the most comprehensive flying-insect sound collections available.

Recording gear

UCS metadata in 40 languages

Like every SHAPINGWAVES collection, each WAV file in this library ships with UCS filenames and 20+ fields of UCS 8.2.1 compliant embedded metadata: CategoryFull, Category, SubCategory, CatID, FXName, Description, BWDescription, CDDescription, CDTitle, Recordist, Designer, Artist, Manufacturer, Publisher, Source, URL, VendorCategory, ixmlNote, OpenTier, LongID, ShortID, Library, Keywords, TrackTitle, Microphone, Location, MicPerspective, RecMedium, RecType, Track, Version, ISRC.

Translations are provided in 40 languages (TSV / XLSX) covering Description, BWDescription, CDTitle, TrackTitle, CDDescription, FXName and Keywords — including Arabic, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese and many more.

The science behind wing sounds

The buzzing sound of winged insects is the result of rapid wing movement creating vibrations in the air. The faster the wings move, the higher the pitch of the buzz.

Mosquitoes flap their wings between roughly 300 and 600 times per second, producing the high-pitched whine they’re known for. Houseflies sit lower at around 200 beats per second with a deeper, more subdued buzz. Honeybees fall in between at around 230 beats per second with a steady droning hum.

The pitch and tone of an insect’s buzz are influenced not only by wingbeat frequency but also by wing size and shape, body mass and flight behaviour. Larger insects with broader wings produce lower-pitched sounds; smaller, lighter insects generate higher-pitched buzzing. When a bee hovers in place the buzz can sound especially intense because of constant wing activity in a fixed position.

Your purchase helps wildlife

20 % of all yearly profits from this sound collection are donated to NABU and WWF to help save bees and other endangered species.

What sound designers say

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$89