Smoker Fuel.

Beekeepers use smoke to quieten the bees and this source of fuel is conveniently close to the apiary. Dried rotten wood works very well, particularly if it is combined with a damper fuel such as fresh sawdust or even slightly damp rotten wood; the moisture has the effect of giving a slower burn and a cooler smoke.

There are various stories about how the smoke works, many books suggest that it awakens ancestral memories of forest fires and so the bees gorge themselves with honey in preparation for a smart exit if the fire gets too close and, being full of honey, are unable to flex their abdomens enough to sting the beekeeper. A much more likely explanation is that, since the bees communicate by smell, the smoke prevents them from talking to one another and the message, "Sting this intruder" just doesn't get through. It is also obvious, from their immediate visible reaction to the smoke of running away, that they don't like the stuff and will try to avoid it.

One old gentleman, who taught me a lot in my early days, often admonished beekeepers with the words, "Your not trying to make their eyes water, Laddie;" you normally just need to waft a little over the top of the open hive to stop the bees welling up in front of you as any more will create a disturbance that will upset their behaviour and mask what you're looking for. If, for example, you're trying to find the queen, you're not actually trying to pick out the one creature amongst tens of thousands of similar ones, you're looking for a pattern of behaviour amongst a group of workers that points you to the object of your search; cause a disruption and you won't be able to spot these signs. I have a photoshopped picture of a cluster of bees in which I have replaced the queen with a drone; ask a beekeeper to find the queen in the picture and he or she will invariably point to the drone before, or even without realising that they've been conned.
It is common for an experienced bee man to reach the end of his colony inspection and find that his smoker has not only gone out, but has gone cold from lack of use.

There is only one fly in the ointment, I know what a queen looks like, I know how to find the her but, in well over thirty years of beekeeping, I have only managed to find her once; she was from someone else's colony and lying dead on the ground in front of the hive; he had accidentally killed her the day before. Despite the obsession people have with finding and marking the queen, it is rarely useful to do so; in spite of all the books giving the instruction, "First find the queen" when explaining the methodology of any manipulation, there is always another way. It may be useful to find her but never essential.

I have just posted "The Swan" from the 24th of April.