Laurence Edwards tests aromatic smoker fuels like lavender, orange peel, white sage, and cassia bark instead of traditional materials. He's experimenting with each to measure burn time, how bees react, and which creates the best scent for beekeepers, aiming to develop a signature Black Mountain Honey blend.
What does a big bunch of dried lavender and some dried orange slices have to do with beekeeping? In this video, you're going to find out. So I have just got my brand new Copper Empire smoker from Thorn Beekeeping. They're going to send me the guard and that's going to be a retrofit because I don't want to go burning things. But this is, in my opinion, the very best smoker in the UK. I've seen these made handmade in the UK and they pretty much last forever. However, every time that I get a smoker, I either run it over in my truck or I give it away to someone as a competition prize. So I contacted Thorn and said, you know what, like, I need a smoker, I need to get back in the habit of using the smoker, and I kind of want to use your smoker because it is the best one. And give me one in copper because I do think that looks the very best that it possibly can on the videos. But it got me thinking about what should I use as my smoker fuel for this season. Now I've done loads of videos about what's the best smoker fuel, what lasts the best, how do the bees react to different types of fuel and smoke, but what I've never really thought about is how does it affect the beekeeper? We're the ones who go home at the end of the day stinking of smoke, and we're the ones that, you know, if you're using substandard, maybe pine fuel, you're getting acrid smoke in your eyes and it's really not very nice. So Adam Goodall, a friend and someone who writes blogs for Black Mountain Honey, has given me this brilliant idea that I believe he got from one of his mentors, which is bundled up packages of dried lavender. So he's made these himself, and apparently the lavender plant really loves it. So he bundles up dried lavender like that, and I'm smelling it and it just smells absolutely brilliant. It's got me thinking, what else can you add to the smoker to make it a nice experience for the beekeeper? My apiaries nowadays, like this one here, is probably the biggest one that I've got. You've got like 10 to 12 colonies here, so I don't need fuel that's going to last me a whole day. I'll just use the fuel in a single apiary and I'll get to the next apiary and I'll stock it up again. All I'm interested in is, are the bees going to respond well to it? And I think the majority of smokes, they do that. Obviously, you don't want it to be harmful for the bees, don't want it to be harmful for humans. but I quite like the idea of it smelling nice as well. So this is where the orange peel comes in. I love the smell of dried orange peel, and you can make it at home, like cut orange slices or cut orange peel, dry them off by the cooker. They're really easy to go in, and they're quite good. They're actually quite flammable. The oil inside this is quite flammable, so good for getting them lit. Obviously gives off a nice citrus aroma as well. But then I've just gone off down a complete rabbit hole of what is good to burn, and I've come across these white sage smudging sticks. Now don't be silly like me and go and buy these from Amazon— ridiculously expensive from Amazon— but apparently it dispels negative energy when you burn it. Believe it or not, I know it sounds a little bit crazy, doesn't it? But burning white sage apparently gives loads of these additional benefits. Sounds a bit like witchcraft to me, but it smells really nice. And it's got me thinking that I've got tons of sage in the garden. I've actually got some white sage in the garden as well, so I'm just going to grow it, cut it back at the end of the year, bundle it up and I'm going to use it for fuel. I'm going to try out pretty much every single type of thing to burn in the smoker this year and see what works, see what smells nice, and see if we can come up with a special Black Mountain Honey formulation. So then the final thing that I bought was some cinnamon bark, so it's like called cassia, and apparently you don't want to burn loads and loads of this, so I'm just going to use like half a stick of this in each burn that I do. Smells really nice, and as I said, I'm just going to experiment throughout the season and see if we can come up with a really, really nice So one of the main reasons I love this smoker, and a number of companies do this, is it has a removable cage for lighting. Makes lighting smokers so much easier because you get all of the airflow into it and you can get the thing properly burning before you pop it back inside. So I'm going to stuff this basket here full of all of my goodies. I'm going to get the blowtorch on it and get it lit. Love the smell of sage, and I'm really interested to see how well these burn. They're rock solid and wrapped really, really tightly, which I think could be good. Get them lit, get some fuel in there to keep them smoldering, and I think they really will make it a pleasurable beekeeping experience and hopefully dispel some of my negative energy at the same time. So for me, every beekeeper should own a blowtorch like this. Brilliant for lighting your smoker, brilliant for scorching wooden boxes. A little bit of an investment. You can buy the knockoff version of the torches for about £40. I got that from Amazon. And then the MAP gas really isn't too bad, it's about £12 per refill. Lasts forever but gives you so much versatility Let's get that Bee Smoker lit now. So there we go, smoker's lit. Really, really easy to light it in there. Closing the lid now. I have to say, first impression, smells really, really nice. Like very light, obviously still smoke, like you're burning wooden twigs in there, lavender twigs. But let's see if we can detect any of that nice smell. Really, really nice. So I'm gonna run this through the rest of my videos that I do today, see how long it burns, and then I'll update this at the end of the video to give you a rough estimate of how long A full container of lavender, cinnamon, orange peel, and a smudging sage stick will last in a Thorns Copper Empire smoker.
