Bananas…great for you, but not if you’re a beekeeper.
Bananas and bees have something in common…and it’s really odd.
Bees are social insects…they’re famous for this. To be social, bees gotta communicate with one another which they do with chemicals called pheromones. Some pheromones tell worker bees not to have babies. Other pheromones tell the queen if her workers are having babies. Other pheromones are laid down by workers as they step around the colony and tell other bees where to go. Other pheromones tell worker bees to gather around the queen during swarming.
Well, when a colony of bees gets attacked they…surprise, surprise, release a series of pheromones. One in particular has an interesting connection with bananas.
Image courtesy of wikipedia commons
This is isoamyl acetate. Bees release this when the colony is in danger to bascially say ‘Oh shit! We’re being attacked’. They go into a blind panic…nurse bees retreat, soldier bees storm outside and become really aggressive.
This sounds well and good, right?
Well, if you’ve ever been up close and personal with a pissed off bee colony you’ve noticed a certain familiar smell.
A honeybee colony that’s royally pissed off smells exactly like a ripe banana. Interesting, right?
Well, the pheromone the colony releases is the exact same compound that makes bananas taste like bananas. If you throw a banana peel in front of a honeybee colony or even eat a banana around a colony, they get really pissed off. This goes for pears, too.
Weird fact for the day.
Like this:
Filed under: Biochemistry, General Entomology Tagged: | Apiculture, Bees, Biochemistry, Hymenoptera, Pheromones, Social insects
That is seriously awesome. And, not awesome, if you are a bee who gets all excited for nothing.
Are bees and bananas not co-located naturally?
Bananas were domesticated in Asia about 8,000 years ago, and beekeeping began in the middle east a little bit later…some recent evidence suggests that Israel had been doing the whole beekeeping thing for perhaps 3,000 years.
The genus Apis is pretty widespread, and there are species that originate in Asia. A. mellifera (honeybees) originated in Africa, but is apparently found wild in parts of Asia. I’m not sure if all closely related bees use this chemical as an attack pheromone.
So they do occur side by side. Since a lot of crops need bees for pollination, beekeeping is common worldwide including areas where bananas are grown.
I don’t think the two are related to each other. Bees are quite good at producing long chain esters, which is what beeswax is. Shorten an ester, and slap methyl group in the proper place and you’ve got isoamyl acetate.
I had a bunch of bananas in my camper next to a window where the sun was beating on them all day. When I returned in the middle of the day there was a swarm of bees outside. The banana smell was strong when I came in so I thought they might be attracted to that. Some of them slipped into the cracks around the slide out.
They didn’t seem too aggressive, though. The ones that got in immediately started looking for a way back out. They found exits underneath a shoe and in the mist of bug spray.