For clarity, bees experience an urge to load up on honey and ventillate the hive when they sense smoke (prepare to flee and avoid death from poor quality air). This is why the smoke calms them, even if disruption is happening like what might happen in a serious crisis.
When bees sense danger, they release an alarm pheromone called isopentyl acetate from a gland near their stingers. This chemical wafts through the air and alerts other bees to be ready to attack. Smoking a beehive masks this pheromone, allowing the beekeeper to safely perform a hive inspection.
It's also a common compound released by fruit and fermented drinks, which is why there is a common wisdom saying that you should not go near a beehive if you have eaten or handled a banana recently.
Super bizarre to experience the first time handling a hive. Smells like banana flavored runts and then suddenly the little girls are bouncing off your face screen
My grandpa always bought refrigerated Bud Light cases and kept them in a closet and then re-refrigerated them and it always tasted or smelled like bananas. I guess that explains why… never would I have thought this
You are both correct. Although I'm specifically referring to Apis Mellifera aka the European/Western honey bee, smoke masks the angry banana smells and makes them want to gorge on honey and ignore you. Just a couple puffs can buy you around 20 minutes to work with the hive in my experience. I've had bees that were so gentle I didn't need smoke or protective gear and bees that were so cantankerous that it was like smoke never existed. Source-am beekeeper.
It also partially covers up the alarm/attack pheromone scent. Its the same chemical as artificial banana (isopropyl acetate) and can actually be smelled by humans who done a fuck up in the hive. Just having banana candies before hive time increases your odds of getting stung
It's different when they don't care about themselves and just the hive, better to be calm and try to save as much as possible compared to fleeing and just dying because you need your hive
There’s also the use of tobacco/nicotine to smoke bees, where nicotine is a strong neuroactive chemical. Anyone who’s smoked a cigarette too fast knows what too much nicotine feels like.
Also, to sting you, bee needs to compress it's body to C-shape (to touch you with it's butt) but there is so much honey in stomach, that bee can't do it.
You'd think right? But then again there wouldn't be survivors to warn the others so unless the bees can associate the two from observation I would imagine not.
If you mean when they seasonally swarm, then that's part of the reason. The bigger reason though bee's are more chill in migration swarms is there's no nest to protect, just the Queen, which they WILL protect.
More to the fact that a sting is fatal to them and they don’t have anything to defend. Now if you started to kill/crush bees and get attack pheromones released they might respond but evolutionarily it’s not to the gain of the hive to throw workers away when there aren’t brood already gestating to replace. Additionally few animals that would have interest in honey less pile of bees can also reach where they typically swarm at.
Does this also mean you can harvest less honey if you smoke out the bees (because the bees have taken part of the honey)? Would that be a significant part?
Maybe, maybe not, who knows. Mostly honey in combs is sealed, so even if bees wanted to, they just don't have time to open combs. One bee can take 40 mg of nectar (I don't know how much honey they can take, but I assume, same amount), one hive contains ~30 000 bees (it's for 12 frames hive), so they possibly coud take 1,2kg of honey, each frame can take up to 3kg of honey, let's say half of hive is full of honey - 18kg, it's less than 10%. But this numbers are wery rough.
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u/Beard_of_Valor 9d ago
For clarity, bees experience an urge to load up on honey and ventillate the hive when they sense smoke (prepare to flee and avoid death from poor quality air). This is why the smoke calms them, even if disruption is happening like what might happen in a serious crisis.