How To Light Bee Smoker Pellets
Ane of the most fundamental skills you lot can acquire equally a beekeeper is how to light your bee smoker. It is not as easy as it may seem. Really, It requires some technique and patience.
Yous want to be able to light information technology well. This will make beekeeping a more enjoyable experience for the bees and their keeper. Trust us; you will get better with exercise.
The goal is to light a smoker to produce slowly burning embers in the bottom of the smoker. It will emit a "cool" smoke from the top of the smoker. If the smoke is too hot, information technology tends to annoy the bees and brand them more defensive of the hive.
Lighting a smoker can be a real challenge. The hardest role of lighting a smoker is getting the feel (and the fuel) just right. Just think of it like Goldilocks' porridge.
Too few embers in the bottom, and the fire will extinguish itself. Too hot, and it burns through the fuel before y'all are done working with your bees. You will get it merely right with practice, or maybe with sheer luck. I'm sure you volition.
Table of Contents
Fuel For A Bee Smoker
There are different types of fuel available to lite your smoker. Some are better than others, and we accept used many dissimilar styles. Not every choice will work well for you. There are so many options because beekeepers tend to utilize what is bachelor to them and stick with information technology.
Ane beekeeper may use forest chip shavings and swear by them. This is because they may too be a woodworker and have wood shavings readily available. If you are not a woodworker, this may not exist helpful to you.
Yous can also use raw cotton from the plant. Again, the odds of finding inexpensive natural cotton fiber are minimal if yous don't live in the southeast.
You can also become on Amazon and purchase smoker pellets every bit an option. These may or may non piece of work well for you. These particular types of pellets are quick burning would exist good in a pinch, but shouldn't be your number 1 choice of fuel for your bee smoker.
Before nosotros get any further, brand sure that your smoker is ready to low-cal. All smokers come up with a perforated plate within the smoker. Sometimes it is built, so it's ready to become, just other times you have to bend the legs, and so it stands up in the bottom of your smoker. There should exist a i-inch gap or so in the bottom of your smoker where air can flow in.Expect at this picture to see how the legs need to stick upwardly.
Pine Straw and Cardboard For A Smoker
For this lesson, nosotros volition focus on two options for fuel. They are readily bachelor in almost places for free. These are pine straw and paper-thin.
Pine straw should be easy to discover considering pino copse are seemingly everywhere. I have even resorted to "borrowing" some of the pino harbinger used for landscaping on short observe. Just with the complete permission of the owner, of form. Am I right?
What about Cardboard? Well, it's everywhere too. Pine harbinger is our #1 pick for fuel, but paper-thin is a great backup.
Pine straw is well-nigh unusable when damp, only I can typically find dry cardboard on brusque notice.
Just a quick note on actually lighting the smoker.Y'all need a good heat source for getting the fuel started. Obviously, you lot can use a lighter or a stick lighter for getting smokers going, just information technology'due south very frustrating when they get wet or run out of fuel.
Our preferred way to low-cal a smoker is with one of these butane torches with a click lighter. The tanks aren't expensive, but the head for it with the clicker is the expensive role. But you only have to buy information technology once. They are a lilliputian big, only they final a very long time and piece of work every single dang time. You'll discover yourself using these all over the house, and then y'all'll savour having ane around.
Pine Straw Every bit Smoker Fuel
When using pine straw, start with a small-scale corporeality of fuel in a loose bundle. Increment the amount of fuel and the tightness of the bundle equally yous add more to your smoker.
You want information technology loose at the bottom, where the embers are, and tight at the top, merely before the smoke leaves the smoker. Doing this ensures the embers build up nicely at the bottom. So the smoke has to sift through the tight pine straw on its way up and out of the smoker.
This helps the smoke stay absurd. The fuel burns upwardly slowly equally you proceed to use the smoker. What happens is that the tight bundle at the top falls down to where the embers are, keeping your smoker lit. This is the general technique that needs practise so you can be sure the smoker lights well and stays lit without burning through the fuel likewise quickly.
This method applies to all types of loose fuel like cotton wool, burlap, woods chips, pine cones, etc.
You volition add about four bundles of pine straw to fill upwardly a standard smoker where the chamber is most 8 or nine-inches alpine. If you are using ane of the pro-style or large smokers, yous will add well-nigh 5-half dozen bundles to fill up the smoker.
The merely advantage of the taller smoker is that y'all can put more fuel in the smoker. It will besides produce fume longer.
