Christine Gray proposes one way that smell may trigger a stinging reflex in
honey-bees.  I have a related query that results from purely anecdotal
observation.  I have only one hive, (and the hornets may not even have
left me that), so my approach does not signal any invasion by foreign bees.
In fact, it does not seem to signal any sort of invasion at all.  I can
do major relocation on the hive (wearing mask and gloves, of course) and I
have no sense that the bees, who are definitely cross, have any idea that it
is me who is doing it.  They mill around, saying "What, what? where?" but do not
target the mask, the gloves or any other part of me.  My suspicion is that
the first sting is what counts.  Is it possible that the human reaction to
being stung is an inadvertent change in odor which the bees can recognize and
home in on?

Back to the hornet experience. . . . I tried sitting outside the hive
after applying my own hand-made excluder (cardboard with ring-binder
holes punched in it and a clear plastic flap over half the hole
diameter) and must have squashed some 70-80 hornets in two hours as
they emerged.  Since their nest must be a fair distance away---I
cannot find it---they must have signalled to one another that there
was a good target nearby.  Do hornets (huge whitefaced black hornets)
dance like honey-bees?

Pierre MacKay

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