>I don't believe we can detect some of the pheromones for whatever reason.

Yet again nearly complete ignorance allows me to pontificate freely.

My understanding of bees ability to detect pheromones, at least in-hive, is more a tactile reception picked up by the antenna. Certainly this is the case with the queen retinue. As if we could smell with our fingers. I suspect that that would also be the case in the air. For mammals smell is dependent on respiration. I don't know of any odor receptors in a bees trachiel system. Correct me please. On the other hand for us taste, a tactile sensation, is very closely associated with smell.  So maybe I'm tying myself in knots. Can some of you biologists weigh in?

Smell can fool even an experienced beekeeper sometimes though. A yard curing Black Hawthorn will set off your AFB alarm no matter how often experienced. But I agree that a healthy hive has an easily recognizsd but difficult to describe pleasant odor. 

Hoping to refresh such memories in a couple of months. 

Paul Hosticka
Dayton WA

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