Anel Electric Smoker Review – Full Unboxing And First Impressions

Keeping your smoker lit throughout the whole day is a very, very frustrating task. You leave it on the side and when you need it, it's gone out. This is not a normal bee smoker, this is a bee vaporizer/smoker sent to me free by Annell Beekeeping, and I'm going to give it a run this season and see what I think. So how cool is that? I can blow it in my face like this. Believe me, the smell of this smoke, or vapor as I should call it, is intoxicating. Like, I absolutely love the smell of it. No idea what's gone into it. I'm going to try it on some bees today though and see if they like it as much as me, see if it gives them a calming effect. But for me, this is a really, really cool product, and I'm so excited to have a go in the 2023 season. Eagle-eyed people will notice it has got a battery pack at the back, and what you're seeing coming out of it there is not bee smoke, it is actually vapor. But the really neat trick that this device here has got is that it also doubles up as a beast smoker, but not a conventional beast smoker, a smoker that is electrically powered through this battery here, but you can use conventional fuels in it. So let's recycle back a little bit. Let's get back to the unboxing and let me show you what turns up when you get this package. Right, so to start off, obviously the main event there, you get the smoker. We'll show you that in more detail in a little bit. Then you get an instruction booklet, but as a fully signed up man, I don't read that and I just try and work it out myself. You then get this little battery pack Here, which connects in onto the Smoker on that connection there. I love what they've done there. They've put Velcro both on the back of the Smoker and the battery pack. Maybe a little bit of a hygiene risk, but it's pretty cool. Keeps the battery nicely stowed away. Then you get a wall charger that comes with a European socket, and then you get a car charger as well. Little set of tongs there. Not actually worked out what the tongs are for yet. But here is the interesting thing. You get vapor pads with it. This arrived. I had no idea this was even turning up. It literally just turned up. I've had a play around with it and it is so, so cool. So these vapor pads turned up along with the smoker, and what is the first thing I do? Obviously going to open it up and have a little look, aren't I? So I opened it up, and I know these always sound like advertorials. I'm not being paid to say this. I've been given the item for free. I'm just genuinely excited like a little boy at Christmas opening up cool things that I enjoy opening up. So there we go. Look inside there. That is what the vapor pads look like. kind of a little bit like insulation material, rock wool, but it's impregnated with this incredibly strong smelling fluid, and not in a horrible way, like really, really nice smelling. I don't even know how to describe it. It's like, uh, the best men's shower gel that you can imagine, like an evergreen pine forest or something like that. I know, sorry, I'll stop with the adverts now, but it genuinely smells amazing. So I opened it up and thought, what's going on with this? I don't even know how the smoker works yet. So let's get back into the smoker and see how these vapor pads tie in with the Anell vaporizer. So it does look like a normal smoker, like there's nothing to distinguish it from a normal smoker other than this cable along here and the battery on the other side. But everything else is the same. You've got a metal cage, you've got a metal spout at the top. Not sure what it's made out of, probably gonna be galvanized. Then up the top you've got a bit of mesh as well, stop the bits actually going out onto your bees. But then this is where it gets a lot more interesting. So hopefully inside you can see there we've got a vapor pad. Now I've had that vapor pad there running for maybe like 20 or 30 minutes, and they give you an estimated runtime on a single charge of the battery about 60 to 90 minutes depending on how much you're using it. And I don't know how long the vapor pads last, and I kind of thought at this point, oh, they've got you here, they're going to sucker you in and get you to buy the thing, and then you've got to buy the vapor pads. But you can use this with normal smoker fuel as well. Such a really cool, neat design. So if I take that vapor pad out and completely burn myself on the hands— there we go, you can see I've burnt myself— you can see the element underneath. And I know that looks like a little bit of a mess there, but that is apparently what it's supposed to look like. The vapor pad just sits directly on it like that, and then the heating element converts whatever impregnated into those pads into a form of vapor. Smells so, so nice, the vapor. Like, it is favorite new smell. I'm going to turn it