William Bostwick gets a whiff:
Besides their dance, bees communicate through chemicals. The queen excretes one imaginatively called the "queen substance" that keeps all other female bees from developing ovaries. Queen substance is 9-oxo-2-decenoic acid. Isopentyl acetate is the defense pheromone—what you smell when you disturb a hive, the burglar alarm—and it smells like bananas.
The Dish 