> how to work hives with minimal disturbance to the bees

One of my favorite sayings is there are two ways to work bees: one, work so slowly the bees don't know you are there; two, work so quickly the bees don't know you are there. 

regarding smoke, Prof Roger Morse wrote a comprehensive article about this in 1954. In it he states:

To work with bees we must be able
to control them and to this end man
has employed smoke from the earliest times.

BY THE TURN of the century the
smoker had in a period of 30 years
developed from a crude instrument to
a useful implement. In 1903 the G. B.
Lewis Company offered the Corneil
smoker which was called a "muzzle
loader" because it loaded from the top.

In the same catalog is offered, "The
Breech Loading Vesuvius Smoker".
This smoker had a removable plug on
the bottom and was loaded from this end. 

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