> Any beekeeper can observe that 
> the house bees immediately begin filling
> their crops with nectar or honey from 
> the combs

There are multiple components here, making the sweeping statement
misleading:

a)  If bridge comb is broken open, bees certainly do immediately move to
clean that up, but this is NOT a result of the smoke, is it?

b) There is a normal work flow of cells being combined as nectar evaporates,
so this work, which involves "filling crops with nectar" is, once again, not
a result of smoke, is it?

I would think that "any beekeeper" could just as easily open a hive and
examine the activity of bees with and without smoking, and see that this
sort of behavior is not prompted by the smoke, but it is very hard to
dislodge some of these firmly implanted old wives tales, even with hard
evidence.  The ubiquitous nature of high-rez video from every cell phone
prompts one to wonder why such flat statements cannot be backed up with
video.  Perhaps the difference is too subjective to quantify.

> and that older bees decrease the degree to which they defend the colony.

No one questions smoke's ability to block alarm pheromone detection, but
this does not make the behvaior part of the  "bees think there's a fire"
myth, is it?

>> I have seen EHB bees wait till the last minute before 
>> leaving when a fire goes through a yard.

Sure, when the hive is actually burning, the bees are going to give up.

But smoke alone, without the fire, is not going to cause an abandonment of a
hive. I even hooked up a length of hose to one of those comically oversized
AHB smokers and connected it to a plexiglas-topped 5-frame nuc to prove the
point once at an association field day (MD? PA? I forget...).  The bees were
smoked to the point of being rendered unconscious due to lack of sufficient
oxygen.   They did not flee, they stayed with their brood, and then reacted
much the way they react when chilled in advance of being tagged with those
tiny German colored number discs.  

It is not so hard to test these things for oneself.  Takes less time than to
write about it.

So, yes, several races of bees abscond at the drop of a hat, as forage and
nest sites are plentiful.  But this is not a unique reaction to smoke, is
it?  ANY disturbance that is sufficiently annoying can prompt those
(generally tropical) bees to abscond.
 

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