One of the important things is to keep records of your Hives. In this way you can track the health, population, diseases and any anomalies that may affect the health and production of the Hives.
I just use notes on the iPhone as I do inspections and transfer to typed nots on computer.
Easy to remember what you’re doing with one or two hives…any more and it’s even easier to get lost.
Register on Beebase…at least you get warnings re noticeable disease in the area and free access to your local SBI
Just a heads up,BeeBase is for England, Scotland and Wales.
There is great content on the site for anyone to use, but the data program is intended to collect only from the British Isles.
Anyway…I’m not familiar with Beetight. Hivetracks is based on Cloud storage with online access only. OK if you’re happy with that and the possibility that somebody else knows where your hives are. I’m old and old fashioned and find notes on my own computer most useful.
Another idea is to place a brick on top of your hives, with each side painted with a colour for a particular situation. You can instantly see what is /was happening in your hives just by looking at the colours. Low tech rocks.
I’ve been using Hive Tracks for a couple of months now. Pretty simple, nice user interface and you can see the registered beekeepers in the area (and the country) which is fun to look at.
There’s a free 30/day trial, after that its $1/per hive each month.
I’ve attached a couple screen shots of what the information recorded.
For one or two hives, its pretty easy to keep track of their status and health, I have gotten into the habit of taking photos of each frame to map their progress, but to do this takes time and you need a helper, not the most efficient way to record the progress. Hive Tracks is brilliant and great for a few hives, the visual aspect is what you are looking for, so much easier to convey words in pictures. I was a bit put off by the monthly expense, I know its not expensive but I just cannot operate a tablet or phone from the apiary with gloves in the sunshine…I love bricks, there is a whole language in brick placement but bricks fall off my pitched rooves. However there is another solution. I have put together a Hive Inspection Sheet to pin to a clipboard where you can note all aspects of the hive on paper and then return this for input into Hive Tracks, BeeTight or even a simple spreadsheet. These sheets have been around for a while, this is a customised version, happy to share with anyone who would like a copy (it is attached to a Hive Spreadsheet dashboard that I am working on, so be prepared for a few revisions along the way).
This available for download from the following Facebook Group and is easily customisable for any situation. Check back regularly for updates. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ozurbanbeebuffs/1145467255469886/
Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll continue. I like technology so its a toy for me. When you’re fussing with the bees, you can’t be entering information. I would rather be taking pictures of the hive activity, but you can’t really do that either unless you have a helping hand.
I like my bricks… and I have some Ready-Date Nuc calendars from Burke’s when I need to track a date. If you have time to enter all that data on every hive, you don’t have enough hives yet…