into like a cologne. So instead of coming back from the bees and you stink of smoke, you're going to smell of these vapor pads now. But the actual operation of the device couldn't really be much simpler. So you just chuck in a vapor pad, close the lid, get your battery, connect it into the cable, and that's it, it's done. Give it a couple of minutes just to warm up. I was amazed at how quickly it actually warmed up. So I'll do this in like real time. You can see, there we go, I'm adjusting the camera a bit. And you can see already, look, it's coming out. Doesn't take long to get going. Starts off quite slowly, but within a minute you've got full access to your smoker. Really, really handy actually, because sometimes it takes a little while to get a good smoker going. And there you go, you can see now we're kind of on to full smoking action. Just going to wander back over to the camera now. I'll kind of try and do it in real time. But here we go, we've got the smoker going. It's really, really cool. Now the last time I did a video on this I did it on the Apisolis, and that was purely a vaporizer, very different design, and you needed to use the fluid to make the Apisolis work. What I really like about this is that even if you don't connect the battery up, you can just use this as a, as a smoker. It works as a smoker without any of the battery, without any of the elements, so you've got yourself like a little bit of a backup as well. I have to say, like, it's probably an even draw between this and the Apisolis in terms of how much I enjoy the smell of smoke, but they're both very similar in that it doesn't get in your eyes. It's like a nice, really nice, cool, soothing smoke. I'm going to go and test it on a colony of bees in a little bit, but people said on the previous videos that I did about non-conventional smokers, what's the point? What's the benefit in that? And it's been so hot in the UK at the moment. You've got tons of like forest fires going around, and throughout the summer that's only going to get worse and worse. Something like this is a, is like a really neat invention to kind of combat that a little bit. Okay, you've still got a risk of like if you're going to chuck the contents out, you might cause a fire. But if you're just using this like as a vaporizer and just popping in a new pad each time, there's no live flames, there's no embers, there's no real risk of fire. A couple of things I'm not overly keen about is like the battery. Okay, it's got a nice little Velcro sticky pad on the back like that, which is cool and it keeps it out the way, but maybe they could have integrated that in elsewhere somewhere. But it's good, it's good that it comes with a car charger as well. That makes it really easy. And then the other thing you've got, like, it's a nice bellows in that it's made with leather, but you know me, I'm like OCD about cleaning now. Might be a little bit difficult to clean this one, but the action on the bellows is by far and away my new favorite action on the bellows. I used to like my Rouch Boy for the best action, definitely better than the Daydon. The Daydon, oh, my hands at the end of the day, it's like Popeye hands. But this one here is the lightest. Look, I'll do it with like My little finger. That is just so easy and smooth to operate. Really, really like these bellows. Right, it wouldn't be No Nonsense Beekeeping, would it, if I didn't open up a beehive without a veil on? I've got a smoker, so I definitely shouldn't need a veil today. My F-battle. Ah, let's go and open one up and see how they react to this smoke. Right, so I've just cracked the lid this side. I'm just going to puff a little bit of smoke in there. Really nice controllable bellows. I love that you can do tiny little mini puffs like that. I'm getting loads of smoke, or I should call it vapor, I guess. Right, you might say I'm cheating using a really friendly colony of bees, but all my colonies of bees are friendly now. We've made such a big step change in the quality of the temperament of our bees that most of them you can kind of open them up now and you don't even need a veil. To be honest, I'm more worried about the horseflies getting me. Has anybody else noticed how many horseflies are around this season? Absolutely bonkers. So let's have a look, see how the bees are reacting to that smoke. And that was basically a pointless test really, wasn't it? Because it was like the calmest colony in the world and they just looked at the smoke and was like, yeah, whatever, we're calm, we don't need smoke. So I'll go and get my bee suit on. Let's go and try it on a slightly more packed out and aggressive colony of bees. Right, these bees here, definitely a little bit more feisty. We did a shook swarm across all of this apiary and this one here was the end of the line. It got jam-packed full of bees. The entrance was very, very busy about 