>Benzaldehyde is the primary chemical component of bitter almond oil, also
>known as the most likely "secret" ingredient of BeeQuick. 

Carbolic acid was the best repellent under all conditions and universally
used for decades, but was banned for various reasons, none of them particularly 
valid IMO, but like many bee chemicals, being a generic and non-patented, nobody 
defended it against fear-mongeringcreeping and government bureaucracy. 

As with all chemicals, however, careless and over-use could and did result in tainting 
honey on occasion.  Some honey houses and bee equipment reeked of carbolic.

Butyric Anhydride http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_anhydride was the 
replacement and it was nearly as effective, but was also prohibited after a while. 

Benzaldehyde was sold freely and routinely as a bee repellent in the in the middle 
of the last century , but was not very popular due to its temperature sensitivity 
and tendency to stun, rather than repel bees under some conditions.

For the record, on this list, Dr Fischer has specifically denied that benzaldehyde is
an ingredient in BeeQuick, but as I understood the reply, did not indicate whether
benzaldehyde or a closely related chemical might be a product of it in use.

Searching the Archives for "benzaldehyde" or "repellent" (substring checked) 
should bring up lots of good info including that interchange.  

Search at 
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?REPORT&z=4&1=BEE-L&L=BEE-L&X=373EF435BC5175A9DC
---

Unfortunately, the archives are broken into weeks or months and are therefore 
harder to search than they should be and following threads is not easy since they 
break at month ends.  I had hope that we would consolidate the logs into 
quarterly or annual logs and did some successful preliminary work to show proof 
of concept, but the project has stalled.

Nonetheless, using the advanced search at http://www.bee-l.org will return plenty 
of hits and if you scroll down, a contextual snip is presented for each hit.

As with any perennial topic, a quick search of the archives will often turn up more
detailed info than posting a question.

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