In your message dated Saturday 5, August 1995 you wrote :
> My last post was pretty vague.  Here is more - from
> articles on file:
>
> A 1979 paper by Pomeroy and Plowright states that worker
> bumblebees that were knocked out with CO2 later ejected
> larvae from their nest.  The bees seemed to have stopped doing
> this after about a day.  This is bumblebees, not honeybees.
>
> The other article, by Ribbands in 1950, is on honeybees that were
> anesthetized with nitrogen gas, CO2, or chloroform.
> Apparently the bees treated with N2 or CO2 thereafter stopped
> collecting pollen, although they had been before and it was
> available, and collected only nectar.  The chloroform bees
> didn't seemed to be changed.
>
> Comments:
> 1. The fact that they changed from pollen to nectar might not
> necessarily be bad, from the beekeeper's point of view.
>
> 2. Neither of these papers studied ammonium nitrate, the chemical
> asked about by the person who posted saying it was used in Africa.
>
> 3. Both papers are pretty old.  Surely there must have been more
> recent work done on calming down honeybee hives.  Does anyone
> know more?  I am wondering mostly about bumblebees myself, but
> honeybees too.
>
>
>
> Liz Day
> [log in to unmask]
> Indianapolis, Indiana, central USA
>
That  chloroform did not cause abnormal behaviour while nitrogen gas and CO2 did
may be because these two are not anaesthetics but rather are suffocants
(obviously chloroform will suffocate at prolonged , high concentrations).
Presumably the nitrous oxide acts as an anaesthetic rather than a suffocant
since no abnormal behaviour was reported.
 
Can someone confirm that nitrous oxide is produced when ammonium nitrate is
burned in  a smoker with hessian (presumably a carbon source)? - L.R.Croft "
Curiosities of Beekeeping"  page 16 (ISBN 0-946019-06-1).
 
 
 
 
--
Allister C. Guy