Loading the smoker with 4 or five tight balls of pinestraw will be difficult to light and will smother the flame. Loading the smoker with likewise loose assurance of pinestraw will burn too hot and the smoker will burn through it's fuel as well quickly.
The trick is to use a combination of loose balls and tight balls of pine straw so the smoker lights easily, but burns slowly.
Lighting Pine Harbinger
Start past lighting the pocket-sized, loose bundle of pine straw while belongings information technology in your gloved hand. One time lit, driblet it into the smoker and pump the bellow multiple times to go on the pine harbinger on burn down. Like flames need to shoot up and out of the acme of the smoker. Trust us.
Add your second, slightly larger, and slightly tighter parcel to the flames. Press the harbinger gently towards the bottom of the smoker with your hive tool.
Once more, keep pumping the bellows until the straw flames up. Continue adding larger and tighter bundles to the smoker as you continuously pump the bellows. About 4-seven bundles total, depending on the size of your smoker. You want to fill that joker upwards.
Wait until flames or intensely thick smoke coming from the smoker before adding the next parcel. In one case you lot put the top on, the very hot burn down on the smoker's lesser will smolder a footling, but keep the pine harbinger lit.
The #one mistake I come across beginner beekeepers brand is they fill the smoker upwardly with fuel and light information technology. Don't do this. Y'all'll light the peak of the fuel and it volition smoke well, but the smoker burns out speedily. The burn doesn't sift down the smoker. Build your burn down at the bottom of the smoker, not the acme.
Also, doing this will blow hot smoke and embers onto your bees. They exercise not like that.
Cardboard As Smoker Fuel
Paper-thin is a great fill-in fuel source for your smoker. It could even exist your principal fuel if you want information technology to. Information technology is slightly harder to light so pine straw simply will produce smoke for a long time if you apply the cardboard right. The fox is to curl information technology up tightly.
In using cardboard, form information technology into a tight roll with the corrugated tunnels running vertically in the smoker. It is important they run vertically so at that place is enough of airflows from the bottom to the top of the smoker.
Using paper-thin works really well at produces a thick, cool smoke so this technique is something you should definitely take in your back pocket. I know beekeepers who volition roll a one-half-dozen of these and tape each one into a tight roll. That way they are gear up to go.
When rolling them, it works best to scroll them into the diameter of the within of your smoker. Not likewise tight that you take to pound information technology into the smoker, but not so loose that information technology moves back in forth in the chamber a lot.
Light Cardboard For A Bee SMoker
Starting time cut a strip of cardboard ¾ the height of your smoking bedroom, 5-inches for a regular smoker and 7-inches for a pro smoker. You want the finished cardboard roll to be about ¾ of it so there is room for airflow on the bottom of the smoker and and so the lid closes.
You lot want the paper-thin to course a tight roll that fills the smoker.If you have the "flutes" verticle tunnels running from the bottom of the smoker to the top, y'all tin can't coil it too tight. The tighter you roll it, the longer the smoker will work. Starting with the short cease, gyre the cardboard tightly into a large cigar-type shape. Hold information technology closed with a piece of tape. It helps to make these earlier going out to the bee yard.
If you roll upwards the cardboard and observe that the diameter is not wide plenty, you can but cut some other strip of paper-thin and curlicue information technology around the small one.
When using other piecey types of fuel like pine straw or wood chips, y'all would add a petty fuel at a fourth dimension to build a fire upward. You can't really do that with cardboard. When using paper-thin, you lot would similar the bottom of the tube while holding it, and once well-lit, it is pushed into the smoker. A few puffs from the blare and the paper-thin volition exist lit and working well.
Pro Tips For Lighting A Beekeepers Smoker
- Pack it full of pino straw or another type of loose fuel. Simply doing that helps to continue the smoker from burning besides hot.
- Use a wad of green grass or other vegetation on the very peak of the fuel before closing the top, this gives the smoke one last chance to absurd downwardly before leaving. You lot don't want hot smoke.
- Throw something else in the smoker while building it to extend the fume time. Nosotros regularly add dried pinecones to the smoker along with the pine straw.
- Don't forget that the smoker needs air, pump the bellow periodically to keep the embers in the smoker lit.
- Dump the fuel out when done and stomp information technology out or pour water on information technology.
- Get the first bundle of pine straw on Burn before adding the next.
- Don't purchase a cheap, undersized smoker similar this ane. While they look the same, they are too small to be functional. They are meant to be cheap and to fox the beginner beekeeper into ownership them.
Source: https://blog.foxhoundbeecompany.com/how-to-light-a-bee-smoker/
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