Page 102 - The Miracles of Smell and Taste

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How Bees Communicate by Smell
Pheromones are one of the methods by which bees communicate

among themselves. The tens of thousands of bees in a colony use these
chemical signals to communicate with one another. (Ants communicate in
a similar way.) Bees recognize other members of their own colony by their
distinctive scent. If a bee from another hive seeks to enter, it is immediate-
ly identified by its scent and ejected.
Having consumed the last of a flow-
er’s nectar, the bee marks it with a
special scent— which other bees can
then detect and thus avoid wasting
their time and energy.
Every bee possesses an olfactory
system to detect the messages borne
by pheromones. Their scent receptors
are located in the antennae. Sathees

Chandra, a researcher into
bees, states that

Bees are able to identify by scent
bees that do not belong to their
hive.