I’ve met a lot of wonderful people that are involved in beekeeping in one way or another, but the thing I get the most kick out of is meeting people who are just starting the journey. One of the reasons – I know what lies down that path and how immersive the world of honeybees really is. And that joy of watching a “rookie” learning the “ropes” is just as rewarding as watching a child grow up. I have come up with this how to light and use a bee smoker guide to answer your questions that you might have if you are just starting out.
How to light and use a bee smoker? The main steps for lighting and using a bee smoker are:
- Understanding the bee smoker
- Preparing all needed tools
- Lighting the bee smoker
- Using bee smoker
- Putting out the smoker
In this post, we will cover what kind of smoker should you use, how to light it, what to burn in a bee smoker, how to approach the hive, how to minimize the influence on bees and what other special tasks you can perform while using a smoker.
Why Should You Use a Bee Smoker?
If you are not sure why we use smokers and smoke the bees in the first place, you can check that out here in this article. But, if you don’t have the time to go through it, let me quickly outline the logic behind.
Almost all secrets of beekeeping are contained in this one sentence: it’s better to fool a bee than to be a fool. Experienced beekeepers can confirm that a calm bee is a cooperative bee, but seeing as we can’t really “buzz” them into serenity (and believe me, many have tried it using music, visual aids, and even vibrations), we have to figure out a way. We just don’t speak their language, but nature does. And not even nature can calm them down, but it knows how to fool them.
Thought by nature, we have, for thousands of years, known how to do the same. Smoke fools bees into thinking there is a forest fire nearby and they start gorging themselves on honey, preparing to evacuate if necessary. Well, you can imagine how difficult it is to be aggressive on a full stomach.
So, to cut the metaphors short, we smoke bees to trigger their natural instincts and divert their attention away from us, thus fooling them we are not the imminent threat. There is also the masking effect that disables the “monster stealing our honey is here” pheromones from spreading when you pop open that lid. So now that you know why, let’s move to how.
Step 1: Understanding The Bee Smoker
While almost any kind of smoke will get the job done, meaning you can approach the hive with a smoldering piece of wood, light a fire close to a hive, or any other means of smoking you can think of, remember this: less is more is the approach you want to take here. You want to have a way to control the amount of smoke and its concentration to certain areas of the hive.
Using smoker is really simple and a single smoker can last you for years. The most common one is the hand-operated smoker, meaning you pump the air into the smoker using mounted bellows. The interesting part is that smoker has been invented almost 150 years ago, but we still use basically the same model today. The smoker features a couple of elements.
Smoke chamber
This is where you burn the fuel. It’s basically a cylindrical object, kinda like a teapot, where you burn your fuel and when we say burn, we don’t actually mean like open flames. It’s more like burning a cigarette where the focus is on smoke not on the heat. This chamber is usually made from stainless steel or other types of metals that can withstand the heat.
Bellow
This is the other key part of the bee smoker. By pumping bellows, you blow air through your lit fuel in the burning chamber and the smoke comes out of the top of the smoker. Any material that air can’t easily pass through can be used for the bellows. Leather, vinyl, rubber, special cloth, and similar materials are commonly found on manual bee smokers.
Heat shield
This is not a crucial part of the bee smoker in terms of the principle, but it is in terms of operational use. You don’t want a hot metal anywhere near your hands or any of your beekeeping equipment. I’ve got used to working with my old bee smoker without hurting myself (it doesn’t have a heat shield). But if you are starting out, definitely look for a smoker with a heat shield.
Other elements
As you can see from the image, a bee smoker can have other features that make handling the task easier. There are different types of smokers, ones that use electricity instead of bellows, or ones that use heaters to burn down fuel so you don’ t have to light it, but honestly, this century and a half old design is still one of the cheapest and most reliable tools for smoking bees.
Smoker Fuel
These are the basic elements of a smoker itself, but you should also pay attention to the fuel you use. These days it’s easier to buy already prepared bee smoker fuel, but you can use any type of fuel as long as it is not harmful to honeybees. There is plenty of you can use:
- Sawdust
- Pinecones
- Pine needles
- Pelleted fuel
- Dried up twigs
- Cotton waste
- Untreated wood
Whatever you can use to produce smoke, go for it. But make sure you don’t burn any harmful chemicals that would in any have a long-lasting toxic effect on the bees, pesticides and petroleum products in particular. You are looking to minimize the exposure and control the hive, not poison it or worse.
Step 2: Preparing All Needed Tools
This is a very quick and short step. You just have to collect everything that you will need into one place. And here is what you are going to need to light the smoker up:
- Your bee smoker
- Bee smoker fuel
- Something to ignite a fire (could be a simple lighter)
- Piece of paper or something similar to help start the fire
Step 3: Lighting the bee smoker
Once you get your essentials: smoker, fuel, source of fire (matches, lighter); start the fire (using cardboard or crumpled up newspapers) and push it to the bottom of the burning chamber. Use your hive tool to push the burning material, because you know – safety first.
Stack your fuel on top of the flames. This will ignite it, but it will take some time depending on the fuel you are using. If you don’t immediately see the results, puff a couple of breaths of air into the chamber. Or you can use the bellows for the task as well.
