Bees are incredible and fascinating organisms. They can be considered as one of the most intelligent, organized, smart and skilled creatures on earth. These tiny creatures are packed with a huge array of skills that help them to perform their tasks efficiently and live safely. Their extraordinary skills make them highly efficient and productive in whatever they do.
Bees colonization and communication
One of their most highly developed skill is the way they communicate inside and outside the hive, pass on information, send out distress signals and warn other bees of possible danger. Can bees smell fear? The answer is bit complex, but in a way they can, with their highly developed and fine-tuned communication medium and powerful sense of smell.
Do you know about when do bees swarm time of year?
Bees live in huge colonies. A single colony can have tens of thousands of bees living and working together. Bees are super organized and each and every bee just knows what to do and how they can help each other. Being humans, this behavior of bees may seem strange because no matter how advanced we become we simply cannot manage such a large group of humans in such an organized way (sad fact!)
Effective communication is the key to their organized and supportive behavior for the entire colony. Bees cannot communicate like humans do, albeit they are equipped with a much advanced set of communication skills.
Learn how to save a bee that can’t fly
How do bees communicate?
A successful and thriving hive is not possible without bee communication. Bees communicate mainly through two different approaches:
1. The waggle dance
Yes! It may sound surprising but bees do dance to communicate a hell lot of information. Communication through dance is mainly done by the worker bees who are foraging for nectar. A bee who will find a potential source of nectar will start the wiggle dance (a series of straight or angled lines and figure eights along with shaking of wings) to inform other bees about the next stop they should make.
The dance holds a lot of information. You can consider it as a map for the other bees to make their next landing. All of the other bees will look carefully at the dancing bee so that they can get the whole information and not make any mistake. If the bee has found a huge supply of nectar, the bees dance will intensify indicating a great source.
This can be accompanied by the shake dance around the hive to attract other bees to join the expedition to collect more nectar. The distance to the location is determined by how long the dance is performed. The most unique and fascinating thing is that the bee will dance at an angle in order to show the direction of the location with respect to the sun.
If the new source does not have much nectar and the number of foraging bees are more; the bee will start the “tremble” dance in which she makes her body to move back and forth by shaking her legs. This signals the bees that more worker bees are needed in the hive for processing the nectar into honey and storing it.
Next time if you want to communicate secretly with your friends, you can definitely opt for the wiggle dance!
2. Pheromones talk:
Pheromones are like any other hormone and are produced when an organism is scared.
Let’s see how bees carry out the pheromones talk. Bee pheromones are of two types:
- Releaser pheromones: released by workers as a reaction to certain events.
- Primer pheromones: released by the queen and brood for maintaining the order of the hive.
The alarm pheromones are the most common releaser pheromones released when a bee needs to alert other bees of a possible danger or attack.
Apart from effective communication, bees are also equipped with some powerful senses like the sense of sight, smell and touch. The use of these senses and their communication method helps them to develop a strong colony. So next time when you are looking to approach bees, why not help them instead of destroying their homes.
Bees and their acute sense of smell!
Bees are blessed with a very sharp sense of smell. They are not only attracted to colors but also to scents and can detect and differentiate different smells very effectually. Their small antennae actually serve as a powerful tool to them. They use their sense of touch with these antennae and also pick up smell using them, even while soaring through the skies.
They use their sense of smell to find their favorite flowers and herbs to collect nectar from and also to find out flowers with the most nectar. Moreover, they use their intense sense of smell to protect their bee hives and help each other, when in danger.
This is the reason, the expression “can bees smell fear” is very common. Their sense of smell is so strong that bees are now being trained as sniffer bees to detect mines and protect humans. Furthermore, this training only requires a few hours not a few months which usually sniffer dogs need.
Do you wonder about how long does it take for bees to make honey?
How do bees smell fear?
Fear is an emotion and therefore cannot literally be smelled. Fear has no distinct smell of its own. However, it is very commonly known that bees can smell fear. Let’s see how bees make this possible. The bees efficiently utilize their sense of smell to survive and protect their hive from possible intruders and dangers.
When an organism is scared, he releases pheromones. To it make clearer, in humans the mouth palette is responsible for detecting smell molecules in the pheromones and from there, the molecules are passed onto the olfactory system which then, directs the brain to take necessary action.
However, humans are less sensitive to this hormone and cannot interpret it as a unique smell. Contrary to humans, bees have a very sharp sense of smell and can easily interpret it as fear. So, the bees actually identify pheromones from other organisms and then communicate through their pheromones to alert other bees.
As soon as a human or any other organism comes in the vicinity of a bee hive, the bee can detect a different smell which is not part of the hive. Not part of the hive, no entry for that organism in the bee zone! The bee detects this unfamiliar smell as a possible danger to the hive and sets of its alarm to alert the hive.
The bee releases alarm pheromones immediately it notices an unfamiliar scent. The other bees smell the pheromones and further continue to release pheromone so that, within no time the entire hive gets alerted and is ready to defend their hive. The bees will not attack until they sense a potential threat (like fast and random movements) because this means losing their life.
From now on, don’t panic when you encounter a bee, just let it be and protect yourself from a possible sting! The bee also releases the alarm pheromone when it stings a creature. The pheromone reaches other bees and they come to attack the intruder and save their partner.
Interesting facts about the age of bees and how long bees live.
Final Word
Next time, a bee stings you, run for your life before you see a swarm of bees approaching you to attack, even though you might not have meant any harm. After all, they are bees, not humans and cannot differentiate between what actually is a danger to them and what not.
Learn about the interesting fact about how do bees make honey.
