This is a big keeper got some

scientific American 60 second science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Honeybee's things are painful, but they're also fragrant.

If a beekeeper got some things from honey bees, it smells like banana.

Dr Stephen Dutrell, a plant ecologist at the University of Salzburg in Austria.

That banana scent, he says, is a compound called isoamyl acetate, also known as

banana oil. It's one of the many compounds produced when a bee stings, a mix of alarm

pheromones that let the hive know that another bees in danger.

But that chemical cocktail doesn't just attract other bees.

It also draws tiny flies known as kleptoparasites.

Or so-called food dealers.

The flies feed on the drippings of bees being devoured by spiders.

And they sense the bees' chemical calls for help as a dinner bell.

Turns out though it's not the flies but a flower that has the last word in this tale of trickery

because researchers have now discovered that the flowers of a South African plant called the parachute plan produce nearly three dozen of the 90-some compounds in that honeybee alarm call, meaning they mimic the scent of a honeybee in danger to lure in and temporarily

trap the flies as a pollination ploy.

The findings are in the journal Current Biology. The plant of course isn't aware of this bait and switch.

It's just by chance that this plant may be produced these compounds and attracted these small flies as pollinators.

And that by time, it was possible I think to refine this plant

and to add another and another compound to finally get such a nice cocktail.

This cocktail though is one that won't be followed by a meal.

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