Smoker placement causing bees to "panic"?

TheMasonicHive · June 16, 2010, 10:53:18 AM

Hello everyone,

As a new beek, I'm starting to get the hang of inspecting my bees, and learning what to look for. Things are going wonderfully.

I've made some rookie mistakes but I have on in particular an experienced beek told me that I'd never heard before.

APPARENTLY when using smoke, you can't just set it down anywhere you want to. The wind was shifting when we were doing our inspection together and sometimes the smoke would blow towards the entrance.

He said that I have to be careful with it because I can cause the bees to go into a panic.

What does this mean, and what should I be doing to prevent this and maintain that minimal smoke approach?

Scadsobees · June 16, 2010, 01:25:55 PM

I'm not sure...but if you do smoke too much the bees tend to run more, making inspections a little bit harder and making queen-finding a lot harder.

I don't usually find it a big deal for the bees, although when I set it down in the wrong spot and too much smoke starts wafting toward MY entrance I get a little panic-y!! :-D

Just set it down whereever and if the wind shifts and a lot of smoke is going where you don't want it to, just move it. As to smoking the bees, ideally a good thick cloud of cool white smoke over the top of the frames or in the entrance once and that should do it for a while. Of course by hive 4 it ends up being a whole lot of puffs of the barely smoking ash gouting smoker....that works too but not so ideal :roll:.

JP · June 16, 2010, 01:31:37 PM

Yea, if you set the smoker down and wind is blowing the smoke into the hive, just move the smoker. Your mentor was correct in telling you about excessive smoke riling the bees up.

...JP

iddee · June 16, 2010, 01:42:47 PM

Everything in moderation. Although the above is correct, it would have to be excessive smoke. Set the smoker 4 to 6 feet behind the hive "you should be working from behind the hive anyway" and the smoke blowing into the hive will not bother them. It will be at a minimum, and will not affect the bees.

AllenF · June 16, 2010, 08:36:53 PM

I normally put the smoker at my feet. It does good at keeping the bees from crawling up my shorts.

BjornBee · June 16, 2010, 10:49:01 PM

If your smoker is bellowing smoke to the point that it's causing your bees to panic when your not pumping on it, it's probably burning way too hot. No wonder the bees are panicked. Your probably burning the crap out of them... :-D

Jim134 · June 17, 2010, 07:07:50 AM

Quote from: BjornBee on June 16, 2010, 10:49:01 PM
If your smoker is bellowing smoke to the point that it's causing your bees to panic when your not pumping on it, it's probably burning way too hot. No wonder the bees are panicked. Your probably burning the crap out of them... :-D

LOL

TheMasonicHive · June 17, 2010, 04:58:49 PM

I didn't actually cause a panic, and I'm pretty good at getting nice cool smoke. I always check.

I was just wondering what the panic was. I guess to me I thought panic is what happened when you introduced ANY smoke, hence the effect we beekeepers benefit from.

If there is some kind of step beyond that that has an observable symptom defined as "panic" I'd love to know what it is.