Fusion_power
12-11-2006, 04:56 PM
I haven't seen a thread like this in a long time so maybe it will be useful to others. When I first started keeping bees about 35 years ago, I was a total neophyte at using a smoker. My first smoker was a small Root galvanized job that just didn't hold enough fuel to be really useful. Non-the-less, I would get it going with old cotton cloths and pieces of punk wood and could really raise a cloud of smoke. I would smoke the bees so much that there was no way on earth they could sting me. It didn't help that my veil was a homemade job made of screen wire and an old felt hat. I was 12 years old and thought I was uptown and high class.
I graduated to a large Kelley smoker when I went to a beekeepers meeting and saw how much easier it was to keep one lit. Pine straw was the smoker fuel of choice and is what I still use. I met a queen breeder, Glenn Fowler, who lived about 30 miles away and spent quite a bit of time at his place learning to handle bees properly. Slow steady movements, smoke at the right time, watch the bees for cues when more is needed, all were learned. I bought a few queens because Glenn Fowler was an excellent queen breeder and the stock he was using were top of the line Italians.
Now I'm a bit older and have handled colonies all over the scale from ultra gentle (the ones sitting on my front porch right now) to ultra hot (100 stings in less than a minute). I've helped a commercial beekeeper, raised my own queens numerous times, and produced a honey crop year in and year out so long as I had live colonies. My bees were knocked for a loop in 1988 by tracheal mites. I bought some colonies from a "leave it alone" beekeeper and transferred them to my equipment. Buckfast queens took care of the tracheal mite problem. Then Varroa hit in 1994 and I lost all but 3 colonies. I treated for Varroa and built back up again to 20 colonies which is about as many as I care to run.
The first and foremost lesson about smokers is learning what to use as fuel. As mentioned above, I use pine straw, but fully dried out pine straw burns fast and hot and makes a smoke that is disagreeable to the bees. I gather fresh green rye grass to mix with the pine straw in a ratio of about 10 parts pine straw and 1 part grass. Most of the grass is in a clump at the top of the smoker where the smoke has to filter through it on the way out of the smoker. This keeps the smoke cool and reduces the acrid character quite a bit. I also keep a few old pieces of heavy comb to drop in the smoker. This has much more effect on the bees than pine straw alone. It takes one small wad of wax about an inch in diameter to a large smoker full of pine straw. I gather up a plastic bag of pine straw when the weather is warm and the straw is dry. Dont make the mistake of trying to light wet pine straw. It does NOT burn.
I light the smoker by putting a small handfull of pine straw in the smoker. I use one of the long snout butane camp lighters to light the straw in the smoker. A few vigorous puffs and the straw in the smoker will be in flames. Add another large handfull of straw mixed with a few strands of green grass and continue puffing. When its smoking freely, finish filling the smoker with straw and top off with a wad of green rye grass. Puff 10 or 20 times more to ensure it is burning properly.
There is an art to opening and working a colony of bees. The first rule is to puff one or two puffs of smoke across the entrance to disrupt the guard bees. After a minute or so, gently lift the cover a few inches and blow a couple of puffs across the top of the frames and inside of the cover. Finish removing the cover and blow one more puff of smoke across the top before removing the first frame. Now its time to watch the bees. Remove one frame at a time. I like to put them on the cover which I place upside down next to my hive stand. I stack the frames in reverse order to the way they are removed. When the bees start showing mostly heads looking up at me from between the frames and when I hear them start a peculiar high pitched buzzing, I send one or two more puffs of smoke across the tops of the frames. Its not forced into the hive, just across the top where it sends the workers scurrying off. I look at the stack of frames on the cover and if the bees are similarly showing their heads, send a puff of smoke their way. Using smoke carefully and deliberately, I finish removing and inspecting frames and then re-assemble the colony in proper order. I rarely use more than a dozen puffs of smoke to go through a single brood chamber. Twenty puffs is enough for most double brood chamber colonies.
So what do you use for smoker fuel? And how do you handle that colony of Africanized bees?
Fusion
I graduated to a large Kelley smoker when I went to a beekeepers meeting and saw how much easier it was to keep one lit. Pine straw was the smoker fuel of choice and is what I still use. I met a queen breeder, Glenn Fowler, who lived about 30 miles away and spent quite a bit of time at his place learning to handle bees properly. Slow steady movements, smoke at the right time, watch the bees for cues when more is needed, all were learned. I bought a few queens because Glenn Fowler was an excellent queen breeder and the stock he was using were top of the line Italians.
Now I'm a bit older and have handled colonies all over the scale from ultra gentle (the ones sitting on my front porch right now) to ultra hot (100 stings in less than a minute). I've helped a commercial beekeeper, raised my own queens numerous times, and produced a honey crop year in and year out so long as I had live colonies. My bees were knocked for a loop in 1988 by tracheal mites. I bought some colonies from a "leave it alone" beekeeper and transferred them to my equipment. Buckfast queens took care of the tracheal mite problem. Then Varroa hit in 1994 and I lost all but 3 colonies. I treated for Varroa and built back up again to 20 colonies which is about as many as I care to run.
The first and foremost lesson about smokers is learning what to use as fuel. As mentioned above, I use pine straw, but fully dried out pine straw burns fast and hot and makes a smoke that is disagreeable to the bees. I gather fresh green rye grass to mix with the pine straw in a ratio of about 10 parts pine straw and 1 part grass. Most of the grass is in a clump at the top of the smoker where the smoke has to filter through it on the way out of the smoker. This keeps the smoke cool and reduces the acrid character quite a bit. I also keep a few old pieces of heavy comb to drop in the smoker. This has much more effect on the bees than pine straw alone. It takes one small wad of wax about an inch in diameter to a large smoker full of pine straw. I gather up a plastic bag of pine straw when the weather is warm and the straw is dry. Dont make the mistake of trying to light wet pine straw. It does NOT burn.
I light the smoker by putting a small handfull of pine straw in the smoker. I use one of the long snout butane camp lighters to light the straw in the smoker. A few vigorous puffs and the straw in the smoker will be in flames. Add another large handfull of straw mixed with a few strands of green grass and continue puffing. When its smoking freely, finish filling the smoker with straw and top off with a wad of green rye grass. Puff 10 or 20 times more to ensure it is burning properly.
There is an art to opening and working a colony of bees. The first rule is to puff one or two puffs of smoke across the entrance to disrupt the guard bees. After a minute or so, gently lift the cover a few inches and blow a couple of puffs across the top of the frames and inside of the cover. Finish removing the cover and blow one more puff of smoke across the top before removing the first frame. Now its time to watch the bees. Remove one frame at a time. I like to put them on the cover which I place upside down next to my hive stand. I stack the frames in reverse order to the way they are removed. When the bees start showing mostly heads looking up at me from between the frames and when I hear them start a peculiar high pitched buzzing, I send one or two more puffs of smoke across the tops of the frames. Its not forced into the hive, just across the top where it sends the workers scurrying off. I look at the stack of frames on the cover and if the bees are similarly showing their heads, send a puff of smoke their way. Using smoke carefully and deliberately, I finish removing and inspecting frames and then re-assemble the colony in proper order. I rarely use more than a dozen puffs of smoke to go through a single brood chamber. Twenty puffs is enough for most double brood chamber colonies.
So what do you use for smoker fuel? And how do you handle that colony of Africanized bees?
Fusion