# What Leaves to put in a Smoker?



## beeMT (Jul 4, 2013)

I have tried dry olive tree leaves and it works fine and they also release a nice smell
anyone tried Pine Needle leaves or Eucalyptus leaves?


----------



## pfin3 (Sep 26, 2014)

Use pine needless here as they are readily available.


----------



## Mr.Beeman (May 19, 2012)

Use old cotton jeans. Less soot, far less creosote, less mess and smolders for hours.


----------



## kaizen (Mar 20, 2015)

I bought a bag of wood pellets. once they are going I've had good luck with keeping them going. I wish I had eucalyptus trees and koalas in my back yard.


----------



## phyber (Apr 14, 2015)

i use dry grass clippings. abundant, easy to light, light smoke smell afterwards. I hate that pine needles linger on me.


----------



## Sr. Tanya (Feb 9, 2007)

I use white pine needles but a friend uses rolled up burlap. His stays lit for a longer time than mine.


----------



## AdamBeal (Aug 28, 2013)

kaizen said:


> I bought a bag of wood pellets. once they are going I've had good luck with keeping them going. I wish I had eucalyptus trees and koalas in my back yard.


Maybe someone will let some lose in Michigan then they will become invasive of course and you will have to spend all your free time getting rid of koalas 

I use pine shavings that I get for my chicken coop mixed with pine needles, pine cones, and some dry leaves from maple or oak trees lying around.


----------



## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

Mr.Beeman said:


> Use old cotton jeans. Less soot, far less creosote, less mess and smolders for hours.


Ditto. Anything that's 100% cotton works beautifully. Old jeans and T-shirts seem to smoke for hours without getting too hot. The smoke is thick and to me it has a pleasant, slightly sweet smell as well. I'm normally carrying newspaper to get the fire started, chunks of cotton fabric to put above newspaper, then a handful of green grass that I quickly roll into a tight ball and slide it in above the cotton. The grass acts like a filter to stop any embers. By the end of the day it's pretty dried out when I cork the smoker. The next time I use the smoker I use the dried out grass filter instead of the newspaper to get the smoker lit and repeat the whole process again.


----------



## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

D Coates said:


> then a handful of green grass that I quickly roll into a tight ball and slide it in above the cotton. The grass acts like a filter to stop any embers.


I started doing this mid-season this year when it was so wet that I couldn't just use whatever was laying around near the hives like I usually do. Ran out of punk wood and was using pine shavings. They work fine, but throw a few sparks. The grass did a good job acting as a "spark arrester" which is what I've been calling it. 

Pine needles work great. I think I'll collect some from under the neighbor's pine trees and use that at my primary fuel this year. I used a lot of dried grass clippings from my yard this year as well. Makes great fuel and burns nice and cool.

This video is a hoot:


----------



## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

I've used pine needles in the past, worked well. Most of the time I use pine chips and debris from ripping boards when I build new equipment. When I rip the boards, the debris isn't as fine as saw dust and works well in the smoker and gives lots of smoke. Pine chips (animal bedding) comes in large bales for about $5 at farm supply places and a bale, usually 2 cu ft, will last a long time. Sometimes I still grab a handful of pine straw (needles) when I need to fill my smoker in a hurry.


----------



## DanielD (Jul 21, 2012)

Same here on old denim jeans. I started using them in the last year and they are easy to light an smolder long.


----------



## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

I use to use the same as JW showed. But I now have few pine stands nearby. so I use burlap nd equine pine (horse bedding pellets).


----------



## RichardsonTX (Jul 3, 2011)

I start mine with paper, put in some cardboard, and then cram it full of pine needles, preferably. I've found that dried cedar needles work well too. And dried grass on top of the card board, if the grass is truly dry.


----------



## JohnBruceLeonard (Jul 7, 2015)

beeMT - olive leaves are easily my prefered fuel, but I have tried eucalyptus as well. I find eucalyptus leaves are easier to light than olive leaves, but they burn faster, particularly when they are very dry. Their smell is also quite nice - very delicate, and absolutely unobtrusive. However, it seems to me that the smoke is less pungent also for the bees, for they do not respond to it with the same immediacy. This is usually not a problem, but I have to use a _lot _more eucalyptus smoke to tame a restive colony. If you try eucalyptus leaves, it helps to crumple them up or break them into small pieces, as the entire leaves do not catch fire very well and have a tendency to smother the coals beneath.

In terms of burning quality, scent, and effectiveness, I prefer olive leaves. They are a little difficult to get going, but if I start out with dry grass and get it burning really well before I put the olive leaves on, I never have any problems afterward. I suspect that there are trace amounts of a flammable substance in them (perhaps hydroxytyrosol?) that contribute to their ability to _stay _lit, and to produce long-lasting smoke. I have found they can even be burned green, if put on top of dry material. The green leaves help to cool the smoke somewhat (not that the dry leaves burn too hot), and produce a really lovely fragrance.

