Honey Bee Senses

Smell

Bees “smell” many things. Guard bees sit or hover near the hive entrance and “smell” other bees attempting to enter the honey bee hive. If the bees don’t have the correct odor of that particular hive they are expelled.

The new virgin queens produce a special odor called a sex pheromone to attract drones during the mating flight . Bees also use odors to help locate their honey bee hive, or their new home after swarming.  To humans this pheromone smells lemony.

When a bee stings, she releases an odor called an alarm pheromone to alert others to the danger. This alarm pheromone smells like bananas and attracts other bees to come to the defense of the hive. This pheromone stays on clothing, so if you are stung you ought to wash your clothing before wearing it again.

The queen bee has her own pheromones also to the smell she produces when ready to mate.  The queen also maintains behavioral control of the honey bee colony by a pheromone known as the “queen substance.” As long as it is being passed around, the message in the honey bee colony is that “we have a queen and all is well.”

When a beekeeper wants to requeen a colony by introducing a queen from another source, he or she has to place the queen in a cage within the honey bee colony for up to five days in order for the worker bees to get used to her odor.

Sight

Honey Bees and individuals  don’t see eye to eye. Humans see the colors of the rainbow; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet (otherwise known as ROY-G-BIV).

Although honey bees have a fairly wide color range, they do not see red and can only differentiate between six major categories of color, including yellow, blue-green, blue, violet, and ultraviolet. They also see a color known as “bee’s purple,” a mixture of yellow and ultraviolet. Differentiation isn’t equally good throughout the range and is best in the blue-green, violet and bee’s purple colors.

Taste

Honey Bees have been found to be able to distinguish between sweet, sour, bitter and salt, and therefore have a sense of “taste.” Bees are more sensitive to salts than humans, but less sensitive to bitter flavors.

Touch

Honey Bees use their antennae to gauge the width and depth of cells while constructing comb. They also communicate via touch during bee dances.