cleaning a smoker?

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thurrock bees

Drone Bee
Joined
Aug 1, 2009
Messages
1,082
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Location
Haywards Heath, Sussex
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
27
Hi all
After 2 1/2 years of keeping bees the smoker needs a well over due cleaning :puke: to rid the carbon. Ive done a search and have not found any thins on here.
So for me and other beeks, new and old, how do YOU clean your smoker??????

:party:
 
Mine is newish , first yr and it sticks together. I was wondering what you clean it with.
could you burn it with a blow lamp, or would this not do much ?
 
remobe the bellows, scrape off as much crap from inside as possible, then burn it inside with a blow-lamp, finallygive it another scrape inside. should remove most of the gunk.
 
It will soon build up again depending on you fuel.

I just give an occasional scrape with a hive tool and/or screwdriver and carry on.

'Burned out' my first (too small) smoker and found the hinge was held on with aluminium pop rivets! I have yet to replace them with stainless steel as I rarely ever use it.

No rocket science on this one.

Regards, RAB
 
From time to time, instead of plugging it with grass or moss at the end of a session, I pump it vigorously with the top open until it is burning well. Then the top goes back on and I keep it hot by burning the remaining fuel at a high temperature. The deposits become dry and will fall out.
 
A bit of high temperature is the key as it displaces the compounds that hold the crap together but then why bother, we’re talking patina.
 
soak it in soda crystals with the bellows off obviously
 
A bit late on this one but I discovered an old container of Sugar Soap in my shed (sodium carbonate, sodium phosphate).

I mixed a fairly strong solution with hot water and tried it on the smoker.

Couldn't believe the success!

The black layers simply peeled off or formed a thick gravy which just poured away leaving the original metal.

Smells awful though so I advise not doing it in your front room!!
 
You don't have to remove the bellows to soak a smoker in washing soda. Simply fill a washing bowl with hot water and lots of washing soda - think whole bag -and then lay the smoker in the bowl with the bellows uppermost. Make certain it can't fall over (a brick on its side works) and leave overnight.
 
That is a quick expansion!

Maybe, but depends on how it comes about and the expertise/good luck of the beekeeper. Cost of 'housing' is the main drawback to many, or perhaps available space for multiple colonies.

Anyone seriously collecting swarms, or making several early splits from strong colonies can fairly easily increase from, say, two at start-up to a good number (15?) after a couple of seasons. Just have to think time, money and return.

If immediate return on investment is not so important and multiple splits are the way one chooses to increase, you just accept no geat harvests in the expanding years, and the dividends will flow soon afterwards.

All in all it is not difficult to expand; some newish beeks have far more colonies than they expected, already. Sometimes it is harder to keep the number down!

Regards, RAB
 
remobe the bellows, sc'canola' (osr) off as much crap from inside as possible, then burn it inside with a blow-lamp, finallygive it another sc'canola' (osr) inside. should remove most of the gunk.

Sorry, what the hell is "sc'canola'", please?
 
Admin put a thing in the system, so that if someone writes rape instead of OSR for oil seed rape it automatically changes it...everywhere...I think it should say scrape? Except of course the glitch will change this too...
 
I've been wondering that for ages but far too polite to try it out. People in that particular Northern town were very upset in the early days of the internet that they kept getting censored but it did not take long for more sophisticated algorithms to be developed. I have not seen this silliness for, what, 15 years? Admin, you need to learn "regular expressions" (regex).

Is it really necessary to censor a perfectly good English name for a crop? We still call the fruit of the hive "honey" even though the same word can be used in a demeaning, sexist way. Context defines the meaning.

Paul
 
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