Can Bees Smell Fear? How Bees Pick Up On Your Emotions

Can Bees Smell Fear? How Bees Pick Up On Your Emotions

Thomas Nelson
August 28, 2020
Animals, Nature
0 Comments

Talk to any bee keeper and they’ll probably tell you that if you stay calm around bees, they won’t sting you or bother you at all. Moving slowly and smoothly, experienced bee keepers can actually interact directly with their hives without causing a stir. It’s a common saying that bees can smell fear, and that if you’re nervous or anxious, they’ll pick up on that. But can bees smell fear or is it just a myth? Let’s dig into this one and see if there’s any merit to it.

The bee’s sense of smell

The honey bee’s sense of smell is extremely sensitive – more so than other insects like mosquitoes and fruit flies. Because its sense of smell is so sensitive, it’s able to pick up on different pheromones quite easily. Their sense of smell also helps them recognize the odor of certain types of food, helping them decide which flowers will provide them the most nectar.

In the case of the male honey bee, his only task in life is to seek out and mate with a would-be queen honey bee. Therefore, his sense of smell is geared exclusively toward picking up on the pheromones of the females and seeking her out for mating.

Bees and pheromones

We’ve established that bees have a great sense of smell and that they pick up pheromones pretty easily. Does this lend credence to the notion that bees can smell your fear? Well, kind of.

Bees can’t smell fear – it’s an emotion after all, not an odor! But when an animal becomes afraid, its body can release different hormones that can release pheromones, which may be smelled by animals nearby sensitive enough to do so. It’s thought that bees may have a sensitive enough sense of smell to pick up on our fear pheromones, and the fear pheromones of other animals.

Once a bee has sensed this, they release pheromones of their own to indicate to other members of their hive that a fearful animal is nearby and to be on high alert. For your run of the mill honeybees, this doesn’t mean they’ll attack straight away, but it does get the hive prepared to go into defensive mode if need be.