174 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



work well until worn out — ah! "there's the 

 rub." 



There is a wide difference between a smok- 

 er that will throw a large volume of smoke 

 with such force as to send it through a col- 

 ony of bees closely clustered in cool autumn 

 weather, or will in an instant make a cloud 

 of smoke so dense that you can hide in it 

 from an irritable colony of bees, and the 

 smoker that you must keep constantly work- 

 ing in order to get a little smoke with which 

 to frighten your bees. 



There is also a wide difference between 

 the smoker that you can use day after, week 

 in and week out, and month after month, 

 without its clogging, or breaking, or burn- 

 ing, or in some way getting out of repair, 

 and one that requires a continual fussing 

 with to get even a meager supply of smoke. 



It is very irritating to find your smoker 

 clogged with creosote, or to have a spring 

 break or a hole come in the bellows, just as 

 you open a colony of hybrids having an un- 

 amiable temper and very pugnacious with- 

 all, and you are compelled to retreat, with- 

 out much dignity or regard for appearances, 

 to the nearest clump of trees or through a 

 door to some safe place, and there be com- 

 pelled to admit that the tiny creatures are 

 masters of the situation. 



Let's illustrate; and we will take the Bing- 

 ham as illustration. The Bingham is chosen 

 not from any desire to throw stones at it, but 

 because I have long considered it the best of 

 the smokers advertised in the bee journals ; 

 and, when new and in good working order, it 

 does most excellent work— but is not perfect. 

 As I said, when new it works well, but if 

 used freely with plenty of fuel you will 

 finally notice that it does not work quite so 

 well, and it continues to work harder and 

 harder until you come to the conclusion that 

 it needs cleaning ; a conclusion that should 

 have been reached before. You push out 

 the wire cloth stretched across the air pass- 

 age from the bellows to the fire barrel, and 

 you wonder it went at all. If you have warm 

 water at hand you can clean it readily ; if 

 not, and you do the work well, you will find 

 it a slow job. But you succeed, aad again 

 your smoker works very well. After awhile, 

 even though the wire screen has been re- 

 cently cleaned, you are sure that the smoker 

 does not work as well when new, and you de- 

 decide that the passage must be getting filled 

 up. To clean out this passage it is neces- 

 sary to remove the grate and use a bent 



wire ; or, as I have done at an out-apiary, 

 drive a nail through the end of a stick, and 

 use that. But when the smoker reaches 

 this condition it never seems to work quite 

 as when new. 



Sooner or later a spark gets through the 

 wire cloth into the bellows and sets the 

 leather on fire ; or one or both springs 

 break. 



This has been my experience with the 

 Bingham. To show that this experience is 

 not isolated I will say that a tinman here in 

 town told me, sometime since, that, before 

 he was burned out, he kept a supply of old 

 clock springs on hand with which to repair 

 Bingham smokers. 



The wire cloth arrangement to keep sparks 

 out of the bellows does not keep out the 

 smoke, and sometimes the sparks get in. At 

 best it is an annoyance, and often a nui- 

 sance, to be put up with patiently if we 

 must, but to be laid aside if some better way 

 can be found to keep the sparks and smoke 

 from the bellows. 



So far as I can remember, all the smokers, 

 with one exception, that I have bought ei- 

 ther choked up with creosote, or the bellows 

 leather was burned by sparks, or they fell to 

 pieces, and in the exception noted the smo- 

 ker was so poor that I could not even use it, 

 or only with great difficulty. 



It will be readily seen why I was led to 

 experiment and to use two valves in a man- 

 ner similar to the plan illustrated in the June 

 Review. But even this arrangement was not 

 faultless, although it gave me much greater 

 satisfaction than others. Inthis smoker, as 

 illustrated, it is quite difficult to remove the 

 air chamber, and should the valve inside in 

 any way become clogged it would be difficult 

 to clean. If the air chamlier is made more 

 movable there is a possibility of its causing 

 annoyance by coming loose while working, 

 I have, therefore, changed the arrangement 

 in such a way as to get entirely rid of these 

 difficulties. As now made, it works nicely 

 and suits me. If properly used, no sparks 

 or smoke can get into the bellows. There is 

 no wire cloth or small metal passage-way 

 between the bellows and barrel to become 

 clogged with creoso-te. The springs will not 

 break. There is a strong draft. But I will 

 not go farther. I have sent a smoker to the 

 editor of the Review, and he can judge dis- 

 interestedly of its merits, and report. If it 

 has no advantages over other smokers, it 

 may as well pass into oblivion. What we 



