# Home Made Smoker



## Tomas (Jun 10, 2005)

After posting some photos of my swarm traps on another thread, a couple Beesource members asked about the smoker they saw in one of the photos. 

This smoker is something that came out of my time with Peace Corps here in Honduras (quite a few years back now). There needed to be an inexpensive alternative to buying a smoker. All you need to make it is two pieces of wood, material for the bellow, a powder milk can, several small nuts and bolts, couple small nails and some other pieces of tin or metal sheeting.










Most of these materials you could probably find for free if you’re thrifty. Otherwise the costs were minimal—about 15 or 20 Lempiras. The connecting piece between the bellows and fuel chamber is from a big tin can I cut apart. The wood was some scraps I had laying around the house. It’s not hard to get a milk can from someone in the family who has a baby or children. If you would buy a smoker already made (like the one in the last picture) it would run about 300 Lempiras or about a full week’s wages for a normal laborer in my area--and that’s usually not even enough to put decent food on the table and buy the things the kids need for school.

Here we’re using the smoker to remove a colony that had moved into a tire. (The neighbor called about this one night so we lifted it up, slipped it into a big bag and took it to the apiary.)










Generally we use big smoker down here because of the amount of smoke used to keep the Africanized bees under control (or somewhat at least). So that means we run through lots of fuel. I actually end up filling it three to five times a day with wood chips/saw dust if we’re doing lots of work with the hives. 

And this powder milk can smoker works well. I like it because it’s a lot lighter than my other one (and cheap). Someone generally keeps the smoker in their hands at all times. The other one gets heavy by the end of the day. And if the powder milk can eventually burns out (but it hasn’t yet in several years of use) it’s easy enough to replace. Someone suggested using a paint can but their metal just isn’t thick enough.

This is a friend with my other smoker (the heavier one) that was made in someone’s metal shop.










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Tom


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## berkshire bee (Jan 28, 2007)

Thomas, Thanks for sharing the pictures and information. That's a simple design that looks easy to make and gets the job done. I've never seen a smoker so big!


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

Yes, thanx for sharing.


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