  SN2011fe was detected by the Palomar Transient Factory on August 24th 2011 in
M101 few hours after the explosion. From the early spectra it was immediately
realized that it was a Type Ia supernova thus making this event the brightest
one discovered in the last twenty years. In this paper the observations
performed with the instruments on board of INTEGRAL (SPI, IBIS/ISGRI, JEM-X and
OMC) before and after the maximum of the optical light as well as the
interpretation in terms of the existing models of $\gamma$--ray emission from
such kind of supernovae are reported. All INTEGRAL high-energy have only been
able to provide upper limits to the expected emission due to the decay of
$^{56}$Ni. These bounds allow to reject explosions involving a massive white
dwarf in the sub--Chandrasekhar scenario. On the other hand, the optical light
curve obtained with the OMC camera suggests that the event was produced by a
delayed detonation of a CO white dwarf that produced $\sim 0.5$ M$\odot$ of
$^{56}$Ni. In this particular case, INTEGRAL would have only been able to
detect the early $\gamma$--ray emission if the supernova had occurred at a
distance of 2 -3 Mpc, although the brightest event could be visible up to
distances larger by a factor two.
