No idea where to put this one, but as it often crops up in the "Natural" beekeeper's armoury I thought here might not be a bad place.

I've read a lot of the arguments about smoke being "bad" to use on bees and while some of the reasons are propagated by beekeepers themselves I wonder just how much research if any has been done on just what and how smoke affects bees.

For example, it's often claimed that smoke puts bees into a state where they prepare to abandon the hive on the basis that a fire's coming. How much truth actually is there to this claim?

The other, perhaps more clear cut claim is that the scent of the smoke masks the pheromones and therefore makes it harder for the bees to communicate, especially alarm and attack pheromones.

Water spray, with or without sugar, has been fairly frequently pushed as a much less stressful/harmful alternative to smoke, but what little I have seen of it in use, it seems pretty drastic to me and seems to be effective by simply drenching bees to the point they can't fly.

Both methods seem to be reasonably effective at dispersing bees, I can't say I particularly like standing in smoke or rain, so I don't really blame them.

How much do we actually know about how smoke affects bees and is spraying them with water really any better, or less stressful, for them?