In this instructional video, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey demonstrates how to use hessian (jute) sacks as a long‑lasting bee‑smoker fuel. He begins by promoting the honeybeebay.co.uk marketplace, then introduces a low‑cost smoker from Old Castle Farms and explains why he prefers it while awaiting a new Dadant smoker. Edwards outlines his preparation method: placing shredded cardboard at the base, igniting it with a large lighter, and then adding a loosely rolled strip of hessian sack. He shows how to light the fuel, close the smoker promptly, and achieve a steady, cool smoke that can last between 1.5 and 2+ hours depending on the smoker and amount of fuel. The video includes a time‑lapse of the burn, observations of the remaining material, and a step‑by‑step restocking process that uses the lingering ember, additional cardboard, and another hessian strip to reignite the smoker quickly. Edwards highlights the advantages of hessian over wood or cardboard alone—its durability, consistent ember, and ease of re‑lighting—while also mentioning a future review of wood chippings as a complementary fuel. The video concludes with practical tips for transport, a reminder to subscribe, and a brief teaser of upcoming fuel reviews.
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Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to talk to you about my new favourite smoker fuel, hessian sacking. So before we go any further, please take a look at honeybeebay.co.uk. It's our new website, an online beekeeping marketplace connecting buyers and sellers for everything beekeeping. Right, on to the video then. So in today's video, I'm going to show you how to get maximum time out of your smoker using hessian sacking. So in previous videos, I showed you how to get really good burn time using wood and twigs and cones, how to pack it out, how to get it really nice and hot. And I was probably getting an hour, hour and a half out of one of these really big smokers without having to go in and fill it up. I've since found out about hessian sacking, something that no doubt loads of you are already using. I just thought I'd do a video though just to show you how well it burns, how nice the smoke is, and how long it lasts. So this smoker is a cheap smoker. I got it from Old Castle Farms. It was about £15. I got it after I ran over my large Dadant smoker, absolutely gutted, completely crushed it to bits. So I'm on the lookout for another large Dadant smoker, and I will get one before the season starts. These are pretty good though. They're not quite well, as well built as the Dadant ones, but they do work quite well. So for £15, you can't go wrong. Old Castle Farm Hives, give them a shout. They're a good company to work with, loads of nice new products down there. So what I found then, when you're lighting your hessian sacking, really good to start off with some shredded cardboard. Now we use loads of this in our packaging sending out our honey, so all I do is I take a nice good clump of shredded cardboard and I stick that at the bottom of the smoker. Then I like to use a big lighter like this. The ignition's gone on this one, so I just light it and then get in there, give it a really good puff, get that cardboard so it's really well lit and smoking and hot. Can't really overdo this. Give it a good 20, 30 seconds so it's nice and hot. So give that a good few puffs. Make sure you don't burn your eyebrows. Get it nice and hot though. What you're trying to build here is a hot base to get the hessian sack going. Then I'm using my trusty Leatherman. Would never be without my Leatherman. Now I've seen videos on YouTube with this where you— they literally just take a very small strip like that. I like to go with a big clump of it because I'm using a big smoker like that. So I'll cut a strip probably that long, and then I just roll it up Pretty loose. You don't wanna roll it too tight. You just wanna roll it up just so it sits nicely inside your smoker, and then you just pop it in. And you can already see how much that has caught. Now I just give it a few puffs. Now you wanna get that closed straight away 'cause it will burn through relatively quickly if you don't close the lid. But now I find once you do that, that just smokes and smokes and smokes. Now on a cheap smoker like this where you've not got very good air control, it burns through a little bit quicker. When I did this on my Daden, it lasted for at least 2 or 3 hours, and that will just continue to smoke now. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a couple more videos. I'm here today doing 6 videos. I'm just going to sit that in the background and I'm going to see how long it goes on for. I'll probably go in, I'll puff it every 5 or 10 minutes just so I'm kind of trying to keep it alight a little bit. But that really does last so long. So my tip for you, get yourself a nice big smoker, get yourself some cardboard matting like this, a couple of bags, hessian sacks, also called jute bags, keep it nice and dry, and then follow that technique and the smoker will last for absolutely ages. So I'll leave this to the side now, I'll come back to the video and I'll show you how long this has lasted for And what gets left in the bottom of the smoker. Right, so I finished all my reviews for the day. I've done 6 videos in that time and the smoker is still going. So as you can see, it's not puffing out quite as much smoke. It's definitely getting towards the end of its usable life. At this point, I'd probably stick another handful of hessian sack in. Bit more cardboard to get it going, but if you take a look at this video, you can see the difference. The cardboard has burnt away to nothing. The hessian sack still remains. It's not burnt away to nothing, and it still gives off that little bit of smoke. So a smoker like that, that's all the smoke you really need in order to get your bees to calm down a little bit. You don't need plumes of smoke, you just need that little bit of smoke to calm them down. What's great about this hessian sack though is that it keeps that ember going at the bottom of your bee smoker. So if you were to use just cardboard or wood, you get to the point where it burns down to nothing, and then when you put new material in, it's difficult to get it back to light. You need to go back to your blowtorch, and if you're using wet material, it can be a bit of an issue. I'm gonna show you now how to restock this smoker, how quick it is just to get it going again from a really small ember at the bottom where it's still chucking out a little bit of smoke. getting it firing again on all cylinders. So I forgot to mention, that was about an hour and a half, and I probably wasn't puffing it that much to keep it going. But as you can see, it's come straight back to life. There's still an ember there, and I can get it going again. So you're probably going to get between an hour and a half to 2 hours if you fill it up properly. I probably didn't put quite as much hessian in as I normally would. Really good just to stuff it in, and then it does literally last for hours. So when you come to restock it, all you do, open up the lid. You can see inside there's still a little bit of ember in there. Go for some cardboard first, keep the lid open, and just keep on puffing. You can see the smoke because it's got that ember in there from the hessian sack. This will catch. So there you go. Took a little bit longer than I thought it would, to be honest. I let that one go down a little bit too far. But it did get it back going after about 30 seconds of puffing. And then once you get it back to that point just by putting the cardboard in, you can then take another strip of hessian sack, just pop that in, and you immediately see the plumes of smoke you get from that. Close it straight up and the smoker is firing again on all cylinders. You're going to get at least another hour and a half, 2 hours out of that. Really good, effective smoker fuel. So that's it for the video. Really quick one today. I just wanted to show you my new favorite smoker fuel. What I really like about it is the fact that you can cram so much of this fuel into the car, stick together a big bag of it, stick it in the back of the car, and you've always got some really good fuel when you need it in the car for your bees, as opposed to having stacks of wood or anything like that. Wood chippings is another one I'm going to do a review of because I do like the wood chippings. I think it works really well in conjunction with the, the sack as well. So a mixture of wood chippings give you that bulk at the bottom and then some sack for some immediate smoke. They work really well together. So I just wanted to show you a couple of the combinations that I use in my smoker to give you that really long, prolonged cold smoke that's great for settling the bees down. So as always, hope you've enjoyed this video. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video. I'll see you next time.
