Bee balm is a North American mint that smells like thyme, warm and sharply herbal. Indigenous peoples used it for chest infections, fevers and wounds long before it reached perfumery. The oil runs on carvacrol and thymol, the same phenols that make oregano and thyme so strongly antibacterial. Those compounds switch on TRPA1, the nerve channel that reports irritation, which explains the warming, counter-irritant feel on skin.^[1] Tested against mosquitoes, Monarda oils worked as repellents.^[2]