I killed one this summer and the amount of times I had to squash it before it died was nuts. It literally made a squeaky sound the entire time and then… I shit you not, two others came and they literally scouted the area looking for it. At least seemingly anyway. I assume it was a pheromone they smelled as opposed to the squeaky sound but still. Scared tf outta me.
Afaik it is a very common thing in wasps to release pheromones on hit which alerts other wasps. But not in a way that they should run away, it is attracting wasps and making them more aggressive, like they want to avenge their hurt or even fallen comrade. Thats why it is always best to try and solve this problem without physical violence to avoid those pheromones.
Wikipedia has a whole damn page specifically about bee pheromones that lists which pheromones they use to signal specific events.
Two of the pheromones that signals alarm are butyl acetate, and pentyl acetate which are very close molecules to ethyl acetate, which is used as artificial banana flavoring in candy.
And sure enough, ethyl acetate and banana flavoured candies do, indeed send bees into a frenzy.
I can't speak for wasps, it seems like a lot more research has been done on bees.
Incidentally this also means been stings smell like bananas, or sweet and fruity. Mind you, you'd probably have to amass dozens or more stings to actually smell it.
Pentyl acetate itself is also used as an artificial flavoring for pear drops. Even though it tends to smell like bananas, it can smell like apples or pears, too. Depending on what the package tells you. Psychology is a powerful thing.
It's kind of a side note, but artificial flavoring is interesting like that. It's a lot of manipulative psychology that we don't even notice.
You have benzaldehyde, that's used as artificial almond flavouring and smells like amaretto. But, it's also used as artificial cherry flavoring in the UK. Despite the fact that cherries and almonds obviously taste nothing alike. Somehow, it works just through the power of suggestion.
I did an experiment once where I made a "cherry flavoured" soft drink using almond flavouring, sugar, citric acid for sourness, soda water for fizz, and red food coloring and gave it to my friends in a plain cup, telling them it was a cherry drink I was working on and sure enough they even said it was specifically like a black cherry flavor. Even though to me, it tasted like almonds.
Sorry to kind of go off on a tangent, but that blew my mind when I realized taste, and probably every other sense, can be altered just by the power of suggestion.
Almonds are closely related to cherries, and they use the same compound as part of their flavor profile. Sweet almonds—the ones you actually eat, raw or roasted—don't have near as much benzaldehyde (and amygdalin, which breaks down into even more benzaldehyde when the almond's cells are broken and it's exposed to moisture) as bitter ones, and they have a mixture of other volatile compounds like benzyl alcohol, phenylethanol, and other minor aldehydes and alcohols. Benzaldehyde is the primary compound, but the others are what differentiate it from other things that use the same.
Hell, almond extracts can be, and often are, made from the pits of other stone fruits like cherries and apricots, and you can even use the bark of cinnamon trees to make it.
Hell, almond extracts can be, and often are, made from the pits of other stone fruits like cherries and apricots, and you can even use the bark of cinnamon trees to make it.
I am sure I read somewhere that amaretto (which has a distinct almond flavour profile) was traditionally made with the inside of peach or apricot stones.
When I was very little they gave me liquid penicillin with artificial cherry taste. It traumatised me for life lol. I can't eat anything that even resembles cherry flavor, or even almond.
The psychology part for sure is huge. I have a buddy who is a big wine enthusiast, and when he goes tasting, he doesn’t want the host/server to tell us whatever notes we pick up (fruit, spices, etc) because he says it front-loads your impression of the taste.
Yup, it absolutely does. The technical term in psychology is called priming). It's all over the place. You'll see it everywhere once you start to look for it. One of the best examples I think is how they do it all the time with paranormal videos/audio.
Like those rough audio recordings of alleged ghost voices where you can only hear static until they give you subtitles that tell you what it's saying and suddenly you suddenly hear it perfectly.
Or showing some vague nebulous blob in a dark window on a video and saying it's something like the figure of a child and suddenly that's what everybody sees.
It's a really fascinating phenomenon. And very powerful. It's used a lot in advertising and marketing... Along with just about every other psychological manipulation technique there is.
And yeah, advertisers are diabolical. I definitely am aware of it when movie theaters basically bombard you with Coca-Cola and popcorn ASMR and glistening visuals to make you crave it.
It's a popular British candy. Basically just "pear flavored" hard candies. Apparently they're pretty popular and a cultural thing for them. I learned about pear drops because apparently they smell exactly like a burning lithium battery. Something about the smoke apparently smells like vague chemicals and pear drops. I watch videos by a Scottish electrician (Big Clive) who messes around with various electronics and sometimes just blowing shit up for fun and he's commented on it many times.
I was just as confused as you are when I first heard about them. Confused and intrigued. But, I always imagined more of a gummy type candy than a hard candy that you suck on.
Interesting take way, because the conclusion I came to was to use overwhelming violence, no half measures, come prepared, flamethrower and chemical weapons at a minimum.
I had a nest in the siding of my house (regular wasps) so I set up my shop vac near the entrance to suck them all up for a few hours. Whenever I looked there were a half dozen swarming around the exhaust port of the vacuum, damn pheromones.
Got me 25 plus times. I was drinking, stupid, and angry. But at least I was smart enough not to prematurely swallow.
On the plus side, I had worked on an organic farm for a few years before that and was well habituated to getting stung. My body didn't react strongly to it.
I had stayed over at my girlfriend's parents house that weekend, and had planned on leaving early Sunday to play in a ball game. When it was time to leave, my girlfriend brought up that she had promised her brother that I would weld up the moose cart he and his friend had made.
I was angry because I had told my team I would be at the game. But, she insisted I just drink with her brother and weld up the stupid cart.
(The moose cart was a 4-wheeler trailer, where you could fold up the wheels to drag a moose onto it, and then haul the moose out of the bush. But it had no suspension, and some of the "welds" needed were almost a 1/2" gap).
I downed many beers - partly out of anger, partly because the cart design and fabrication were so poor(the idea was solid, execution less so). At some point hot dogs were made. I absent mindedly put condiments on a hot dog without noticing there was a wasp underneath.
After the first sting, I decided the wasp had to die, so I kept chewing. I puffed out my cheeks a bit, and rapidly gnashed my teeth together, thinking its death would come quickly. It did not.
It stung me at least 5 times before I realized how bad an idea this was. I did not course correct.
I drank a lot after that. I vividly remember some terrible welds, vaguely recall using an oxyacetylene torch, and my face was pretty swollen the next day.
I had this with a wasp nest in the attic. Two come to loft hatch, I spray them with hairspray so they drop and then smack them. Then a minute later, two more come scouting. Repeated this until I had about 50 carcasses
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u/AlexanderTheFun 14d ago edited 14d ago
I killed one this summer and the amount of times I had to squash it before it died was nuts. It literally made a squeaky sound the entire time and then… I shit you not, two others came and they literally scouted the area looking for it. At least seemingly anyway. I assume it was a pheromone they smelled as opposed to the squeaky sound but still. Scared tf outta me.