So funny, one of my son's favorite memories from childhood is the smell of my smoker. I love coming in from my beeyard smelling of smoke and propolis!! I guess to each his own. I usually work my bees in gym shorts and a short sleeve tee BUT...I ALWAYS use smoke. I don't think burlap smells bad but then again I have never tried pine needles. 8)
>Yes they will--Me included!! because the old "design" was basically a hollowed out skep or box and required KILLING ALL OF THE BEES, usually with sulfur (yum...)
Propaganda based on chronological snobbery. Moses Quinby kept his bees in box hive up until they forced him into movable comb hives. He did NOT kill all the bees (nor did any significant number of people) and raised queens and did splits and was one of the most successful commercial beekeepers in American history. And, in fact, he INVENTED the smoker we now use. Skeps were kept the same way. You can harvest a skep or a box hive and kill no more bees than you do in a Langstroth. What you CAN'T do is inspect all the combs.
Beekeepers stopped using skeps because a vastly superior method was developed that uses wood boxes and removable frames. Nobody has ever come up with something that works better than smoke, so smoke is still used. BIG difference. The smoke = skep = outdated method(s) argument is ridiculous
As far as smelling like smoke afterwards, you are supposed to smoke your bees, not yourself. If you are doing it right you should not smell (much) afterwards. The smell from my bee suit after working in the hot sun is worse than any smoke problem.
I always like how the new beekeepers (a year or two) chime in saying that they never use smoke or veils. I am not saying that it can’t be done with a lot of practice, but most people will end up finding out the hard way.
I use sugar spray and smoke. They are complimentary. Smoke alone does not always settle them.
I totally agree about smoke NOT calming bees. I have never seen it calm them. It just confuses them and keeps them from talking to each-other or they simply hide from it. If you mist them with syrup after you smoke them, then they lose the inclination to fly and sit and lick syrup instead.
I know I risk coming off like a tree hugging hippy... and this is partly true. But I found that my own emotional state and attitude could keep the bees calm. They are sensitive to movement and have their own body language. This is actually why I love keeping bees. It's meditative.
Yes, it's easier to shoot smoke in the entrance and down the top, but I don't like doing that. I listen, and if they tell me they don't like what I'm doing, I stop or slow down. I adjust my perspective and try again. If they are just irrevocably cranky that day and I must complete some critical task, I smoke them. I do keep it lit. Or, I leave to come back another day when they are more agreeable (or when I'm in a better mood myself).
My understanding is that the bees aren't actually calm when you smoke them. They are preparing for an emergency (the hive catching fire). They rearrange their defensive priorities and leave you alone. Is smoke more or less stressful than a human's hands in the hive? I don't know. But at least if I'm not smoking it's only one stressor and not two.
The other thing is that smoke contains a lot of chemicals I don't want soaking into my wax and honey through long term regular use. We all know what it does to lungs. I may try spraying syrup mixtures into the entrances this year and see if it makes a difference.
So, I use as little as I can get away with. Which, you may have noticed, is more than zero.
I only have a year experience, but the whole year I was only stung twice. Once when I was moving the hives from a truck, and once in the fall. I had five hives... I probably actively used smoke around ten times.
I so agree! I do keep a smoker lit because on occasion a normally calm hive will be VERY unruly! Mine seem to not get over being upset quickly and will follow me quite a distance. Yet on most days they are very calm.
One hive is pestered by neighboring bees all the time in attempted robbing. I must keep that hive very tightly covered and a very reduced entry. They are always ready to fight, lift the top and I get hit with a face full of bees. You know I wear my suit and veil AND use smoke.
Davo - I understand your point about "feeling the bees"... we are dealing with a collective super-entity after all.
However, when your collective super-entity gets to full strength - they will try to kill you on occasion or try to drive you away. A one or two year hive is a far different critter than a 3 or 4 year hive - especially in the Fall or in a dearth.
*We have fire bans here every year. I like that there are alternatives. But alternatives are not exact substitutions.
*Keeping a smoker lit well can also depend on the size and design of the smoker. I have no problems keeping mine lit (after I watched a YouTube vid on how-to), but I helped a friend the other day and had a dickens of a time with hers, though ultimately successful.
*Greg and tommy - y'all crack me up.
*Pellets work great from what I've seen. I have asthma. Sets it off pronto - like nothing else I've used. The type of smoker And the fuel can make a big difference - in addition to experience.
*The caustic and rude comments you Will find online here? That's because there are caustic and rude people. The upside is there is a wealth of knowledge here. The down side is it chases people off.
*"Same" questions will continue to be asked. I'm guilty. I have all but given up on the Beesource search tool. If I want to search how to make a nuc, for instance, I will get 33,000 results. That is great if I want - and sometimes do - to spend a few Hours reading on a subject. But if I perhaps just want to converse with some folks more experienced on a subject than I, or I'm not in the mood to spend an hour trying to ask the question in a way that will reduce the search results down from 33k to the neighborhood of only 2,000 - or None - I'll post "the same" question "yet again." RnS people lay in wait. It's how they bully and feel superior. Considerate people will answer. Even though they've answered it perhaps a thousand times.
I have to alternate smoke/syrup to keep my bees calm. The only time I go smoke-free is when they are too cold to fly. Desert bees can have a nasty attitude at times.
Out here in the desert we have juniper bark which looks like coconut husk when you break it apart and it burns clean and smells nice too, thanks goes out to Bill Davis for this tip.
I use sweet water with vanilla essence in it. I use this with smoke. It reduces the need for smoke. My logic, bees don't really like water if it is loaded with sugar they will clean each other up. Try it
> My most effective searching comes from plain ol' google outside of BS and then I usually look for BS responses and land back here closer to my search goal than within BS.
If you prefer to use Google Search outside of Beesource, try typing or pasting this into the Google search box:
nuc site:beesource.com This uses Google, but limits the result to just the domain that appears after the keyword "site:". Of course, you can use this with sites other than Beesource.
And yes, I misread your intentions as to what "nuc" referred to!
> If you prefer to use Google Search outside of Beesource, try typing or pasting this into the Google search box:
nuc site:beesource.com. This uses Google, but limits the result to just the domain that appears after the keyword "site:". Of course, you can use this with sites other than Beesource.
My brother in law and I found out that late at night, and after copious amounts of alcohol, you can pet a bee beard 4 times before getting the hell stung out of you.
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