Anyone who watches carefully knows that bees respond to smoke.  Years ago (mid-1990s) when we had 50 hives fitted with bi-directional bee counters, scales, RH sensors, etc. and transmitting the data every night over phone lines, we sent one of our student employees out to give another employee a break from living in Maryland, come home to Montana for a bit.  

The hive bee counters registered number of bees coming in and going out 200 times per second, reporting bi-directional movement activity at the entrances for every 5 minutes, 24/7.  The day after the new student took over the job, we saw an anomaly in the flight data.  At each of 5 sites, we had 10 wired hives.  Early in the morning, at the first apiary site, we saw a short ingress of bees occur sequentially for each hive in the row.  Then later in the day, same occurred for the second site, then the third, etc.

It finally dawned on us what was happening.  This student was a chain smoker of cigarettes.  He couldn't go more than a few minutes without lighting up.  When working in the lab, we forced him to curb his habit - limit his smoking breaks.  No one watching, in the field, he went into continuous smoking mode.

So, we knew from bi-directional flight data, when he was checking the hives.  Since they were wired, he simply needed to walk through the yard, be sure a skunk or wind or vandal hadn't displaced the counters, check the computer in a shed to scan that data was being sent from each hive, etc.  So, he'd show up, check the computer, then walk down the row of hives to see if everything was ok for each hive.  He'd pause to watch the bees (sometimes debris could clog a portal in the counter, sometimes a dead bee was in one of the portals) to be sure the counter entrances were clear and that the bees going through in both directions.  As he paused in front of a hive, he puffed away.  Just standing a few feet in front of the hive entrances, smoking a cigarette, was enough to cause bees to turn around and go into the hive.
 


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