My gut tells me liquid smoke is not a good idea but then I am often wrong.
The whole colony communicates with pheromones. Queen pheromones and brood pheromones keep the colony balanced. They know when the queen dies because of the absence of her pheromones.
For me, it's beyond the imagination what liquid smoke would do to the pheromone communication inside the hive. Not sure how long liquid smoke would stay on bees squirted with it but considering how they spread queen pheromone by touching, even that doesn't sound safe or healthy.
I do smoke myself often when I am in a strong hive. I also wash my bee jacket and hood often especially if I have had lot of defensive bees on me. They leave an alarm pheromone. Getting the hood back on is sometimes tricky. If you have one of those jackets with a long tab and a short tab, the zippers need to be on the long tab side when taking it off and on.
Not a bad idea... I may hang my bee jacket above my smoker the next time I smoke a brisket... Probably similar effects
I will smoke myself before getting into my hives which seems to help with two really aggressive hives I have. Even if I continue to use my regular smoker for the hive interior I think I might try this concoction on my bee jacket and see if it works better than regular smoke. Thank you.
I've discovered alfalfa pellets for use in my smoker. They're a bit harder to start... I use a small butane or mapp gas torch to get them started but once you get them going it produces a dense smoke for over an hour. You almost don't need to pump the smoke after the initial fire up because it continues to flow
Very interesting! Always something new to try.
I visited Joe and George Hansen this morning in Colton, Oregon. Foot Hills Honey operates roughly 6,000 colonies of bees and mostly their business model is pollination. They get upwards of $120 per hive in the Almond orchards and as low as $40 for some more local crops like Crimson Clover or Carrots.
When I first arrived, Joe was out in the middles of 1,000 hives checking on things. (BTW, there were another 500 or so hives not 100 feet away from the field of 1,000. I walked out to greet him and we talked for 45 minutes with a billion bees buzzing around us. He was holding a spray bottle with dark brown substance, which he used to calm the bees down. I was surprised when he told me that it was simply Liquid Smoke. As in the liquid smoke ones buys at the local grocery store to flavor your summer barbecue cooking sauces.
He told me that he puts about 1 and 1/2 inches of liquid Smoke in the bottom of the bottle and the rest is water. He uses it just as you would with real smoke, except he limits how much actually goes into the hive itself, as the liquid smell will remain too long and continue to work more than necessary. His primary reason for using liquid smoke is fire hazard during the summer months, especially with the hives he has in the forested areas. But it is also much more convenient when he only wants to look into one or two hives.
I did a little research about it and here is an article I found on the web.