# Spray Sugar Water instead of Smoke



## Wendellww (Sep 20, 2014)

I read somewhere that spraying bees with sugar water is preferred over smoke - anyone with experience please advise. What sugar-to-water ratio works well?

I like the idea. I have heard smoke disrupted production a day or so.

Wendell


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## papabear (Mar 5, 2014)

Wendellww said:


> I read somewhere that spraying bees with sugar water is preferred over smoke - anyone with experience please advise. What sugar-to-water ratio works well?
> 
> I like the idea. I have heard smoke disrupted production a day or so.
> 
> Wendell


I don't know about preferred but , I use to use 5 to 3 mix with some honey b healthy it worked great but attracted to many ants just use water with smoke near by just in case my girls want me to leave.

Stumpy Lake Bee Farm


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

It might cause robbing to get started if there is a dearth at the moment. I've tried it. I've tried just a tad of vinegar in the water, no sugar also. I still prefer smoke, it seems to work better for me.


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## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

Wendell, the problem is, you have to be able to spray the spray for it to have any effect.
When you walk up to a hive and CRACK the lid loose, it is already too late!
The idea of smoke is to interrupt the alarm pheromone that is emitted the SECOND that the lid is cracked, from being revived by the other bees in the hive.
This defensive pheromone message is sent and received in a fraction of a second in the hive. 
Your sugar syrup is WAY too late for comfortable work in the hive.
The utilization of smoke in apiculture is not some new fad that swept a wave on the internet.
Rather, the BASIS for our very comfortable time working with bees begins with smoke.
I suggest that if you are concerned with the effects of smoke application, start varying the amount of smoke used to judge how very little is actually necessary.
In good weather with flowers in bloom, it takes less than in cooler weather or in the fall after a flow.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I have read, but never observed, that the sugar/water mix can result in the bees' wings getting stuck together when it's really hot and dry, if the bees don't get a chance to have it groomed off them promptly. For house bees, it's likely groomed off, but for flying bees that might be a problem. 

I have cautiously used a mister with sugar water, form time to time. More in my first year year than recently, though.

But I also light my smoker ahead of time, as well. I find just having a lit smoker nearby is often enough to keep the bees calm for all but the most annoying intrusions. I light it, and often finid I don't neeed to use it, even at the start. My bees are quite used to me - and I am getting quieter and more deliberate in what I try to do; well, for the most part.

It's one of the challenges for new beekeepers: they most need to use a smoker when they are novices, but that's also when they find it the most difficult to keep going.

Bees can be unevenly defensive, too. Some days, or seasons, they are just plain pissy. But if they are really accustomed to you, being there and poking about around in their space, they seem to accept that. FWIW, I talk to my bees as I initially approach them and off and on while I'm working on them. Except for my mentor, no one except me ever does anything to my hives, except stand around and admire them, and only on carefully chosen days when I know the bees will be on their best behavior. Don't want the girls getting any bad habits and discovering they can be rude to humans.

Enj.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I sprayed a swarm very lightly with sugar water because I read somewhere that it would "keep them from flying". False. 

What it did do is make the box I had very very sticky... and the bees sticky. And my gloves. And everything had a little sugar on it so a lot of bees were more interested in sucking that up than following their queen into the box. Learning experience... I wanted to get as many bees as I could as fast as possible without leaving the box until dark because I was leaving town that evening. Not directly relatable to a hive inspection... but valuable I think. Plus all those bees have to groom and bee groomed and that takes them away from caring for brood, hauling pollen, and bringing in nectar.
Just smoke your bees. The robbing situation is a very real possibility.


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## MRB (Jan 26, 2013)

I sometime use sugar water instead of smoke when I am working with a starter/finisher colony for grafted queens. These colonies were overflowing with bees, so I wasn't too worried about robbing. The sugar water does calm down the bees little, but it's nothing compared to smoking your hives in my experience. I used a 1:1 ratio probably more than I needed. I also don't use gloves, so I didn't have the sticky glove problem.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Wendellww said:


> I have heard smoke disrupted production a day or so.


Not smoking so they get all riled up disrupted production a day or so.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

I tried the sugar in the water when I first started my top bar hive a couple years ago. The sugar was causing mold on my bars so I switched to water and anise oil. That smell masks their pheromones pretty well, so that's all I use on my 5 hives now. They are all top bar though, so I don't know how well it works with a Lang where you open the whole roof all at once.


