Plain Talk: The Smoked Beekeeper (254)

Episode 254 – Plain Talk: The Smoked Beekeeper 

Jim Tew: Listeners, can I be honest with you? I am really tired, but not so tired that I don't want to talk to you some about bees. I got to do that thing I seem to always do. I don't know why it's so oddly important to me that you understand where I am and what I'm doing when I talk to you. I'm at my daughter's house in southwestern Michigan. We just took a long ride up to Petoskey, Michigan, up in the north country, but not as far as the Upper Peninsula.

The autumn leaves were just spectacular. The weather was brisk and cold. I didn't see a single beehive on the 300-mile walkabout that we did. Not a single one, but there was hardly an hour that didn't pass as I sat in the back seat being chauffeured around like an old man. I thought about bees all the time. I looked. I wondered what life was like keeping bees in this colder climate than I'm accustomed to down in Ohio. Couldn't really draw any conclusions because I couldn't see any beehives. Those few that I saw before we left town here were just typical beehives.

I want to talk to you about an old, tired subject, but try as I might, I can't get it off my mind. After thousands and thousands of years, we still have to use smoke to manage our bees. Kim and I talked about it. I've talked about it personally with you, and here I am talking about it yet again. I want you to honestly know this. I'm not talking about this again just because I couldn't think of anything else to talk about, but I want to talk to you because I can't get it off my mind that this smoke thing cannot be the best idea we've got, but right now it's the only idea we've got.

Listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you once a week here at Honey Bee Obscura, where I talk about something to do with plain talk beekeeping. This time, I want to talk about smoking again. I have an update on smoking bees.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today Podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.

Jim Tew: I'm at my daughter's house here. I don't have my normal recording equipment. I don't know how this is going to sound. I'm talking to you on my laptop computer. I hope it works. I've got to get it to Engineer Jeff, who's antsy because I've cut this too close, because in that area I was just in, there was absolutely-- not absolutely, but there was very minimal internet connection most of the time.

Besides that, it was so striking, so pretty, such a nice trip, walk about to be on the big lakes up there and see the way other people live that there just wasn't a perfect time to sit down and talk to you anyway. Now I'm back home, and I'm not alone. I've got two old cats here with me who have been completely alone for the last four days, and they are just really ardent to be noticed and adored. If I seem to lose my train of thought periodically, it's because I've got a cat or two cats all over me.

Listeners, last week I had a man help me with odds and ends around my home. I don't want to sound old and sappy, but I need help more and more to do things that I would have done 10, 15, 30 years ago and not even thought about it. Now I just don't want to get up on my house to check the chimney cap, and I don't want to have to get up on a ladder to clean the leaves out of my own garden, so I rented youth and hired this man to help me do it. It was money well spent.

Ironically, he's a fireman, and you need to know I had this thought in mind from the minute I negotiated with him to come do these busywork things that he does while he has time off as a fireman. He's on some number of hours straight, and then he's oddly off for some number of hours straight, oftentimes coming to be as much as days, so he looks for odd jobs to stay busy. Physically fit, strong, a daring guy. I can't think of any lifetime that I would be a firefighter. I am strangely afraid of fire for reasons that I may tell you sometime. They don't have anything to do with bees. They just have things to do with boys and fire, who didn't know how easily fire could get away from you. I had the moment, I just put the question to him. When you go into a large burning house, hot fire, everything is burning up, plastic is melting, things are falling in, how do you deal with smoke over and over again? I sense that he did not really have a lot of interest in making me become a fireman in a 10-minute conversation.

He quickly and easily said, for the most part, he's got specialized equipment. If the fire's bad enough, he has respirators, he's got fire-resistant clothes that he wears and hoses, and he's got other firefighters with him. It's not my perception of a fire running amok where you're running around trying to find a water hose or to take a towel to beat out a fire that's gotten away from you.

He has shown an interest in getting bees. He's just bought five or 10 acres, got some chickens. He wants to get goats and bees, but I think he wisely decided to hold off on the bees until next year while he got his house set up. He did get the chickens, going to bring me some eggs sometimes from his pet chickens. I ask him point-blank, "What effect did the smoke have on me as a beekeeper when I fired my smoker, and not as importantly, but a very close second, what effect does smoke have on the bees?"

He thought for a second, and he said, "How often do you smoke your bees?" In essence, how often am I and my bees exposed to smoke? I told him that in my life now and in the bee lifestyle that I was leading, that I probably only fired a smoker off maybe now once a month or so, and that when I did it, I got a good, strong draft of smoke every now and then, probably no more than once a month.