Once the first stack of fuel starts igniting, stack the second layer and repeat the process. The goal here is to create a smoldering pile that is slowly burning away, producing a lot of smoke in the process instead of having an open flame.
The amount of fuel you stack depends on the amount of time you plan to spend working around the hive. If you have plenty of stuff to do, make sure you have enough fuel, or that it is at least of a slow-burning variety so that your smoker doesn’t require re-ignition.
Once you are happy with the pile and the amount of smoke coming from it, close the lid, and you are ready to go. Once the lid is closed, you can control the rate of burning and the amount of smoke by pumping air into the chamber using bellows. It sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite simple and it doesn’t require a lot of time to master.
There is a faster way to light the smoker by using a start torch. This is the method that I use. Before using the torch, put the smoker fuel in the smoke chamber. Then just start the torch, point it towards the fuel, wait for 5 seconds and you are all done! When it comes to torches, there is no competition for Bernzomatic, in my opinion, check out the price and reviews on Amazon here.
Congratulations, your bee smoker is lit! You should see something similar to the below. This is the bee smoker which I have ignited, ready to work:
Step 4: Using the bee smoker
The important thing to keep in mind is this; you are not looking to drown the hive in smoke; you are just sending them a message that they should take certain actions – using the smoke. I know many novice beekeepers who treated their first smoking experience like a battlefield. No, you are not special forces invading the enemy, you are still a friendly beekeeper visiting your friends.
Approaching the Hive
Start slow, with one or two puffs of smoke near the entrance of the hive. The results will be dramatic and instantaneous. Then, open the hive and do the same. Again, you are not looking to hide your presence from their vision, bees can see you just the same; you don’t need a smoke screen.
You just need to make them smell the smoke. Then you are no longer the biggest threat! While working within the hive, keep your smoker away from the bees as it may still release smoke, or worse, the wandering bees may get injured landing on the hot surface of the burning chamber behind the heat shield. So, keep it away from the hive, but still close so that you can reach it quickly to puff if needed as you go deeper into the hive.
Step 5: Putting out the smoker
After you finish the work around the hive, make sure to extinguish any burning processes and empty the remaining fuel on a fire-resistant surface. Sometimes, when you open the lid and shake the fuel out of the smoker, it ignites kinda violently as the oxygen touches the smoldering mass.
It’s not as dangerous as it sounds, but it is something to look out for and avoid having flammable materials close by, or on you for that matter. You can use a simple trick of laying the smoker on the side before opening it. If you let it lay for a couple of minutes, the air is no longer coming from the bottoms side and the ignition slowly dies down.
Once the fuel is no longer actively burning, remove it and store the leftovers for the next smoking cycle. I just simply empty the bee smoker fuel on the ground and pour some water on it.
Negative Side-Effects of Using A Bee Smoker
Well, there aren’t many negative side effects to this method of hive control, but let’s mention and explore some of them.
Smoke can taint the flavor of honey and contaminate the vax
This can happen, but very rarely and only when you don’t follow the guidelines regarding the amount of smoke and the type of fuel you burn. So, remember the rule, less is more and don’t turn your honey into something you put on a pizza, like ham or jerky. But trust me, if you get to such high levels of smoke that your honey is tainted, you’ve got bigger things to worry about.
Fried bees
Ok, simple logic here; smoke is hot, bees are delicate. Do you see where I’m going with this? Instead of blowing hot smoke directly at bees, puff it around, close by, here and there, gently, lightly. Bees wings are made from a gentle substance that is extremely sensitive to heat, so again, let me repeat: DON’T FRY YOUR BEES.
Aggravating the hive
Hey, how can the supposedly calming procedure cause them to get rattled? Well, again, failing to follow the guidelines regarding bee smoking results in this one. If you pick a wrong fuel or ad wrong type of essential oil, you can actually aggravate the hive instead of calming it down. This happens when your fuel releases compounds similar to the pheromones bees use to warn the hive about an imminent threat.
If you notice a pattern here, you are not wrong. Every adverse effect of smoking bees comes from improper use of a bee smoker or some other deviation from the recommended guidelines. So, keep following this guide and the chances of encountering any of these negative side effects are minimal.
Here are some common questions regarding bee smokers:
Q: How do you know that smoke won’t hurt bees? Well, it’s a science, and if you would like to really get into it, you can check out this article that explains it in details. The short answer is; you are not actually using smoke to confuse the hive or to make yourself invisible or to even sedate the bees. You are just shifting their attention away from you using natural basic-survival instincts and some clever pheromone-hiding properties of the smoke.
Q: Does hot smoke from the smoker harm their sensitive wings? Honestly, it does, but only if you go “full napalm” on them. Like I already mentioned, less is more when it comes to smoking and you are only looking to send them a signal. Also, don’t smoke the hive directly if the smoke is too hot, puff a few times near the hive, it will do the trick just the same.
Q: I don’t want to smoke my bees, are there alternatives to smoke?Yes, there are, you can use a water sprayer, a technique that uses similar natural mechanisms for tricking bees into thinking it rains outside. A blower can also get the job done, but honestly, all other methods are more challenging than smoking. The other thing smoke does really well is masking defensive pheromones guardian bees secrete when you start poking around. This leads to the hive being less alerted to your presence.