EL>Interesting stuff!  While generally, I concur:
 
EL>Unscientifically, I've observed that sometimes the opposite can happen.  On
  >early or cool mornings colonies can seem to "still be drinking their
  >morning coffee" when a visit, even with smoke, can arose the field troops
  >and kick-off the days activities.  There can be a clear increase of
  >activity after a visit.
 
EL>regards, Ed
 
Ed, I am with you and am NOT knocking anyone's BS, but I have never seen
the negative results of smoking on working bees that others report. I
did know one beekeeper who got his daily working orders from a higher
authority then most and he would on certain days work his bees with
out any kind of smoke because of his beliefs. I also know that on these
days he and his son took a real beating from the bees. I suspect that
these tests are not reflecting any more then the regional observations
that may vary radically from one area to another. Like the spraying of
aggressive bees with water in the low humidity of the southwest which I
would not be surprised has little or no calming effect on the bees in
the humid south.
 
Here in California we have flows, both honey and pollen that for sure if
you pull into an apiary during a corn pollen flow the bees will drop the
heavy greasy loads of corn pollen and it will fall like rain. But
enough gets in to make NO difference in the nutrition of the hive or the
amount collected in pollen traps.
 
We have another flow from the fall tarweed that is common in the lower
elevations of both the Costal foothills and Sierra mountain foothills.
There is no doubt that if you pull into a yard when this flow is on ALL
bee activity in the yard will stop. I have parked a half mile away and
tried to sneak up on the bees to have a peek and by the time you open a
few hives the yard will go deathly silent. I am sure this is the bees
response to the aromatics released by the plants by just the normal
activity of crushing a few plants under foot. What happens to the bees
in the field is a mystery, but do doubt as soon as the air clears which
may take a hour or two the bees return. Hives in this kind of flow are
notorious drifters and robbers and they will clean out any failing hive
before the beekeeper finds the problem I believe this is because of the
masking of the hive odor by this very aromatic plant.
 
Yes, it does smell like dog du du some say, and I have been run out
of the local beekeepers favorite coffee shop in town several times
because of the rank odor of this plant that will cover your pant legs
with its sticky resin within the first few feet of tramping through it.
The honey mellows out with time and if not drummed up for a few days.
 
The bees also can make a good crop of honey from the stinking tarweed,
several times I have extracted 100# per hive from this source alone, but
must admit the honey is about the same quality as dandelion, yellow, and
it will get hard in a few cool days. The pollen from this plant is also
very low in bee nutrition and the bees will store up huge amounts
because they can't consume it as fast as they bring it in, and in fact
will cut way down on brood before the flow is over if this is the only
source of pollen they will stop all broodrearing. Heavy mysterious
losses are sometimes reported from bees pastured in fall tarweed and
some in BS have named it 'fall decline or fall collapse and much effort
has been made to find a cause other then poor nutrition and the fact
that even in California tired old worn out bees do not winter well even
in our mild winters.
 
On the other end of the scale is the early summer sage flow along the
central coast of California. The first experience I had with coverall's
is in this flow when we used coverall's because of the wet foggy
weather normal along the south cost which would soak us to the skin
and take some of the pleasure out of beekeeping. The bees would fly out
of the fog to get to the sage and coming back fully loaded with
nectar they would drift onto our backs in numbers large enough that they
would dry large areas on our backs from the heat they picked up a
mile or two away working the sage which was outside of the fog and 70 to
80 degrees. Our activity did not stop them from flying nor did the wet
fog, and we extracted huge crops at one time measured in case's per
hive. (A case is wooden shipping container that held two sixty pound
cans of honey and was used in the days when California honey was mostly
shipped east by rail. It was one unit of measurement that I was sorry to
see go out of use just about the time I got into the bees on my own and
honey crops took a dramatic fall from 200# or more per hive to 60# or
even the 30# crop that is considered good by some pollinators today.) It
was so wet on those sage locations from the fog that the power lines
would spark and pop and big clouds of bees were attracted to that
activity and would ball the insulators, and balls of them would
fall to the ground and you sure did not want to be directly under
them when they fell, maybe the Ozone got to them.
 
Last, in the old days I worked in a portable extracting house, actually
outside most of the time. We pulled the portable which was built on the
back of a Morland Truck into the bee yards which were 96+ hives arranged
on each side of the truck in three or four rows deep. Within a few
minutes the bee activity would get back to normal after pulling the big
old honey house into the bee yard. I remember one flow that we averaged
60# per double hive in the tank by the end of the day. We extracted the
supers and also removed any heavy honey from the bottoms and equalized
all the hives as we went along. By the time we got to the end of the
rows and finished that afternoon I went back to check the first hives
and sometimes they would be FULL of nectar from top to bottom, so I am
sure no matter what the beekeeping activity the beekeeper is doing if
there is a good honey flow the bees can get back to normal within a few
minutes of the end of that beekeeping activity. I am also sure that if
there is no real bee activity in the field a few puffs of smoke will
cause all activity to stop and it will be slow to start again.
 
Beekeepers who operate in the hotter regions of the desert southwest
ware they must keep their bees under shades or have them melt down or
see the field bees die landing on the hot earth can with no problem give
a yard a few puffs of smoke in the hot afternoon and load them on a
truck and move them without leaving a bee.
 
                      IMHO, the OLd Drone
 
 
(c) Permission is granted to freely copy this document
in any form, or to print for any use.
(w)Opinions are not necessarily facts. Use at own risk.
---
 ~ QMPro 1.53 ~ L'ENFUMOIR" is the tool the beekeeper uses to smoke bees.