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Beekeeping, Beginning Beekeeper, Questions
What do you use for Bee Smoker Fuel?
I was asked the other day what kind of Bee Smoker Fuel we use in our smokers at kiwimana. The best smoker fuel we have found is using Hessian sacks, Small Kindling and pine needles.
So how do we use them, we age the Hessian sacks outside for a good month or so. Tie a rope between two trees and hang your sacks across that. You get Hessian sacks from your local coffee shops. Some people even sell them on Trademe, but why buy something you can get for free at your local café.
We cut up a small section and roll it up into a small roll, and light the bottom of that and put it into the smoker.
We starting adding small dry stick to the fire going. The key to having a smoker burn all day is having a good solid fire at the bottom of your smoker.
Once you have your fire going then we start adding pine needles, make sure there are dry. Keep cramming these down, these give a cold white smoke, this is an idea we got from the Fat Bee Man.
Well that’s our answer to Bee Smoker Fuel Question, I hope that is a help to people. We will have a video coming out soon about how to light a Smoker.
Media Credits
- Kaffeebohnensäcke flickr photo by wuestenigel shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
I’m a fan of straw, which here in the US consists of wheat stalks bundled into a big bale. It’s really cheap and when crammed really tightly in a smoker can last an hour of two. I like it because I do a lot of removals and meet some pretty feisty bees. With wheat straw I’m able to crank out some very thick smoke to calm down any aggressive behavior.
Hi Tyson, Thanks for the feedback.
Yep great tip, I mujst try that, does it produce a cool smoke?
Looking forward to our talk about your Bee removal work.
See ya…Gary
I like the leaves ( they look like pine needles) of Casuarinas ( you may call them She Oaks or Ironwood) as we have plenty of them or the good old hessian bags are Ok too.
Yep we love using Pine Needles, which are easy to find and store well. The only downside Max is the resin in the smoker that you have to hack out every so often.
Thanks for the comment…Gary