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## Wendellww (Sep 20, 2014)

I would like to thank everyone that has replied very much for taking the time to share their experience.

It seems sugar spray is a better idea than actual practice. It may be a good thing to keep a spray bottle on hand incase the hive realy gets riled.

I am a newbie  and my girls are very calm. I work without gloves mostly (until I get stung a couple times). I try not to use much smoke and I think sometimes I don't need or use it. However, sometimes it seems like it is almost a habit to use smoke. Finding my queen seems to be the biggest challenge and I read they run from smoke. Both hives swarmed this year (June 25 & Aug 29), so neither queen is marked. I did find the late season queen last hive inspection in late September. I have trouble seeing eggs, but I can find them if lighting is right. 

Late season I got "lit up" one day .... lost count after 7 stings as I was too focused in getting the hive back together and getting away from there. I actually walked off for 5 min to let them calm a little, then went back (with my plan & focus) and got it done and left. 

FYI - I have one very strong hive, even after it had a June 25 swarm (took 6 weeks to see new eggs/brood), it built to 4 mediums of brood August into September. This hive was a lil scary for a newbie all season to do a full inspection. At one point in August, it was 8 medium boxes tall....had to stand on blocks to feed it. Finally talked my mentor into allowing me to pull some full supers. Hind sight is 20/20 .... should have split it a couple times. Went into winter 4 boxes tall.

Seems most of my stings are my fault, not theirs. The good news is I am reacting less, so hopefully I am getting desensitized. The good news is the 7+ sting day I reacted less that one sting earlier in the season - hardly knew it the next day. (Yes, I have an epi pen - never used it). I only got stung 8 or 10 times for the season until the 7+ day.

Bes wishes for a productive year!

Wendell


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## ChuckReburn (Dec 17, 2013)

I've seen the sugar water overdone, stick too many wings down and you end up with bees that can't get cleaned up and die like little sugar coated raisins. Worst I've done was in my first spring and I killed a swarm this way.

The sugar water, "I don't use smoke", Tibetan chants and crystals... seem best reserved for first year colonies. Plenty of people get away with it even with Texas bees but then the 2nd year they crack open a large hive and find their little wolf puppy has grown up. I've seen a few pet dogs that accompanied the beekeepers to the yard on those first year inspections killed or seriously harmed the 2nd year.

I thought I knew how to "blow smoke" until I had the pleasure of working alongside a 5th generation beekeeper, my technique improved overnight. Much like driving, it is a learned and practiced skill...


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I read somewhere that spraying bees with sugar water is preferred over smoke - anyone with experience please advise.

I've read a lot of things somewhere, but many of them were not true. I've tried sugar water, I've tried just water, I've tried liquid smoke. Only smoke works as well as smoke.

> What sugar-to-water ratio works well?

IF you use it, and I would NOT use it, I would use 1:2 (1 part sugar to 2 parts water). Unfortunately it will ferment faster, but it also won't make them so sticky.

>I like the idea. 

Having tried it, I don't.

>I have heard smoke disrupted production a day or so.

Simply not true. If you smoke them correctly, and you are working them for a while, you'll find the smoke wearing off in a matter of minutes. If you let them have a defensive reaction, they are often still upset several days later. The syrup will not stop the defensive reaction it will just occupy them with cleaning up the syrup. Better to avoid them getting upset in the first place. There are cave paintings in Uganda of people smoking bees that are at least 8,000 years old... smoking had endured because nothing else is as effective.

I think some of this comes from Langstroth's theory that they gorge on honey because of the smoke. I do not believe this is true. I've opened enough hives with and without smoke and the same number of bees have their heads in the cells either way. I think some of it also is from thinking that smoke in general is bad (smoking is bad for us, right?) but if you think of it this way, if you're standing around the campfire and you get a wiff of smoke it's actually kind of nice. If the smoke blows in your face so much you can't breath and your eyes are watering then it gets you upset.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessmoke.htm

The most common smoking mistakes:

o People have the smoker too hot and burn the bees with the flame thrower they are wielding

o People use far too much smoke causing a general panic instead of simply interfering with the alarm pheromone. One puff in the door is enough. Another on the top if they look excited is ok and after that having it lit and setting nearby is usually sufficient.

o People don't light the smoker because they think smoke upsets the bees, probably because of one of the above reasons.

o People blow the smoke in and immediately open the hive. If you wait a minute the reaction will be completely different. If you’re doing something not too time consuming, like filling frame feeders or something, it’s a good plan to smoke the next hive before you open this one. That way the minute will be up when you open that one.

o People don’t smoke because they have the idea that it is either bad for the bees or somehow unnatural. Their exposure is only a puff or two once every week or two. People have been smoking bees for at least 8,000 years that we have documented for one very good reason. Nothing works better at calming them.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

"Only smoke works as well as smoke."

