Urban bees vs wood heater smoke

[Dan2]

Forest fire smoke

Hi all. We have had a forest fire burning here for ove a month now and we wake up to a heavy blanket of smoke every morning and by 10 am or so it starts to clear off but the air smells of wood smoke to various degrees 24/7. We did a hive inspection before the fire & identified & marked 2 frames to harvest in a month or so. We went into the hive yesterday and our bee population has dropped dramatically and they have been eating their honey stores The brood frames looked good but the honey frames…

Hi @anon63823775 ,

You may have seen this linked post (above) recently…anyhow worth a look although it may not answer the question. Burn offs are known to be much more putrid as the lower heat of the burn (often caused by greener wood/plant litter etc) causes more chemicals and particulates to be released in the smoke - a less complete combustion. I guess it depends on how close and how stinky, but I still think the sustained concentrations of the smoke (the particulates and the chemicals) would be unlikely to cause the bees to leave the hive. When you look at the air quality on this site (click on Geeveston or Huonville for example) http://epa.tas.gov.au/epa/air/monitoring-air-pollution/real-time-air-quality-data-for-tasmania
you will see the spiking of the readings so although the air is poor at times, and extremely poor at others, the changes in wind and the like (inversion layers) might mean that the bees are not exposed to sustained very high levels.