Smoke Before Fogging?

[Sungold]

I looked through this forum a bit but did not see anything on whether one should smoke the hive before fogging? I imagne it would be prudent to do so, but I thought that I would ask. Thanks, cj

[Juandefuca]

Hi Sungold
The thought of smoking never occurred to me since the last 3.6 years .
I see no relevant purpose of doing so .
Some members say that the fogging effect has indications of "Smoking" , although I never paid attention to it either . My smoker finally went to potty several years ago and I use liquid smoke only when the bees "Overflow " onto the sides when inspecting to avoid squashing them unnecessarily. The fogging is done when all is at rest or working . May you have some reasonable cause to smoke them but I am not able to give info on that .
Feel; free to give us your thoughts on that .
Regards
JDF

[Michael Bush]

I just fog. It does tend to have some of the same effects as smoke. The only behaviour that seems odd is some wrestling at the entrance like there is robbing going on and it clears up in a few seconds.

[Russ]

Is there any advantage to waiting until the latter part of the day when the Field Bees are back to the hive to fog???

[Juandefuca]

This has been talked about before , but I see no cause not to comment about it .
Two viewpoints : !) When all field bees are at home ( After sundown and warm weather ) all bees are subjected to the fog unless the
cluster is so thight to prevent the fog penetrating all areas within the hive. ( No data on that assumption)
The question is then acute to treat the field force also when the colony is infested with phoretic mites to a large degree.
In a lesser degree event the field bees most likely are not the carriers of mites during their outings ( Not looking at robbing and other criteria) . That leaves us mainly the nurse bees and hive worker bees affected by Varroa . It it therefore assumed that there is more space within the cluster for the fog to penetrate more effectively .
So it might be reasonable to alternate the timing of fogging taking both aspects into considerartion.
Furthermore there is such thing as attraction and repulsion as it applies within the dynamics of bees as well as Varroa.
It was found That specific pheromones attract Varroa more than others . Brood and nurse bees are a stronger attractant than other denizens of the colony. In addition to it , Infrared emanation also attract varroa where the heat emitted from any bee serves as motivation to mount the "horse ".
This is another benefit of the sbb since the "Draft" to some degree disperses the infrared concentration , thus rendering the bees not so attractive when passing by . ( Distance to from screen to bottom board )Any additional thoughts?
Happy fogging
JDF