page 206 of Insect Societies by E. O. Wilson (1971):

" Training experiments by von Frisch (1919, 1921), Ribbands (1953), 
Schwarz (1955), Fischer (1957), and Martin (1964, 1965) have 
established that the sense of smell of the honeybee worker is closely 
comparable to that of man. This is true in the sense that both species 
can detect approximately the same set of compounds in the gaseous 
phase.  But even more significantly, both manifest about the same 
threshold concentration, as illustrated in Table 11-1. There are a few 
noteworthy exceptions. The odor of bee's wax, of the Nasanov gland 
secretion, and of the queen substance (9-ketodecenoic acid), all of 
whose recognition is vital to the bee, are perceived by the insect at 
lower concentration than by man.  The bee is also sensitive to carbon 
dioxide and water vapor, which are "smelled" in a straight forward 
manner by sensilla ampulacea and sensilla coeloconica on the antenna 
(Lacher, 1964, 1967).  Other odors are sensed mostly or perhaps even 
exclusively by the sensilla placodea on the antenna......"

Table 11-1 lists a number of compounds showing human sensitivity 
higher, similar or lower than bees.  For example relative acuity for 
Butyric acid is 16 times higher for humans, while it is higher for bees 
for things such as Nerol (twice), Eugenol (42 times), and Citral (7 
times).

 

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html