How To Use Smoker Pellets For Bees

Once y'all make up one's mind to light your smoker, how do you keep it lit? Many beekeepers report that before they've finished simply one hive, their smoker is cold as nighttime and they have to begin again.

In truth, everything yous need to know most smokers you learned in elementary school. I'm thinking of those "fire triangles" that always appear in scientific discipline textbooks. The triangle commonly has a graphic of red and orange flames in the center, and each of the three points is labeled. Oxygen. Fuel. Oestrus.

Don't forget the basics

If your smoker is going out, you are likely neglecting one of the three points. You may accept put all three elements in the smoker, merely unless they are pampered, the burn down is apt to go out.

For example, when you build a campfire you more often than not begin past lighting some quick-called-for fuel like paper, paraffin fire starters, or finely split tinder. Plenty of oxygen surrounds your pile, and then you simply add together heat in the form of a match or torch, and the burn starts. After the starter material gets hot and burns on its own, you add larger pieces of wood, oft chosen kindling. When the kindling gets going, you tin finally add together logs. At present all y'all demand is marshmallows.

You know that hot air rises and yous tin can see the burning gases (flames) every bit they rise from the fire. You can get quite close to the burn down on the perimeter, but the space to a higher place the fire is extremely hot. Fifty-fifty your marshmallows will fire if held directly over the flames.

Don't light the top

I accept a neighbour, a regular he-man, who can't build a fire to save his life. I've seen him endeavor to calorie-free big slash piles of logging debris by dousing diesel fuel over the acme. He lights it, flames shoot skyward among billows of black fume, but within xx minutes the diesel fuel is gone and his slash pile remains undamaged.

In the same way, some beekeepers stuff their smokers with fuel and and then light the top. Information technology may flair upwards for a few minutes, but then information technology goes out. When y'all light the top, the hot gases movement up and out of the smoker, but they don't ignite the fuel downwards below, and so information technology goes out. You demand to calorie-free the fuel at the lesser first, and then the hot gases move up through the fresh fuel and make information technology burn.

Going back to our example, if yous build a campfire in the style of a tepee or log cabin, you can even so light it from the bottom and be successful. Simply the mode a smoker is designed, it is difficult to fill the canister and and then calorie-free information technology from the bottom. Then you have to practise information technology in increments.

Steps to lighting a smoker

The following steps take longer than lighting the fuel at the top, but the extra time is worth information technology. Properly lit, the burn down will smolder for long periods without going out.

1. Begin with some quick-starting fuel similar crumpled newspaper or pine needles. This fuel should non exist packed tightly just should be lite and fluffy with lots of air infinite. Ignite the fuel, wait until information technology burns on its ain, so button it down to the lesser of the smoker with your hive tool. Squeeze the bellows a few times to forcefulness air up through the lightly-packed fuel.
2. Afterward the initial fuel is burning well, add another scattering of fluffy fuel to the smoker. Once information technology begins to burn, push it down with the hive tool and squeeze the bellows a few more than times.
3. Repeat the previous step one or two more times, e'er waiting for the fresh fuel to brainstorm called-for before pushing information technology downwards into the smoker, and ever adding a few puffs of air.
4. Once the burn is burning lustily and flames are licking the insides of the fuel sleeping room, you can add together larger fuel and more oxygen.
5. Afterward the larger fuel has ignited, you should be able to close the lid. At this bespeak, the fire should smolder on its ain with only an occasional squeeze on the bellows. Recall to check the fuel supply from time to time, and always add a few puffs of air along with the fresh fuel.

Once it's hot, it'south hot

Once you take your smoker burning well, remember it will fire for a long time and it will exist hot. It is piece of cake to forget near the hot smoker one time yous have finished working your bees.

Information technology's embarrassing to study that one twenty-four hours earlier this twelvemonth after I finished hive inspections, I shed my bee adapt and left my smoker on a wooden tabular array in the backyard. Later, while talking to my hubby in the forepart yard, I said, "I smell smoke." Information technology didn't odour similar the wood chips I had been using, and it wasn't.  When I went to investigate, smoke was rising from a charred circumvolve nether the smoker.

Moron. I could have burned the house downward.

Rusty
Honey Bee Suite

Oops. Embarrassing to acknowledge, but I walked away from the smoker without checking it. © Rusty Burlew.

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