Quote of the day


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

A little cool smoke just does no harm and works so well. Why ignore 8000 years of success?


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## Matt F (Oct 7, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> o People blow the smoke in and immediately open the hive. If you wait a minute the reaction will be completely different.


This is the mistake I always make. I blow a puff into the entrance, then (immediately) open the lid and put one puff across the top of the frames. I set the smoker down upwind of me & the hive so it wafts in our general direction while I'm working.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Vance G said:


> A little cool smoke just does no harm and works so well. Why ignore 8000 years of success?


I can only think of one good reason to not use smoke, and that's if you have bees in a spot where use of smoker is prohibited. We put bees in one spot, private forest land, where use of the smoker is prohibited for forest fire hazard reasons. It's a very productive spot, so we go there anyways. But, we dont dig down deep in the hives up there either, just pop lids and check if they need more supers.

But, the 'dont use smoke' question seems to come up every year, early in the year. The problem, most newbies that read about it, will try it shortly after putting packages into a fresh new hive, and come to the conclusion, all this talk about smokers is overdone. A new start colony in a box of fresh new frames, tends to be docile, they are still trying to get established, dont have a lot to defend. But, once they are well established, have comb built for the entire brood nest, and some more that they are filling with nectar, as well as 10x or so the original population, then those bees will start to get defensive. It's a rude awakening for the newbie beekeeper to go into a hive after they have been lulled by docile bees for 2 months or so, and suddenly find that the bees have developed an attitude, and enough of a population to enforce that attitude. For the newbie with a false sense of security, that opens the hive lid with no smoke, and the veil neatly tucked away somewhere inside the house, the awakening can be really nasty.

Ask me how I know this cycle.....


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I can only think of one good reason to not use smoke, and that's if you have bees in a spot where use of smoker is prohibited. 

I suppose I can think of one other, when you're looking for queens, it's better to just light the smoker and set it upwind... so you don't make the queen run.


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## RedDave (Apr 5, 2010)

enjambres said:


> I have cautiously used a mister with sugar water, form time to time. More in my first year year than recently, though.
> 
> But I also light my smoker ahead of time, as well. I find just having a lit smoker nearby is often enough to keep the bees calm for all but the most annoying intrusions. I light it, and often finid I don't neeed to use it, even at the start. My bees are quite used to me - and I am getting quieter and more deliberate in what I try to do; well, for the most part.
> 
> ...


Some folks laugh when I say that I talk to the bees and they know the beekeeper, but I've always talked to them and had folks standing nearby get stung when they ignore me completely. (Except those rare days when like many females, they're just plain nasty.)


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

RedDave said:


> Some folks laugh when I say that I talk to the bees and they know the beekeeper, but I've always talked to them and had folks standing nearby get stung when they ignore me completely. (Except those rare days when like many females, they're just plain nasty.)


Maybe they're tired of you talking.


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## wertzsteve (Dec 28, 2015)

I just went from 1 to 2 hives did not have a smoker so I used a spray bottle. I would sit 1 to 2 feet away from the hive and watch them very friendly. after using the spray bottle bees would be mad 3 to 7 days. just bought a smoker and used it Sunday went out today and my bees are very friendly. they are not only friendly today, but it was weigh easier to work the hive yesterday . I will never use a spray bottle again. smoker is the way to go for me.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

wertzsteve said:


> I just went from 1 to 2 hives did not have a smoker so I used a spray bottle. I would sit 1 to 2 feet away from the hive and watch them very friendly. after using the spray bottle bees would be mad 3 to 7 days. just bought a smoker and used it Sunday went out today and my bees are very friendly. they are not only friendly today, but it was weigh easier to work the hive yesterday . I will never use a spray bottle again. smoker is the way to go for me.


Awesome that you came back and shared the results! 

