In this video Laurence Edwards reviews the Apisolis, the world’s first non‑combustion bee vaporizer, positioning it as an alternative to the traditional bee smoker. He begins by listing the drawbacks of conventional smokers—health hazards from inhaling smoke, risk of burns to the beekeeper, suit, and hive, unreliability (smokers going out), fire risk during transport, stress and conditioning effects on bees, and residue that can taint honey. After acknowledging that he received the Apisolis unit for free (with a second unit for a giveaway), he unboxes the product, walks through the setup steps (soaking the cartridge filter, charging, filling the tank, assembling the bellows), and demonstrates its operation (three bellows pushes to turn on, inversion to turn off). He highlights the device’s simple design: a plastic bellows, rechargeable electric unit, and fluid tank. The vaporizer produces a cool, scented vapor that does not irritate eyes or lungs, eliminates burn risk, and leaves no residue on bees, wax, or honey. Edwards cites Apisolis‑conducted studies showing reduced bee stress and slightly better calming effectiveness than smoke. He outlines three core values—health, safety, comfort—and notes child‑friendliness. Limitations are discussed: the unit is not suited for large‑scale commercial beekeepers, delivering about 70 colonies per full charge and 250 colonies per cartridge, has consumable costs, and is relatively expensive (€160‑€170 in the EU). He recommends the product for hobbyists with 1‑20 hives, especially those using poly‑hives or involving children. Edwards promises further seasonal testing, mentions upcoming UK availability via Thorn Beekeeping, and runs a giveaway (comment fuel type, like, subscribe, share). The video ends with a call‑to‑action and a link to a separate tutorial on lighting a traditional smoker.
Chapters
Do you have a bad habit that's burning a hole in your beehive? Are you addicted to smoking and don't know how to quit? If that's the case, then you need help. Smoking is bad for you. In this video, I'm going to help you kick that nasty addiction. Of course, we're not talking about cigarettes here, we're talking about bee smokers. In the smoker today, I've got some cardboard, and it's giving me a really, really bad cough. So in the comments, let me know, what do you use in your smokers? Wood chip, Cardboard, twigs, pine cones? Stick it in the comments, let me know. But that's not what this video is about. This video is about the Apisolis, the world's first non-combustion bee vaporizer. So let's get the caveats out of the way first. I was given this vaporizer free of charge, and as always, when anybody approaches me saying, can you do a review of my product, I say, yep, give me the product for free, but also give me another one so I can give it away on YouTube. Find out later in the video what you need to do to bee in with a chance of winning the Apisolis Bee Vaporizer. Before we take a look at the features the Apisolis. I'm going to show you how it works, how it goes together, all of the consumables you need, and just give it a bit of a trial run on some bees. Let's talk about the smoker first and everything that's wrong with the bee smoker. Right, first off, smoking is bad for your lungs. Doesn't matter what you burn, what you put in the comments— pine cones, wood, whatever it is— you must know this is a bee smoker, and I'm getting it now, it's going in my face, it's not very nice. Smoking is definitely bad for you. It's bad for your lungs, it's bad when you inhale it, it's carcinogenic, it's not a good look at all. If you could do away with it, that would be perfect, but we need something in order to calm the bees down. Next thing, smokers can cause really, really bad burns. They can burn polyhives, they can burn your skin. I even melted part of my bee suit last year on them. They get very, very hot, and you want to build it up to a really good heat within the chamber, so that it stays and keeps on going for a long time, and then it really does, it can burn you very, very badly. Next on the list, smokers are constantly going out. I do everything within my power to try and keep my smokers going, but always when I need that puff of smoke, it's always going out. It's an absolute nightmare. Carrying these smokers between apiaries, I've showed you in separate videos a safe method for doing it, but there is no doubt it still poses a real risk having that smoker in the vehicle with you. I've seen bee farmers do this before. You do not wanna set fire to your truck. That is not a good look for a bee farmer. Now Apisolis have done a number of studies, and I've seen other studies on this as well, which is showing that excessively smoking your bees creates this conditioning reflex, which really does stress out the bees. I know a lot of people say this, they don't even use a smoker. And I just need to cough there 'cause that's just gone right in my mouth. They use water spray instead because they don't like the effect that the smoke has on their bees. And I've seen this as well. Some colonies, you smoke them and it does not calm them down. If anything, it makes them angry. Next on the list is that smoking, again, doesn't matter what your fuel is, it can leave residues on the bees, in your hive, on the wax, and in your honey. I don't know about you, if you've tasted anybody else's honey and you get that real smoky note to it, it's because they've been in there with the bee smoker puffing away, getting the bees out, and it taints the honey. And then the final one on the list, if you've got young bee helpers, they want to have a go on the smoker, don't they? Come on, smokers are good fun, but they clearly can't hold it because it's hot, It's a fire risk and it's not safe. So in recent years, there's been a transition away from smoking cigarettes. They've moved over to vape guns and vaping instead. I think it's time for the bee community to move away from bee smokers and move on to bee vaporizers. So in this video, I'm going to give you a top to bottom look at the Apisolis, show you how it works, show you how you charge it up, show you how you fill it up, the maintenance that you need to do, talk about some of its pros, talk about some of its limitations, and then of course I'm going to give it away to one lucky channel subscriber at the end of the video. So what I love about the Apisolis is that it is such a simple design. All you've got is you've got a plastic bellows, and then at the front you've got a rechargeable unit that's non-combustion, and then you've got a tank to hold the fluid inside. The instructions that you get in the box are really, really good, and it gives you all of that detail. I'm going to give you a 30-second rundown of exactly what you need to do now. So you open the box up, you need to soak the cartridge filter in the solution for 5 minutes so you don't burn the cotton on the first time, plug the Plug the unit in, charge it up for a couple of hours, fill the tank up with the solution, clip the tank that's got the solution into the