# Smoker Fuel.....pine needles



## NasalSponge (Jul 22, 2008)

Looks like dry to me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwEnri6lNNI


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## Yucca Patrol (Mar 31, 2012)

As long as they are brown, I'm sure they are fine. Although nearly everyone in my neighborhood has huge pine trees, the previous owner of our home cut them all down due to their tendency to crush people's roofs. 

So I get my pine needles from the nice garden center manager at Home Depot who lets me fill my own garbage bag full of the loose needles that fall from bales and litter the tractor trailer full of bales. I'm also now in the habit of getting a free handful of paint stirrer sticks whenever I go to make guides for foundationless frames.


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## mbcpa (Feb 10, 2011)

Any chance you have a picture of the installed stirrer stick?


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## Eddie Honey (May 30, 2011)

I do the paint stirrer too! It works great. My only complaint was that it eats up too much of the top so you lose an inch or so of would be comb because the bees won't build over it they just attach to the bottom of the paint stirrer. They fit very easily into the groove on the top bar though. Now I just cut a piece of plastic foundation into strips and glue that in.


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## Yucca Patrol (Mar 31, 2012)

All of them are in the hives right now, so no photo. But all I did was pull out the plastic foundation and use a bead of wood glue in the slot to glue them in. It takes about one and a third sticks to completely fill the slot. I scored both sides at the right length with a razor knife and snapped the extra part off.

This is just a first time experiment, so I added two of these foundationless frames between drawn comb in a super to see what happens. If I like the results, I will try it next time with a full super.


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## TimnEsther (May 18, 2011)

If you can easily light the pine needles, they are good.


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## scdw43 (Aug 14, 2008)

Brown not green.


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## CesarBeeCool (Apr 11, 2011)

Brown dried pine cones work well also.


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## stripstrike (Aug 29, 2009)

So does fallen white pines that are rotting on the ground. I have a couple that I regularly take the axe to and fill up a five gallon pail with the damp stuff near the ground. Burns great once it's lit and has a lot of moisture in for cool white smoke. Kind of like "punk" wood you can almost tear apart with your hands.


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## sfisher (Sep 22, 2009)

dry dry


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## the kid (Nov 26, 2006)

I use 5 pages from an old phone book and the wood chips like used in the flower bed


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## westernbeekeeper (May 2, 2012)

Make sure any fuel you use (except gasoline [just kidding!]) is very dry.


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## psisk (Jul 21, 2011)

Green pine needles on top of the pellet fuel makes a cool smoke. Green pine needles will smoke profusely. 

psisk


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