If you think bees like being sprayed with water open them up in a drizzle.  Or even a pending drizzle.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

The only time I knew smoke couldn't be used at all was by a fellow beekeeper here. He was removing hives from some buildings locally at the Lake City ammunition plant. No smoke or flame at all no matter what. He used sugar water and said the small hives were okay but the big ones were really bad. He was getting paid for removal, not for saving them. Saving them was him trying to turn a lemon into lemonade. He said he'd not do a job like that again.


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## Joe Mac (Jun 1, 2016)

FlowerPlanter said:


> "Only smoke works as well as smoke."
> 
> Quote of the day


:thumbsup:

I'm amazed at the number of posts of people insistent on not using smoke or trying to find a substitute for it. Smoke calms the bees like nothing else, when used properly and does not harm them. Nothing works as well as smoke and 8000 years of using it successfully should prove it. It's like some people are trying to re-invent the wheel.


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

Why do the no smoke people thank us cheap beekeepers would spend the money on a smoker (for my op its x 6 a year) if there not needed?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i was able to work all of my hives without smoke from coming out of winter through the spring flow and right up to the onset of our summer dearth when i began harvesting honey.

i had read that one should not use gloves and that would force you to become better at working a hive. i did this for a long time, but found that eventually i would take a sting or two to the hands. i didn't mind the stings but their smell off set off defensiveness with the colony.

i found that thin nitrile gloves don't prevent a sting from going through, but since the bees can't smell through them they don't seem to know there's a hand inside to sting, and it's very rare that i take any stings. 

i now use the gloves at every inspection and reserve the smoker for summer time harvesting.


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

X2...

Get gentle bees, and treat them gently. 

The last time I tried using smoke IT DIDN'T WORK. The southern queen had obviously found an AHB drone along the line. A little smoke just pissed them off. A little more smoke just pissed them off a lot more.

I got a 2 quart pump sprayer from HD. Made some 2:1 syrup and added 4 Tablespoons of Pro Health. I sprayed it in the entrance ( heavily). I lifted the outer cover, drenching the inner cover hole as I lifted. I cracked the inner cover enough to spray a pretty good dose into the crack, without releasing the barbarian hordes. I sprayed the entrance again and again. 

It seemed to work - reducing them to the level of an aggressive hive, rather than the Mongol hordes they started out as. It was an effective way of dealing with them for me.

Every time this comes up ( smoke, or not) the smoke hordes get all riled up. Especially if someone says it isn't necessary...

Nowadays I always have my _sprayer_ ready, but rarely have to use it, and a light spritz usually works wonders_ if_ I do. It worked well enough on the AHB cross that I just switched. One nice feature is that I don't struggle with lighting it, or keeping it lit. A few pumps every now and then, and it's _always_ ready. My smoker is gathering dust. It's a nice little conversation piece.

Get gentle bees, and treat them gently. I have 36 colonies that don't know what smoke smells like since I haven't lit the smoker in over two years. I haven't had to, and you don't either.

I can almost hear the screams of the hordes building to a fever pitch. :lookout::gh:


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## Joe Mac (Jun 1, 2016)

> I can almost hear the screams of the hordes building to a fever pitch.


Nope, no screams from me. :no:

I recently rescued a colony of bees from a tree, broken off in a thunderstorm. When I took them home they were desperately in need of feeding. I put in a plastic division board type feeder and filled it about halfway with sugar syrup. The next morning there was a cloud of bees hovering at the entrance, bees fighting on the bottom board and probably 50 or more already dead on the ground in front of the hive. The neighboring hives could smell the sugar syrup and were attacking the struggling colony. I already had the entrance greatly reduced and reduced more to about a 1" opening. After a couple of hours, things settled down. I didn't spill a drop of the syrup when filling the feeder (I added the syrup before setting it in the hive), and still the bees were still aggressively attacking the new hive. If I used your sugar syrup potion to seduce my bees, especially if I sprayed the entrance "heavily" and sprayed the inner cover and sprayed the entrance "again and again", my apiary would be in an uproar with bees, not to mention inviting the fire ants (which you probably don't have to deal with in CO). We are in a dearth here and robbers and ants are always looking for something to steal. 

You must have some really gentle bees, that never sting or rob from each other, or maybe you never have a scarcity of nectar, but I do. If I had concocted a sugar potion that could tame the vicious AHBs, I wouldn't be giving out the recipe. I would patent it and market it and be world famous. . You could make million$$ selling this stuff. 