Apisolis, put the cartridge in, put the tank into the unit, and then you're ready to go. When you want to turn on the unit, you need to push the bellows together 3 times and you'll get an audible notification that the Apisolis is turned on. And then when you want to turn it off, you invert the Apisolis and hold the bellows together. That will shut the unit off completely. I love it. No switches, no on/off switch. It works really, really well and it's a very simple design. So why do we need an Apisolis? The Bee Smoke has been around for years, everybody uses it. I'm going to run through all of the reasons why I think there's a place for the Apisolis on the beekeeping market. There's no combustion, there's no getting smoke in your face. It creates a smooth, soothing vapor instantly with the push of the bellows. And to prove that, I'll show you. I'm going to fire it into my face. Don't try this one at home, but I thought I'd give it a go. The smell of the cartridge and what they put in in terms of the essential oils Has made my house smell fantastic. I really, really do like it. And it is, it's a very cool, smoothing vapor, not produced through combustion. Smells really nice, doesn't get in your eyes, nice and cool. They've eliminated the worst bit of a bee smoker, which is getting smoke in your eyes. It certainly stings when it goes wrong. So as there's no combustion in the unit, it's completely cool. There's no hot parts. So they have not only mitigated, but they have completely eliminated the risk of burning yourself, burning your bee suit, or burning your beehives. There's no risk of it ever going out because you're not trying to keep a fire lit. Inside. You can turn it off, you can turn it on, it's always there to give you that puff of soothing vapor to calm your bees down whenever you need it. There's no requirement to light a smoker, to carry around big gas canisters in your car to keep it going and to light that smoker on a regular basis. It's all electric, you just turn it on and it works. So Apisolis have conducted these studies to show the different stress levels on the bees and its effectiveness compared to smoke in terms of keeping that colony gentle, and they've studied these in a really great amount of detail. And they've showed that not only does it reduce the amount of stress on the bees, but it's also slightly more effective at actually calming them down. The beauty of this system as well is that it leaves no harmful residues on the honey, on the bees, or on the wax, or for that matter, on the beekeeper. And then the final benefit, and this is a really nice benefit I think, is that your kids can use it, your children can use it. It's completely child-friendly. It's not going to burn them. Doesn't matter if it kind of goes in their face. I think for children tagging along for a beekeeping session, This is a great little invention and something to get them involved with all of the beekeeping activities. So you get a surprising amount of vapor coming out of this vaporizer. You need to make sure that each time you let the bellows go in and go out again like that. But as you can see, really good plumes of vapor coming out. And as you can see, like I showed you before, you can get it right in your face like that. And it's like being in a complete sauna. It really is quite amazing. The smell is lovely. It's nice and cool. Doesn't burn your eyes. I really do like the fact that it doesn't get in your eyes, if you haven't guessed that already. So before I go and try it on the bees, And as always with these product reviews, I like to be completely open and transparent, and I'm not paid for this review. And I want to talk to you a little bit now about the limitations of this product. So this product here is clearly not designed for bee farmers, for people with commercial intent who are going out and inspecting 400 or 500 colonies in a day. It can't handle that in terms of its output, and it's not been tested to kind of cope with that demand. On a full charge, you'll get around 70 colonies vaped. And on a full bottle of cartridge fluid, there's enough there to do about 250 colonies. So there's a couple of things there. The first one is that you can't use it kind of like throughout the whole day. That's a little bit of a negative. And then there's some ongoing consumable costs that come along with it as well. The only other negative as far as I can see is that it's not cheap. This isn't a kind of £20, £30 unit. They have put so much research into getting this exactly right. And in the EU at the moment, it's around €160 to €170. And the pricing will be released soon for the UK. I'd expect it to be a little bit more than it is in the EU. That's just generally how things work out. So who's this product for? It's not for bee farmers. However, I am going to use this all the way throughout the year. You will see a lot of this Apisolis, this bee vaporizer, in lots of future videos. But I think if you've got, say, between 1 and 20 hives, you've got hives in your back garden, you've got them in the local area, you don't want to mess around with a smoker, you're a fan of polyhives, you've got children who want to get involved in it, then this is a really, really good idea and something that will improve the quality of your beekeeping. So the Apisolis has been designed to fix 3 major issues and has 3 core values: health, safety, and comfort. The idea is that you're not getting long-term health issues by inhaling the smoke. The safety element in that there's no heat, there's no way that you can possibly burn yourself. And then the comfort element in that it's easy to use, it's easy to transport, and it's just generally easy to work your bees. If you've watched this channel before, you will know it. I love innovative products. I'm going to test this one throughout the course of the season, see how my bees get on with it. But I always welcome any changes that people can make to try and fix beekeeping problems. Right, let's open up a beehive. Let's get the Apisolis on it and see how the bees react. Well, I know that was hardly a conclusive test. difficult to do that at this time of year. I promise you I will follow up with lots of different tests on this throughout the season. However, if you are interested in getting one, they're bringing these very soon to Thorn Beekeeping in the UK. I'm sure they'll do some good promos as soon as they're released. Right, so this is what you've all been waiting for. How do you win one of these Apisolis smokers, the full kit including the cartridge? You need to tell me which fuel you use in your normal bee smoker in the comments, like this video, subscribe to the channel, and then you need to share this video on social media. That's it, they're the rules. Do what one, but I am going to pick the best social media share and I'm going to send them a free Apisolis smoker. I hope you enjoyed the video. Good luck in the competition. If this isn't for you, check out this video here where I show you how to light a bee smoker and keep it lit for as long as possible.
