Beekeeping is one of the oldest activities in the agricultural sector, and it involves breeding bees for honey, wax, and other products, as well as to pollinate crops to increase their yield. Every major beekeeping organization has a tremendous variety of tools needed to properly maintain its hives, and care for bee colonies. A bee smoker occupies an important place among these tools; this is a tool beekeepers use to generate smoke around bee colonies.

Bees are surrounded by smoke to help calm them down. A bee smoker is also sometimes used to fill the hive with medicinal products while treating bee colonies. The bee smoker has a relatively simple design: a small metal cylinder acts as a combustion chamber, where coal is burned and smoke is formed, and with the help of small bellows air is delivered into that chamber, causing the smoke to come out in a thick plume in the upper part of the smoker. This is exactly the kind of smoker showcased in the museum’s collection; this one was made in the XX century.

Usually the smoker is fired up with dry wood chips and paper. The modern bee smoker is designed so that when tilted, for example, over the hive, the fuel does not fall out of it; this is prevented by a mesh inserted into its cover. There is also a grille on the bottom side of modern smokers that prevents burning fuel from touching the bottom, which allows the instrument to be placed on the roof of a neighboring hive without risking damage from the heat. In addition, this grille provides good ventilation for the combustion chamber.

Smokers are used particularly frequently by novice beekeepers, since only by using them is it possible to cope with a hive that has been disturbed, for example when pumping out honey. Sending a few plumes of smoke into the hive to calm the bees is sufficient. This effect is achieved due to the fact that bees are afraid of forest fires, and smoke unfailingly accompanies those. The smoker is used with great care, at some distance from the hive, so that the insects do not feel any heat. The amount of smoke released also holds great importance, since too much of it will not only not calm the bee colony, but disturb it even more.