Oh by the way, what did you used to smoke in your smoker? I use pine needles and cypress wood shavings and it seems to calm my bees very well. Just curious because whatever you used to use, I want to stay away from, if it pisses the bees off. What kind of smoker do you have? Maybe you would want to sell it since it's just collecting dust.

To smoke or not to smoke. I say whatever works for you.


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## IslandLife (Apr 14, 2015)

Always have been using my smoker. Working well for me. 

But, a local beekeeper just gave me some "liquid smoke" (the stuff people cook with), mixed in water, which he uses sometimes if he wants to do a quick, non-intrusive inspection ... He says the smell sticks around a little longer, but it helps calm the bees ....

Thoughts?


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

This discussion comes up from time to time. In a previous thread, one poster brought up the really excellent reason why they did not use smoke: tinder-dry conditions. There are times and places where the fire danger is extreme, and smokers are either a bad idea or outright illegal. You don't have to be working bees at an ammo plant for there to be a danger.

That said, we smoke.


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

Joe Mac said:


> especially if I sprayed the entrance "heavily" and sprayed the inner cover and sprayed the entrance "again and again"


Maybe you could re-read my post - I was referring to dealing with a *lone *African cross hive. I was drenching them, prepping to split them with multiple new queens. I could have cared less if every hive in the yard started ganging up on them.

I do have very gentle bees, and I know when & how to not aggravate them. I'm fortunate that I'm usually not forced to work them if the conditions aren't right. If they get out of hand they might get an ounce of syrup, lightly sprinkled. I think I _may _have spritzed_ one hive_,_ one time_, last year.

"Making millions" - I think that ship sailed when the recipe (not even my own) became public knowledge, but you're welcome to give it a shot as far as I'm concerned. 

I used pine wood shavings from the shop where I build bee equipment. DON'T USE PINE shavings- it pisses Africanized bees off.. Maybe I used dried Oak bark, same advice.

There are other ways to calm bees besides smoke. Get over it. I _never_ said smoke _doesn't_ work. Go smoke you bees, and yourself, while you're at it. Oh yeah, you're not in Colorado :lpf:


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Colobee>> after 38 years using smoke, now only the spritzer. You are truly a Renaissance man!


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## wertzsteve (Dec 28, 2015)

this was my first time and I used cardboard, worked great on my local mutts.


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## ankklackning (Dec 10, 2020)

Well I don't see any new posts on this.

Has anyone perfected this technique and worked it out?

I would really like to compare notes with someone on this. But I'll share what I've found out so far.

One of the problems I'm having with it, is that because this technique has different physics than a smoker, I can't tell if a hive is acting defensive because the technique and time of day etc were just off or because it really is a defensive hive. (This I'm trying to figure out today.)

Also you don't put very much sugar in the sprayer for use as a calming spray. And depending on the source, some people say you put say 3 to 5 drops of lemongrass oil in the water sprayer bottle. (But I did find out if you spray this too much with lots of lemongrass it can really confuse the bees and do some weird things, like giving them a false idea of a non-existent second queen being there. This is rare but it can happen.)

I'm trying to figure out if this technique shouldn't be used on really large hives that can react more, because when you crack the lid open the bees can react faster than the beekeeper can spray. So this is one issue with it. Another problem is that its hard to know how exactly to do the technique. Am I supposed to only spray down things that come in my face and are acting defensive? Or am I supposed to spray down everything there? And before going in?

I've been using this technique for a while. But I've got more questions than answers at this point because I'm not totally sold on the idea that I know everything. And I'd like to talk to people who use it a lot and know a lot about it to see what I could do better on it before I advise people on it.

One thing I can tell you; I would NOT use this technique without a veil. This is because when I use this technique...it works. It does work! But the problem is the guard bees are faster than I am. So by the time I spray him he's already trying to sting me. Now when I spray him, he'll go down 90% of the time and go away. Occasionally there's this one guard that comes back. Usually I spray them once, or twice, and they just fly backing off. But in some cases, there's a chance the guard that got defensive brought friends. This happened today. I'm still trying to see if its the hive just being overall defensive or if I used the technique wrong.

So you should use a veil with this technique... but then again i don't like getting stung anyway. It takes the fun out of it, even if I don't die or react. I just don't like pain. And there's 2 people in my area that reacted badly to stings after like 20 years working bees and had to suddenly stop.

