The partnership is mutual and unusually explicit. A honeyguide approaches a person with chattering calls and flies short distances ahead, waiting to be followed; the hunter subdues the colony with smoke and opens it, and the bird feeds on wax and larvae it could not reach alone. Honeyguides are among the few birds able to digest beeswax.
A 2016 field experiment played back the Yao honey-hunters' trilling grunt alongside control sounds. The traditional call roughly tripled the probability of being guided and more than tripled the chance of finding a bees' nest, indicating the birds treat the specific signal as a recruitment cue. Later work found honeyguides in different regions respond most strongly to their own local human call.
The same species is a brood parasite. Its chicks hatch with hooked bill tips and kill the host's young in the nest. The often-repeated claim that honeyguides also guide honey badgers is not supported by good evidence and remains unverified.