Hive Scent
Lexikon
The shared scent of a colony, made up of the queen's pheromones, the comb material, the food that has been brought in, and the bees' genetic makeup.
The shared scent of a colony, made up of the queen's pheromones, the comb material, the food that has been brought in, and the bees' genetic makeup. Its character also depends on the queen's laying performance.
By this scent, the guard bees at the entrance recognize who belongs and who does not. Foreign bees and foreign queens are treated as intruders, while bees returning home are let in.
This is decisive for practice: when uniting two colonies, the scents must align, otherwise the bees fight. The newspaper method makes use of exactly this, because the bees gradually chew through the inserted paper and take on a shared scent during this time.