08/29/2026
Improvised Smoker… Improvised Entrance
Have you ever seen anything like this?
Back in 2015, when I was still doing bee removal work, I had to go to San Antonio for some supplies and got a call from a lady who had bees she wanted removed.
She told me her husband had built an owl box a couple of years earlier and put it up in a tree, about 20 feet in the air. The first year, owls moved in, and they enjoyed watching them raise a couple of chicks. The next year, squirrels moved in, and they enjoyed watching them raise a litter too.
Then, that spring, a swarm of bees moved in.
The bees had been fine until about a week earlier, when her husband got stung while mowing the lawn. He asked her to find someone who could remove them because they did not want to poison or kill the bees. They just wanted them relocated.
She said I could take the whole box.
She sent me a picture, but it was hard to see much because the box was high up in the tree and shaded. I told her to send me the address and I would swing by.
I usually carried enough stuff in my truck to handle most jobs. I had a ladder, screen wire, staples, and most of what I needed. When I got there, I started getting everything out and realized I had everything except my smoker.
Of course.
The problem was that a lot of the bees were bearding on the outside of the owl box. It was July in Texas, so that made sense. They were hanging outside because it was hot.
But I obviously had to get them inside the box so I could put screen around the entrance without leaving a bunch of bees behind.
The lady had already gone back inside, and I think she may have even left. I started looking around to see if I could find anything that might work, and there was nothing around that resembled a smoker.
Then I found a soda can in a recycle bin.
So I got my stapler, ladder, screen wire, and my new high-tech smoker, and figured out a way to gently put some smoke on the bees to encourage them back inside.
After a few trips up and down the ladder to refuel my new smoker, I finally got them in. I screened the entire box, lowered it down, and brought them home.
The owl box was attached to the tree with a board and a couple of screws, so it was easy enough to take down. When I got it home, I did the same thing in reverse and screwed it to a tree in my backyard, which worked out great.
As a side note, I treated them with oxalic acid v***r two or three times when I first got them home, just in case. I did not have any real way to inspect them, so I treated them as a precaution. Eventually, they closed the entrance down so much that I could not do that anymore.
And that brings us to the real reason for this post.
This was not meant to show that I’m some kind of crazy genius for making a smoker out of a soda can. That was just a fun side note to the removal.
The real point is to show how smart honey bees can be when it comes to regulating their own space.
That owl box had an opening big enough for a good-sized owl, or maybe even a grapefruit, to fit through. It was meant for an owl, not a honey bee colony.
But when November came around and we had some colder weather, the bees evidently decided that big open hole was more entrance than they wanted.
So they started making adjustments.
They used propolis and wax to close that doorway down to a size they could better manage. Over time, you can see the progression in the photos as they reduced that big owl-box opening into something more suitable for a bee colony.
Bees are always making adjustments.
Sometimes we think we are managing the bees, and to some degree we are. But a lot of the time, we are really just watching them show us what they already know how to do.