He was categorical that it's going to take a really toxic smoke to be exposed to it for 30, 40 minutes, an hour, whimsically. Not really inside an enclosed building, out in the open air with smoke. That he did not see it being an immediate problem. Listeners, I didn't try to go into detail to say that sometimes you work hundreds of colonies. Over the period of a week, some people work thousands of colonies. They're in smoke all the time.

I decided just not to go into that since I had asked him a very personal question about a small-time beekeeper like I am now, and he was reassuring. He said that, "Sure, if you want to, you can wear a respirator, which I am inclined to do more and more, but it's just one more thing to do." Here's the interesting thing. How can I wear a respirator and talk to you at the same time? Pause, think, pause.

Any way you look at it, for the time being, when I go out and actually work my bees with you, I cannot wear a respirator. You don't know this. You have no reason to know, but it's my problem. I had childhood asthma, and my sleep pathologist said that childhood asthma doesn't go away. That my lung capability is never going to be that of a non-asthmatic person.

I noticed that when I exposed myself to smoke, that I would get asthma conditions that would arise. I was going to wear the respirator, and I will. I'll wear the respirator when I'm not talking to you, but also I need to say that the respirator is just one more thing you have to have. Smokers, hive tools, equipment, matches, fuel, and now I've got to have a respirator on under my veil. Can you see why this smoke thing weighs on me all the time? I don't think it's really good for me. I just don't know how bad it is for me. I don't know what else to do for the bees other than to use it judiciously, no more than necessary, and I don't know if it has any harm, long-lasting, on the bees. This is also a good time to say that I don't really know that anyone knows for sure why smoke has the effect on bees that it has. I do know that we have been smoking bees to control them and manage them for thousands and thousands of years, with no justification.

I would guess that early honey robbers and bee robbers, because they were also taking the brood and the wax for food and for light and for whatever else they wanted to use wax for, probably figured out that going out with a burning branch, or something, would probably singe the bees' wings, and I'm guessing that it was only a short step from one figuring out you don't have to actually burn the bees up. You've just got to smoke them, and it probably confuses their pheromonal communication system, so they're more easily managed. That's just a long series of guesses. To be sure I haven't completely lost you up till this point, I have a lifelong breathing condition. Smoke doesn't help it. I don't know how bad it is for me. I don't know how bad it is for the bees, and importantly, I'm not quite sure what fuel to use in the smoker that would mitigate this to some degree. If you're confused, that's okay because I've already admitted to you. I have talked to you about this several times, and I'm confused. While I get my thoughts together, let's take a break and hear from our sponsor.

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Jim Tew: I can tell you straight up that the cats have no interest in this topic. They've moved on now away from me. I think I'm boring them. I ask, what was the harm? How seriously wrong was it to use wood shavings? Probably pine in most cases, but in my case, I specifically use aromatic cedar. I buy a bell of that stuff over at farm supply stores, and then I use that as my smoker fuel.

He said on one hand, the terpenes didn't do him any good and would not be safe to breathe if you really breathed heavily over time. If you had a quick exposure and moved on, it probably wouldn't mean that much to you unless you had these quick exposures over and over again. I don't have that exposure. I'm managing anywhere from 10 to 15 colonies now. Managing is a loose term there. I don't think that I'm exposed to it all that often.

Why wouldn't I use straw? When I wrote an article many years ago on smokers and smoker fuel, I made most of these comments that I've made to you, that in the South when I was keeping bees in Alabama, there was pine needles everywhere, abundant smoker fuel. My professor at the time said that's a beautiful smoker fuel because it's readily available, easy to start, plenty of it everywhere, free. Why would you use anything else?

In my first years, I just commonly would grab a handful of pine needles, stuff them in my smoker, light it, and then add more pine needles to that. No starter needed, no newspaper, no nothing. It would turn into a fire. Get the coal bed going, and then add more needles to it. I had an individual write me telling me how toxic that smoke was. That writer at the time had good science and solid reasoning that the best smoker fuel to use was common wheat straw, that it had almost no residue and just resulted in white smoke that had the calming effect on the bees.

I wrote that in stone, but then this is what happens. If you use either pine needles or wheat straw, it burns down very quickly. While you're in the middle of a delicate process, I don't know, what are you doing? Replacing a queen or doing something like that, then you've got to recharge that smoker periodically. You've got to stop. All too often, it would actually go out. Many years ago, I accidentally worked out a smoker system that works for me, but I don't think is good for me or the bees.

