A Smoker Lighting Trick

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Early one morning 2012, shortly after I’d first arrived in Australia, it was my first day of work for a beekeeper, and he handed me a smoker, some damp leaves,

I don’t know if it was entirely a put-on considering the damp leaves were never going to be very promising, but having never used a cigarette lighter before I thoroughly struggled to even get a flame out of it much less get the smoker lit, as my employer shouted “I thought you said you were a beekeeper!” from where he was already working hives.

Then as we worked, gloveless which is normal, bees started stinging the bajeezes out of my hands. On the basis of this anecdotal evidence I have ever since suspected bees can sense how you’re feeling – I was very stressed out and it set them off, I suspect. But my qualifications already in question I kept reaching in the hive doing my duty until bossman finally exclaimed “you look like a pincushion put some gloves on!”

The next day when my hands were swollen like lobster claws he greeted me with “real beekeeper’s hands don’tswell up like that.”Would a non-beekeeper quietly work through receiving dozens and dozens of stings on their hands without a peep about it? I grumbled to myself. Anyway I was out of there about two weeks later.

So what’s the actual best way to light a smoker? How would a “real” beekeeper do it?

Well first of all, keep some dry fuel on hand. It’s easy to get in the habit of just gathering up pine needles from your favorite place every morning, until you find there’s been a heavy rain the night before and it’s all thoroughly damp. Keep a stash in the garage/shed.

When I lived in mostly urban Orange County, California, I had to actually buy hessian (“burlap”) at the hardware store, it’s a good fuel if you lack access to freely available fuel natural resources. Dry pine needles are a common goto, but tend to need to be tamped down and topped up every five minutes. I like to start with pine needles and then

44 | Celebrating 125 years | Vol. 126 | No. 06

ARTICLE BY KRIS FRICKE

and a bic cigarette lighter.

go to something that smoulders better, such as stringybark bark, or nice dry cow or horse dung. The latter two things actually smoulder really nicely and I get excited when I find the perfect specimen of nice dry cow patty.

Next make sure your smoker is clean. Empty out the old ashes. If your smoker has an anti-spark screen in the lid make sure it’s clean. The table-like spacer at the bottom to keep the fuel from obstructing the bottom air intake will often fall

Do not put the fuel in first and then try to light the top of it.

Light the bottom of fuel in a toilet-paper-tube, place in smoker and

then add more fuel around it.

out and while you’re putting it back in it inevitably will really want to go in upside down, but make sure it eventually goes back in correctly.

I see a lot of beginners start by putting fuel in their smoker, and then try lighting the top of it. Fire doesn’t like to travel downwards, this is not an effective method.

I was surprised one day to be helping a newer beekeeper and he squirted lighter fluid into his smoker to get it started. I’ll be honest, there’s some things that just wrankle my professional pride perhaps for no real logical reason and I think that is one of them. That strikes me as “cheating.”

The correct method of lighting the smoker is to light the bottom of your fuel before putting it into the smoker. To do this I usually put on my left glove so I don’t burn my hand, then I take a tight wad of pine needles in that hand, with my right I use a barbecue lighter to light the bottom of that material. Once its going I shove it into the bottom of the smoker and then give it a quick series of puffs until, ideally, thick white smoke is lazily billowing up from the contents, and then I pack more pine needles down on top of it. If you’re shooting out flames it’s too hot and you probably need to intentionally semi-smother the fire by packing more fuel in and letting it slowly get a nice quiet smoulder going.

Storytime: once, using hessian in California, I thought it had gone out and removed the wad of hessian from the smoker to relight it. I happened to be standing in and surrounded by thoroughly dry grass, and the hessian immediately burst into flame once removed from the smoker, so I found myself holding a fireball. Thankfully I was wearing my glove but it quickly became painful anyway. Fortunately, choking back the urge to panic, I was able to jam it back in without dropping it or any burning embers.

And here’s where I want to introduce one of my proudest yet simple inventions. I call it “the beekeeper’s cigar.” You see there’s two problems with even the correct method – sometimes once you’ve got your flaming wad of pine needles going well, when you go to stuff it in to the bottom of the smoker it falls apart and goes out. Or conversely, sometimes when you go to pack

more fuel on top of it that smothers the flame. Enter those cardboard tubes at the center of a bog roll. I stuffed one of those with pine needles and lit the bottom of that. The tube itself makes it even more convenient to hold (though I still put a glove on that hand first). The pine needles in the bottom easily ignite on the first try, and then I usually blow on it a bit until the flame has moved up into the tube; then I put it in the bottom of the smoker and I can pack fuel around it then without worrying about smothering the fire. It acts as its own little chimney, the white smoke curling out the top while I pack fuel around it and eventually over the top of it, and voila, a consistently one-light smoker.

Another similar smoker fuel innovation has been developed by Victorian beekeeper John Edmonds. Running a beekeeping supply store, he has a near endless amount of waste cardboard from boxes things came in going into recycling. After some experimentation he figured out that if cardboard is cut into strips the width of the internal height of the smoker drum (above the spacing table), with the corrugations (ripples in the cardboard) going width-wise, and then roll it up tightly until you have rolled up cardboard the size of the smoker (corrugations now going vertically up and down), tie it up with twine, you can light the bottom of this and put it in the smoker and it will give you a nice slow burn from the start and lasts a fair good while. This one I call The Beekeeper’s Cinnamon Scroll.

Vol. 126 | No. 06 | Celebrating 125 years | 45

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