This technique was working well today...until I ran into this defensive hive. So maybe its the hive partly at fault. (shrug...)

If you had a veil on and gloves and did this spray you can get something to work out for small and medium size colonies. (I am hesitant to say if it would work with very large colonies yet.) But its also possible you could do a screened cover over the top of the hive you are working on while only working on 1 frame at a time to keep the other bees more manageable when coupled with the sprayer! I think this could possibly do something! POTENTIAL! (Feeder shim with screening stapled over it, for temporary lid for open hives. Switch frames around with a handle on the temporary screen cover. (Sword and Shield Method haha... this is what I'm working on now and what I refer to it as but I would like to test it more before posting about it.)

And then to reiterate you only have say a table spoon of sugar in the bottle sprayer. (You couldn't do more anyway without having the spray bottle gum up and ruin fast anyway.)

_I am also hesitant about someone trying this out who already gets bad sting reactions._

Part of what got me interested in this technique was the fact that I don't react well to smoke.

Another thing I'm trying to research is if the interval of the bees forgetting you or remembering they are mad between times you crack open the hive is the same with this technique compared to with a smoker? (Don't know yet. And I don't like to assume things.)


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

ankklackning said:


> Well I don't see any new posts on this.
> 
> Has anyone perfected this technique and worked it out?


I almost exclusively use the anise oil in the spray water for every single inspection. (On the occasion that the bees in a hive are nasty and I have to break out the smoker, after two times they get requeened). I use the spray bottle as a fine mist across the tops of the bees when I first open them up. This helps mask any immediate alarm signals from popping the box. Then if I have been rough in pulling a frame and I have a few guard bees on my veil, I mist around my face and the frame in hand. I never use it as a spray directly on the bees on the comb, because there is no reason to do that. I've watched students I am teaching do that like you would spray a cat with a water bottle and I asked them why they would do that. They didn't know, just thought that was how it should be done. So much of a "technique" is a perceived way of use vs. actual reasoning.

Many people can achieve inspections without any smoke or other device, but I sometimes loose my grip on the frame and clumsily drop it back into the hive, in which case, I've raised the alarm and I want to override their communication with a stronger scent. It is not used to "drive the bees back into the box" as I've seen others say about the smoker.


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## Mud Songs (Sep 30, 2010)

I haven't had a chance to read all the comments, so I'm sure I'm repeating some things that have already been hinted at. But here's the deal:

It's easy to misuse a spray bottle if you've never used one before, just as it's easy to misuse a smoker if you've never used one before. Once _you know how to use it properly,_ it's just as handy as any other tool in your toolbox.

I use a fine mist on my bees most of the time, and it's no better or worse than using a smoker. (A spray bottle isn't more "natural" or any of that jazz.) It doesn't create mould on the frames (it must take a lot of spray to do that). It doesn't make the bees defensive. It doesn't trigger robbing. It doesn't make the bees' wings so sticky that they can't fly for the rest of the day, though if done right, the bees won't fly at all for about a minute.

Once I figured out the best way to use a spray bottle, it worked just as well as a smoker for me -- in most cases -- and I mainly stick with it because I find it more convenient (I never have to light it or concern myself with keeping it lit).

But I always have a smoker on stand by because the smoker seems more effective on defensive bees, and when I need to completely tear a hive apart, it's smoker time.

I suspect commercial operators, who have to do a lot hive manipulations, would prefer a smoker. But small scale folks can probably get away with a spray bottle.

I'll never give up my smoker, but I use the spray bottle for convenience most of the time.

I posted a video that explains and demonstrates my use of a spray bottle here if you're interested. In the first 60 seconds of the video, you can see how how effective the spay is on the bees (though I'm not trying to convert anyone).









Beekeeping Spray Bottle (Instead of a Smoker)


In this longish video that I recorded over my lunch break at home today, I demonstrate and explain my use of a spray bottle that I use on my bees instead of a smoker. I don’t think a spray bo…




mudsongs.org


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## Pazuzu (May 8, 2021)

I find that sugar spray works ok with calm bees but not so much with aggressive bees.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

Well, if smoking bothered the bees I'd be in real trouble...I smoked a brisket last week for 8 or 9 hours and the smoke was drifting through the bee yard the whole time...


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