That is, as I've already said, to go to a farm supply store and buy a bale of cedar shavings that's used for animal bedding. That stuff will last me for five or six years with all the harmful side effects, if you just lived in that stream of smoke for hours on end. I've already explained to the point of painfulness that I don't do that. I'm not in that smoke that long, but it does stick to your clothes. I've admitted time again, I just hate to fire a smoker because after that, my clothes are soiled, my truck smells like smoke, my life smells like smoke. People wonder if we've been to a barbecue when you come in from smoking bees because of the strong smoke odor, so you've got to clean up. I just have never enjoyed that part of beekeeping. Now, quit your complaining, Jim. Quit your complaining. You've made the point as best you can.

I learned to use these chips, and I've got an odd system worked out through a complete and total fluke. At a farm estate sale, I bought two really old-fashioned, no-nonsense, heavy-gauged, galvanized cans with lids. I bought them, get ready for this, to use them as garbage cans. I don't think you can even buy them now. I bet you that all the companies who made these heavy, galvanized cans are gone now.

One day, I decided that I would just put smoker fuel in one of them. That way, the smoker fuel is in the yard with the lid on it. It's always dry. Roll of paper towel, some newspaper, and a one-type igniter to get it all going. Then it was a short step away to realize that I'll just take my lit smoker when I'm finished, and I'll stuff a wad of needles, grass, anything in the spout of the smoker, and then put it in the other can, and then put the lid on it. Over time, just within a short while, it goes out. Then this is where it gets complicated.

When I come back out again, I take that smoker, and I pour the partially burned contents into one of those can lids. I take one of those paper towels that I told you I had a bit ago, or a small piece of newspaper, make a fire out of that, and then just grab a handful of that charcoaled, unburned wood, along with the paper towel that I usually used, or the grass that I used. Just stuff out the spout. I put that back in, it immediately catches fire. Then I lean the smoker to one side about 35 to 40 degrees and keep adding fresh chips out of the other smoker, pack it for a minute, puff, puff, puff, bring it up to a full stream of smoke.

Then the last thing I do after my tall smoker is fully packed is to lay a piece of paper towel on top of that to keep those chips from blowing out when I smoke my bees. It burns for hours. If it begins to burn hot, if the smoke begins to turn gray or blue and not snow white, then I stop everything, take my hive tool, pack all that down back to the coal bed, add a fresh charge of wood shavings, and then put that paper towel back on the top. Then I'm ready to go again for another hour and a half or two hours. It burns forever.

I'm recycling nearly everything. I end up burning everything in the world. Anything that's left in that lid that you just couldn't quite pick up, I dump back into the chip-containing can, it gets mixed in. Everything is recycled. Two cans, the smoker, it's worked flawlessly for me if that smoke coming from those wood shavings is not considered to be harmful for me. A firefighting helper friend reasonably convinced me that short burst, overtime, from a firefighting standpoint, he didn't see an issue with that. If I was going to be using it more than that, then I was right. I probably should be wearing a respirator.

There it is again. I don't know how many times I've talked about smoke. This is the second or third time. I've tried to explain to you why it's on my mind all the time. I'm not a young man anymore. I don't want to do something to myself and my bees that's harmful to me, but it looks like this is the best I can do for right now. I wouldn't mind hearing from you. I'm just terrible at responding to you when you write me. If you've written me and I haven't gotten back to you, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude. I'm just one man.

If you have a smoker fuel that really works, or even better, if you have a technique that works even better. Let me know about it. Real quickly, as I close, if you're using sugar syrup, I can't always make that sugar syrup spray work. It doesn't calm the bees enough and it's sticky and messy to use, especially if I'm holding cameras and microphones the way I usually am. Go ahead and tell me if you're having good luck with sugar syrup spray.

I'd like to know if anybody's had any other ideas. Do you vibrate colonies? I've often wondered if you could put a vibrator like I use to vibrate trees to shake pecans off of trees. Can you do something to vibrate the hive that would set them on edge? I think not because I think what smoke is doing is masking their chemical response. My time is up. I've tried to make it clear. I'm not going to go back through it again. I will let this sit. I promise. I won't bring this up again for months unless someone writes me with a really good alternative idea. I love talking to you. I'm going to go take a rest now after my walkabout. I'll be anxious to hear from you if you've got some ideas. I'm Jim, and I'm telling you, bye.

[00:22:25] [END OF AUDIO]