10 Get a Smoker

A beekeeper's best friend is his or her smoker. A smoker is simply a cylinder with a bellows attached. In the cylinder you build a slow burning fire, using pine needles, old burlap, rotten wood or even commercially prepared smoker fuel. A slow burning fire produces mostly smoke, and when the bellow are squeezed, smoke comes out of the nozzle. When smoke enters the beehive when you are working in the hive, a couple of things happen. First, a honey bee's natural instinct when confronted with smoke is to react as if there is a forest fire, and the natural home (recall that hollow tree?) is about to be consumed. Escape is the first defense, and worker bees will duck into the hive and eat as much honey as they can to take with them when they abandon the hive and seek out a new nest. Thus, they are busy when you are working, and they pretty much leave you alone. Second, communication in a beehive is chemical ... pheromones waft around the hive continuously, produced by the queen, other workers, the brood and even drones. These chemical messages tell other bees what to do, when to do it and when to stop. Smoke interferes with these messages, and communication breaks down ... and when that happens you can go into a hive and do your work, being left pretty much alone because nobody can talk, and nobody can hear ... chemically. Keep your smoker lit at all times.