Features:

  • BEE HIVE SMOKER made of stainless steel produces safe cool smoke to help calm bees and protect from stings during hive maintenance
  • MEASUREMENTS from the bottom to the tip of the nose is 13” with a canister diameter of 4”
  • HEAT SHIELD protective guard that surrounds the smoker to help prevent burns. Smoker is both easy and safe to use
  • MOUNTING HOOK on the side of the heat shield allows you to safely suspend or store your smoker
  • PERFORATED FIRE BASE provides air pockets at the bottom of the smoker to ensure good airflow
Works pretty well, but sometimes flames shoot out of the ...

Works pretty well, but sometimes flames shoot out of the bottom when you un-squeeze the bellow. But overall, works well. I lit a piece of cardboard/paper, dropped it in, pumped the bellow until the the fire was burning good. Then I start dropping handfuls of sawdust while I continue to pump the bellow. After I know I have good embers, I start packing in more saw dust and it lasted a good 15-20 minutes of continuous pumping. So using it here and there for a bee hive or two would last you all day.

Very good smoker for a very fair price.

I saw all kinds of comments in beekeeping groups recommending spending much more money to get brand names but opted to try this ones since it had good star rating despite the cheap price. It works great. The only thing I'd recommend doing is gently bending up (or is it down?) the 'legs' on the round metal ventilation disk that sits inside the can on the bottom, so the disk stands further off the bottom of the can and that lets more air circulate. Once you've done that, pack it right and spend enough time getting it lit properly and the smoker will stay lit for several hours. To be honest I only left it lit for several hours once when I was testing it out and after that I just put it out after finishing with it. Plus we've only used it a few times since then as well because we're lucky enough to have docile bees that don't need smoking or spraying with anything (at the moment anyway).

High performing smoker at a great price

I just finished my first year beekeeping. As any beginner knows, it can be expensive getting all the required equipment. I tried to save money where I could. Smokers run the gamut on prices so I went cheap with this one. It has been GREAT ! no regrets at all. It worked like a champ all summer. The bellow material is some type of vinyl Naugahyde so I was concerned it would wear out quickly. But no, I used it several dozen times this summer and it shows no signs of wear. Beware of the bottom. As some reviewers pointed out, it gets red hot. I burned my finger really bad the first time I used it. But for the money and performance, it has been great for me.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

Having worked in the bee keeping field for quite some time I’ve worked with smokers of all different kinds. This one is a great value for the money. Highly recommend for your backyard beekeeper or small patch of hives. Only if you kept 50+ hives would I see you needing a bigger reservoir for more burlap, kindling, etc. and in that case I’d just upgrade to a larger body. Great, durable, handy, all around smoker. Note: you will have to bend the arms on the bottom shelf that comes with it to allow for adequate air flow. Simply bend them all at 90 degrees in the same direction and place it, legs down, into the bottom of the smoking cylinder body. “Save Thee bees.”

Sturdy

I keep forgetting it or have trouble getting material to light (until I got a torch to light it with) so I don't have a ton of mileage on this. Despite that, it is really good quality that seems as if it will hold up well. It certainly did its job the times I got it to light.

Best Smoker Ever

order shipped very promptly and the product is outstandingly built. am nervous about bee keeping but this is a real smoker that will give me the confidence of attending to my bees. also, it looks great. as a side note, the reason for using a smoker is to dis-allow the bees from communicating with phermones to "say" attack the intruder of the hive....price was perfect. at another bee keeping site saw another smoker selling @ $45 !