I have yet to try pine.

John


----------



## exmar (Apr 30, 2015)

Crumble up a sheet of newspaper in the bottom and let it get going good. then put in pine needles, let those start, then CRAM pine needles in. lasts a long time, if the smoke is a little hot (always puff some on your skin to check) grab some green grass and put on top, cools it down nicely.


----------



## Nardi (Jan 22, 2013)

I use wood chips, after starting with crumpled paper. I also burn Sumac berries with the wood chips, as folks in the bee club say the sumac helps with mite control. I'm not sure if it's true, but figure it can't hurt & we have lots of sumac around.


----------



## Ddawg (Feb 17, 2012)

I use Pine needles too. We have a fair amount of land in pine, but I find it easier to take a garbage bag to the local landscape supplier and they will let me pick up scraps out of the trailer for free.


----------



## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

for long days in the bee yard or especially doing cutouts where I will have it lit and not use it for loooooog periods of time, I use pine bedding pellets. For quick trips I'll use jeans, leaves, grass, whatever.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_vyENu9Ato


----------



## Luv2beekeep (Dec 11, 2011)

I use tightly wrapped burlap topped with some dried soumac buds. I got this idea of the soumac from the Fat Beeman. He said that the soumac would calm the bees. Believe it or not it actually seems to do just that. I also use some walnut chips and heard that the walnut smoke helps to a degree with mites. Don't know if that is true or not. Further testing this spring and summer will tell me if that works.


----------



## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

I didn't light my smoker last year. My one slightly testy hive responded well to a light spritz of Pro Health in sugar water. I don't have to lite the spray bottle. It's always ready.


----------



## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

All of the scrap lumber that comes out of my shop I put on the radial arm saw and cut into little blocks. The thin pieces i cut to about 5" long and use to light the smoker. I have a 55 gallon drum full of little wood blocks and a 33 gallon trash can full of fire starting strips. It has always worked very well for me. One of the harder things I've had to learn is how to light and keep a smoker lit.


----------



## GSkip (Dec 28, 2014)

I pick up left over cotton from the harvested cotton fields. I wrap a big handful in the heavy brown paper Mann Lake uses as packing material. I use the paper to get it started and add the cotton wrapped in paper. I keep a couple of the cotton bundles ready in my box in case I need to refuel.


----------



## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

i forgot to say that I used to use leaves/grasses in my smoker but no matter how hard I packed them they burned up quickly. I still tend to use what's around me in the field for smoker fuel but always have blocks of wood with me as the main fuel as they tend to smolder a lot slower than leaves or dried grass. Pine needles do work well but burn quickly also in my experience.


----------



## larrypeterson (Aug 22, 2015)

I use burlap and cedar bark. (juniper) It takes a bit of paper or tinder to get it going but after it gets going it stays lit and is fairly mild.


----------



## Bdfarmer555 (Oct 7, 2015)

Looks like I'm a bit of an oddball here, but I light with dry oak leaves, packing paper, and wood chips. Then, I drop in 2-3 charcoal briquettes if it's gonna be a long one. Then wad up some green grass for a spark arrester/cooler/smoke fuel. If it begins to get hot, I can always find more green grass, and it can stay lit for long periods of time.


----------



## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

On the Africanized bees I used to use sage because it puts out *SO MUCH* smoke. On mellow bees I use either pine needles, burlap, wood shavings, or cardboard rolls - whatever is convenient. 

The big lesson is to keep two smokers lit and keep the push-button torch at the ready, just in case you suddenly need it. Each smoker has it's own metal bucket so it does not start a fire. The water spray bottle puts out the fires after the work is finished. An extinguisher is at the ready in the truck, and I leave a hose near the bees before I start work.


----------



## JohnBruceLeonard (Jul 7, 2015)

kilocharlie said:


> The big lesson is to keep two smokers lit and keep the push-button torch at the ready, just in case you suddenly need it.


That is a good idea, kilocharlie. As noted in my previous post, once olive leaves very are _well_ lit it takes a lot to make them go out again; but if I were dealing with Africanized bees, I think I would not want to rely on that. 

The other thing I like about olive leaves is that, when emptying the burner, the remnants are very easily extinguished, at least compared to cardboard. When I was using cardboard I worried a lot about fires, but with olive leaves it is quite sufficient to stamp on them once or twice and to spread out what remains with your foot.

John


----------



## compaq23 (Sep 25, 2014)

I am, like many other beekeepers around me, using pieces of dried tinder fungus








https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomes_fomentarius.


After harvesting the fungus it should be cut into small pieces (size to fit smoker or smaller) and hang onto windy and dry place. Dry chunks of fungus are easy to lit, burn for qute long time and have nice smell. Some people boils fungus for some time. After boiling they proces is pretty much the same but fungus become soft like sponge, can be torn apart with hands and lited with flintstone


----------



## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Funny - that fungus looks like a skep basket hive!


----------

