Hive Scent (Smell)

[rail]

I have only smelled of two different hives other than mine, both used foundation. Do brood chambers have different smells and also differ from the honey supers?

My foundationless hive smells of aromatic wood, heavy or deep woodsy smell? Sometimes it smells of freshly baked bread, heavy whole grain bread smell? Will a foundationless hives smell different from a hive with foundation?

[AllenF]

Frames with foundation or drawn comb smells of beeswax.   My wet honey super frames I am placing out back after extracting smells of honey, and you can smell it without getting close.   Bees smell it also.   I think to use, brood and honey supers in use in the same hive smell the same.   Bees can tell the difference I bet.   I know different hives smell different to me sometimes.   

[sc-bee]

The smell of the hive is often due to the source ---- as in aster and goldenrod! Not the wood or frames.

[AllenF]

Stink honey.   :-D

[annette]

I very often have the smell of baked bread or yeast smell. I know when I started out beekeeping the books all say the smell will be so nice coming from a beehive. Well I freaked out when I began to smell that yeasty smell. 


Then Michael Bush responded to my post about the smell and he said this is totally normal. I don't worry any more about the smell.

[sc-bee]

The smell I often get --- not during goldenrod or aster-- is a musty not very plesant smell. No not diseases, bee go etc. just the normal smell of the hive. I often smell it in my clothes after working bees and my wife hates the smell. Not sure what it is ---- maybe I smell me :-D

[AllenF]

I know I normally smell like smoke for some reason around the bees.

[CapnChkn]

Now I just know about 1.5 to 2 percent of anyone is going to know what I'm talking about, but if the smell I'm thinking of is this, I associate it with the larvae of the Black Soldier Fly.  They're "Wasp Mimics" that lay eggs above piles of rotting organic matter.  The "grubs (*cough* maggots) grow to about 3/4 an inch.

They make teh great chicken food...

[L Daxon]

Sitting outside my hives this late spring/summer i have noticed a waxy/honey/woodsy smell that I like.  To me it is not the smell of anything else but a bee hive! :-D

[Intheswamp]

I know I normally smell like smoke for some reason around the bees.

They've probably been smoking pot (I under stand bees keep a buzz)...be careful in case the sheriff ever raids'em!!!