Good Smoker For the Price -- Here's a Trick To Keep The Bottom Cool(ish)

We're just getting into beekeeping, and all the experts say, you need a smoker like this. I've used it a few times, and it keeps my girls calm, or at least, preoccupied, while I check out their hive. It is well made, and a complicated device for the price. I think it's good value. It's easy to get a cool smoke with this. I just use a couple of wadded pieces of paper, which I light, then drop in a handful or two of dry straw or pine needles, When they're burning, I add a half-handful of fireplace wood pellets. We have fireplaces that burn them. I use the bellows with slow puffs to get these glowing, and I have more than enough smoke to go for the 30 - 40 minutes I need. By the way, you can buy small bags of the same wood pellets from some bee supply companies for about $20 each -- but why, when a 40 lb bag at your local home- or hardware- store is about $5?? That will last you for years! Some reviewers said the bottom of the smoker got so hot it could start a grass fire when set down near the hive. To combat this, I studied my new smoker and saw a metal disc with holes in the bottom. This keeps the fire up a little, but not enough. There are three stamped (cut) "legs" in it, almost flat, so I bent those down to give me more like an inch of airspace from the bottom of the can. Works great! The whole thing still gets hot, but not enough to start fires, I hope. I put a brick near the hive to give me a safe place to park it while I do other things. It's the bees-knees -- Recommended!

For a few hives 1 to 5 this one would work just fine or if someone didn't want a heavy smoker to ...

Yes this is of thinner than Dadant which i have 3 of. The price for a spare or light weight you can't beat it. For a few hives 1 to 5 this one would work just fine or if someone didn't want a heavy smoker to carry around this is light . I show this one at the bee club in sarasota fl . I also have a mannlake smoker that came with a junkie rubber/plastic bellows so i ordered one from dadant and put it on the smoke leaking thing ...but after a bit of pine needles the tar and soot seem to have sealed most of the leaks. The ash tray in the bottom is NOT attached in any way other than friction in any of the smokers that i have.Actually the smoker fuel should hold the ash tray in the bottom. Thanks for a product that is priced correctly for the uses I described, it also makes a pretty good show and tell item for the elementary schools... now there is a test for durability. After it makes its rounds through all of the kids it will have been puffed more times than I do in a year with 40 hives and 20 nucs.

Good value for the price but it's not high quality material. It gets VERY hot.

If you get this smoker you're accepting that the metal will be thin and the whole thing won't feel like high quality. That said, at this price point it's very well constructed and works great. I was looking for a smoker because we have a bee problem in our roof and I'd read that if you smoke them over time, it'll trigger a natural reaction for them to eat up their store of honey in preparation for flight (smoke = possibility of fire in nature) and file out. Not wanting to kill the bees we tried to smoke them out. I bought some smoker chips before switching to pine needles that were in my backyard. The smoker was easy to setup and the hook was really handy. The tin gets discoloured immediately from first use, but I imagine it'll happen to all smokers. Based on how thin the metal felt, I was worried that the flame would burn through the metal, but this smoker lasted being nearly continuously lit for 5 straight daylight days now and it's staying together fine with no signs of the metal being burned through (smoker was refilled about every 20 mins.) Be careful when using this smoker because it gets VERY hot. Even with padded bee gloves on it was sometimes too hot to touch. I ended up switching to oven mitts. The other thing to keep in mind is that flames can shoot out of the bottom port. While I was unfortunately unable to persuade the bees to bail, the part about a lot of smoke getting them to eat up their stores was true. When we finally opened up the roof after smoking the bees for 4 days the combs were very clean and didn't appear to have any honey in them. But the bees were still around in copious quantities. Overall, for my purposes this smoker was perfect and at a great price point, but if I were to keep a smoker for long term use (for example if I was a bee keeper) I'd probably opt to pay a little more to get a sturdier feeling smoker with thicker feeling metal.

Makes smoke and feels durable.

This looks like it's going to last me for at least several years. The fabric on the bellows is really my only concern on the durability front. I'm just not familiar with that particular fabric so I have no basis to judge realistically how long it should last. This is the only smoker I have used so I really can't compare it to others but I find the gap between the bellows and the smoker body to be fairly narrow. I don't use gloves when working with my bees and if I reach for the smoker to quickly the tops of my fingers inevitably get a quick singe from the smoker body. I haven't tried it wearing gloves so I can't say how much clearance there is for gloved fingers operating the bellows. I'll update my review if I my view on this product changes.

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