Banana Rama

In college I briefly dated a guy who drove a brand new silver sports car with a license plate that said "Gon2Rav".  I was mortified every time I got into the car, which thankfully was only about 5 times.  The other flashing red warning sign was that he once told me that he wore cologne with pheromones in it so that girls would like him more.  Who actually says that?   I mean, even if you do, why would you tell someone?  What a weirdo.  Besides, men's cologne makes me want to gag.

Honeybee alarm pheromone however smells like artificial banana flavoring.  I kid you not.  Banana Runts and banana twin pops?  My favorites.  I smelled one of the stingers that was in my arm the other day, which is how I found this out.  Turns out, I am hardly the first person to make this observation.

Alarm pheromone is emitted when a bee stings another animal.  Or sometime the guard bees disperse it when they detect a threat to the hive.   The other bees smell it and will congregate enmasse to the origin of the scent and get all agro.   This is what they did to me this morning as I was trying to collect the bees from the hive.  Two got stuck in my hair, and I had to throw the hive lid down on the ground, abandon the jar, and run to the house yelling for Sam to get them out.

The pheromone is a chemical called isopentyl acetate.  It isn't a coincidence that it smells like artificial bananas--it's what they use to create the flavoring agent.  In the olden days of aviation it was used to stiffen and wind-proof the canvas which covered the frames, and it is still used for model airplanes.  It's also used to test gas masks and respirators.  This all according to Wikipedia.

I've also found that artificial banana is one of those flavors, along with black licorice and coconut, that people either *love* or *hate*.  There isn't much in between.  Banana runts are either people's favorites, or they find them utterly disgusting.  I wonder why that is, or if there's a correlation between sensitivity to that substance and something else...  Don't worry though, the food product actually comes from banana oil or it is synthesized.  There is no alarm pheromone extract in your banana twin pop.