5 minutes ago. But it has clouded over, so they've stopped flying as much. I'm just going to smoke them a little bit at the entrance here, see what they do. So no major reaction to that. Really nice close-up there, really good being able to see like how much I'm pushing that bellows in and how much smoke I'm getting out. Really nice to see, like I'm barely touching it. Look at that, the amount of smoke coming out per bellows squeeze is incredible. Never seen anything like that. Right, so I'll do the same with this one. I'll crack the lid, I'll give it a good puff of smoke from the top like that. See how the bees react. So again, it's difficult to see whether it's having like a drastic effect on the bees. I can't really prove it because I've not got any horribly aggressive colonies here. Like, they're all packed out. You can see we've got bees on frames drawing wax, so there's tons of bees in here and they seem pretty chilled out. They really do seem very, very chilled out. I'm not going to say it's the smoker that's doing that because I know they are quite chilled out bees as well, but it's definitely working as a smoker should. And you know what I really like about it is that I'm holding a frame of bees there and I go over to my smoker and look at that, directly in with lots of vapor. That's what I want. I want responsiveness. I want to be able to immediately use my smoker and get lots of smoke out of it like that. I don't want to have to wait for it to turn on. I don't want to have to make sure that there's always a good solid ember in there. I just kind of want instant access to good solid vapor like that. And without a doubt, this one here delivers on that front. Right, so that's the Smoker set up as a vaporizer. Let's get that vapor pad out now and let's put in some genuine smoker fuel, see how the Smoker performs kind of in a more conventional mode. Right, so I'm going to try and kickstart it with a little bit of this hay, this straw, whatever you want to call it. Just picked it up from the ground. I want to see if I can get a fire going in there first before I start putting in a little bit of fuel. That just really burnt my finger there. So it was, it was still going, you could see It had started to make a little bit of a dent in it, but I would say this is probably just operator error as opposed to blaming it too much on the product. Oh yeah, there we go. That was much better. Right, we'll scrap all of that bit of the video. Look at that, pretty much instant. So if you start it off with maybe a bit of egg cup or something like that, then you're going to get that going much, much better than if you're a bit stupid like me and just start sticking in big lumps. And that comes down to the fact that I'm used to sticking in big lumps, getting my blowtorch in there, and just trying to get it going as soon as possible. With this one here is a little bit more slow going, but as I said, I wouldn't be buying this for its conventional use. I would be buying it for that vaporizing use. Right, so there we go. We're working in conventional mode now. We are on proper smoker, and I have to say I'm quite happy with that. That worked really, really well. No lighters, no failed lightings. You are of course dependent on a very good starter material like that and making sure that you're not a stupid beekeeper trying You want to just stick logs in there, but that looks like a very, very nice smoke. Right, so here we are now in conventional mode and it's working really well. It's nice fuel that I've put in there. It is nice, that bark, once it gets going and you can smell that straw or hay or whatever you want to call it. I know I always get it wrong, but that is burning really, really nicely now. But it is just back to a conventional smoker now, but it's still got the battery on the back and it's still got the cable. Like, if I was going to have a conventional smoker, I'd just buy a conventional smoker. What I like about this is the ability for it to be a vaporizer, the ability to have it in the truck just with some vapor pads that pretty much not going to go off for ages, the ability to charge it up in the car, and the ability to always have something to calm the bees down. Really, really like that. I like that it actually looks like a smoker. They've not done anything too wacky with the design, and you know me, I've got a massive smoker fetish. I have got so many different smokers. But I do think I'm going to get quite a lot of use out of this one just because of the unique smell of those pads. So there we go, that's the first look at the electric Annell vaporizer smoker. You can buy it direct from Annell Beekeeping, and no doubt there'll be some suppliers in the UK and the US as well at a later date. Definitely gets the thumbs up from me though. It's a really, really cool product, and I'm excited to use it throughout the 2023 season.