Hi,

The the most plausible hypothetical explanation for the case of the "suicide bee" that presumably flew into an active "smoker" has nothing to do with honeybee behavior beyond the fact that a bee is small and light, that guard bees are attracted to moving objects, such as a beekeeper, and his "smoker", and that the bee was airborne at the time, i.e. it was not holding onto any substrate. The assumption that the bee actively flew into the "smoker" is groundless, and probably also utterly misleading, because it obscures the effects of the physics of fires.

Fires, whether large or small, cause in rushing winds, due to cooler air that moves in to replace the hot air that moves up and away from the fire, and due to oxygen that moves in to replace the oxygen "consumed" by the fire. In the case of the small fire inside the "smoker" such a wind may be very light, but its suction power is further augmented by additional air that moves in to inflate the bellow after the beekeeper deflates it. All this may suffice to suck in a small light airborne object like a honeybee that happened to get close enough to the opening of the "smoker".











Sincerely,

Ruth Rosin ("prickly pear")

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