Why Do We Smoke Bees?

Michael at the hives asking how come he doesn’t get stung when he uses that smoke on the bees
A little smoke makes opening a hive safer.

A calmer hive

We use bee smoke for several reasons.

  1. It masks the bees’ communication with each other by interfering with their sense of smell — the smoke blocks their pheromone communication system.
  2. The bees think the hive is on fire, so they rush to eat up as much honey as possible — which means they’re too busy to sting the beekeeper.
  3. Those fatso bees are so bloated from all that honey they can’t bend their bodies enough to sting.
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