Western Honey Bee
Note Profile
About
The smell of the live hive, not of one hive product. Warm and waxy-honeyed, with dust from the pollen, a dark resinous edge from the propolis, and a faint animal muskiness from the bees themselves.
Scent Profile
Honeyed leads, because wax, honey and propolis all carry it and the trade description opens on 'warm, waxy-honeyed'. It is set below the published beeswax at 0.75 and honeycomb at 0.88 on purpose. The whole argument for this note is that it is broader than either, so the honey is diluted by four other things rather than concentrated. Powdery is the pollen, described as 'dusty, sweet', and it is the one facet that reconciles the two sources: the single Fragrantica attestation this note is built on says 'dusty organic odor, with green nuances' and names neither honey nor wax. The published pollen note carries powdery, so places the dust as one component of a hive and not the hive itself. Animalic is the live bees, 'the pheromone-rich air of tens of thousands', and it sits well above beeswax at 0.15 because that is the difference between the wax and the animal that made it. Amber_resinous is the propolis, held to about half the published propolis. Tobacco_hay is the dry comb, tracking beeswax. Green is doing two jobs and is the least certain number in the vector, which is why its spread. Fragrantica says 'green nuances', and the pheromone list independently gives geraniol, citral and neral, which are terpene-green. Two weak sources agreeing by different routes is worth and not more. Below: floral for the geraniol and the pollen, fruity for the banana of the alarm pheromone, sour for royal jelly's acidity, citrus for the lemony queen pheromone, aldehydic tracking beeswax, and sweet_vanillic and earthy for the sweet dust. Nothing here is set to zero to mark an absence.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
Origin
Apis mellifera, the western honey bee. Nothing is distilled from the animal. Premiere Peau defines the note as 'not honey alone but the complete olfactory environment of a beehive: beeswax (warm, honeyed), propolis (resinous, slightly medicinal), pollen (dusty, sweet), royal jelly (slightly acidic), and the pheromone-rich air of tens of thousands of living bees'. The pheromones are named compounds: geraniol, citral and neral, plus isopentyl acetate, the alarm pheromone that GoldBio says 'smells like the aroma of bananas'. A second GoldBio line reports the queen's drone-attracting pheromone 'smells lemony'. Attested once on Fragrantica, not on Parfumo.
Usage in Perfumery
A composed hive accord, built rather than bought, sitting where beeswax alone would be too clean and honey alone too sweet. This data set already publishes its five parts separately: beeswax, honeycomb, propolis, pollen and royal jelly. This note is the whole together, including the air.
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Perfumes featuring Western Honey Bee
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Western Honey Bee appears prominently.
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