In this instructional video, the host demonstrates how to keep a bee smoker lit for extended periods by using specific fuels and techniques. He starts by showing his initial setup with shredded paper, oak pellets, and a glass plug, then explains his preference for using bone‑dry, rotten wood—ideally a hardwood like oak, but also suitable conifer stumps—as the primary fuel. He describes how to identify the right wood (light, crumbly, completely dry), optionally dry it further indoors, and combine it with bark for added scent and longevity. The host walks through the lighting process: inserting the dry wood into an already lit smoker, giving strong puffs to ignite the wood, watching for flames, and maintaining the fire for several minutes until the wood fully catches. He warns against stopping too early, emphasizing the need for a steady flame that lasts several seconds. Finally, he introduces a “green plug”—a slightly moist piece of material—placed in the smoker’s spout to cool the smoke, allowing the smoker to burn for hours. The video concludes with a promotion of his beekeeping channel and website (14daybeekeeper.com).
Chapters
What is the best fuel to go in the smoker? Today I'm gonna give you some of my top tips. So first thing this morning, I set up this smoker. I took some shredded paper, got it nice and hot, got some solid oak wood pellets, and I built up a really good fire inside my smoker. I got a glass plug, I stuck it in the top, and I closed it over, and I used that for about 2 and a half, 3 hours, and only now we're at the point where it's starting to die out a little bit. Now I like to see it as a bit of a challenge to get my smoker all the way throughout the day, so I don't like rebuilding it and starting it all over again. So whenever I'm out kind of walking around the forest, I'm always looking for little things to burn in the smoker. And what we've got here is one of my favourite things to burn. So I thought I'd do a little video showing you how to keep this smoker going, but also one of my favourite fuels to put inside it. So what we've got here is a really old, completely rotten and bone dry conifer tree trunk. Now, if you can find a hardwood one of these, even better. Oak works particularly well, but you will see it is completely rotten. Rotten through. Zane, come right in, get super close up on this. It is completely rotten. So when you're looking for rotting wood, this is the kind of wood that you want. You want it to be really light, but you want it to completely break apart as you open it up like that. Now even opening that up, I can feel a little bit of moisture in there. So what you can do is you can take that back, go and leave it in your house, leave that to dry out over winter. Ideally you want it bone dry. But this bit here is super, super dry already. You can just take bits like that, open it up, and then just pop that into an already lit smoker. Got the remnants of the pellets in there, but if we pop that in, that will smoke really nicely. So on top of the old rotten wood, we'll get that in as well, but I like to get some of the bark in there as well. I find that gives a really nice smell and just keeps it going very, very long. Break it all up like that. You can stuff it pretty much full, but just make sure that everything you put in there is completely bone dry, or take it away further drying before putting it in your smoker. Once you've got it in, just give it a really good puff like that. Wanna try and build up the heat in here. I see a lot of people make this mistake. They'll say, yeah, that's it, it's good to go, smoke's coming out the end, and it looks okay at the moment, but that wood has not caught yet. You need to keep it open for a good few minutes, giving it a good few puffs. We'll get a flame coming up at some point. You can already see loads more smoke coming out. I keep on puffing until I see the flames coming up. And then I know the wood has taken. And there we go, you can see we've got flames. At that point, I leave it open for 3 or 4 minutes like that, and I want all of that dry wood to just take as much of that heat in as it can. Looks like the flame went out there, so if you see the flame go out really quickly, you can do it a couple more times. You wanna see a flame building up like that and not going out for a good few seconds. Once you get it to that point, that's gonna stay lit now, and all we're gonna need is a nice green plug to cool that smoke down. And that will last for hours and hours. So to finish it off, I just take a nice green plug. You want something that's a little bit moist. And all we're gonna do with that is take it, put it into the spout of the smoker, close it up like that, and then all of the smoke that comes through is nicely cooled through that plug. This smoker will last for hours and hours, but do take advantage if you see a rotten tree stump like that, especially a nice hardwood like oak. Take it in, dry it out, use it throughout the season. I would say there's nothing that burns better. I've got nearly 300 videos exactly like that one showing you everything you need to know when it comes to beekeeping. Check it out over at 14daybeekeeper.com.
