Beekeeping Log: a hive inspection tracker and apiary log

The one you will actually use with gloves on. A hive log has to be quick while the box is open, keep every colony separate, and hold the things you cannot carry in your head — varroa counts, treatment dates, queen changes. Beekeeping Log is built that way: per-hive inspections covering queen status, brood pattern, temperament and mite counts, a treatment log with a honey-safe date, harvest totals by hive, and an apiary calendar. Free on iOS and Android.

Through the swarm season in spring and early summer, many keepers open a colony every seven to ten days, because that is roughly how long a colony needs to go from a fresh queen cell to a swarm. Outside that window, every two to three weeks is common, and in cold or wet weather you leave the hive shut. Cadence genuinely varies with climate, colony temperament, and what you are watching for.

Four questions cover most of it: is the colony queenright, does it have room, does it have stores, and is anything wrong. In practice that means eggs and a solid capped-brood pattern, queen cells along frame bottoms, how much of the box is drawn and filled, sealed honey and pollen, pests, and temperament. Write down what you saw with the date — one inspection means little, a season of them means a lot.

You rarely need to see the queen herself. Eggs standing upright in the bottom of cells were laid within about three days, which tells you a queen was laying this week. A solid slab of capped brood across the frame says she has been laying well for longer than that. A colony that is loud and restless, building queen cells, with no eggs anywhere, is the classic sign something has gone wrong.

The strongest signal is charged queen cells — cups holding an egg or a larva in royal jelly — usually hanging along the bottom edges of frames in spring. Alongside them you often see a congested brood nest, cells backfilled with nectar, a queen slimming down and laying less, and plenty of drones. Bearding on a hot evening on its own is not swarming. Adding space early, or making a split, is the usual response.

Monitor with a count, not a guess: shake roughly half a cup of nurse bees, about 300, in alcohol or powdered sugar, and count mites per hundred bees. Many keepers check monthly through the season and again in late summer, before the winter bees are reared, because that brood is what carries the colony through. Thresholds, approved products, and treatment windows vary by country and climate — follow your national or local guidance.

A common rule of thumb is to add a super once about seven of the ten frames in the top box are drawn out and covered in bees, and a nectar flow is on. Bees need the space before they look like they need it, so supering late can push a colony toward swarming. If you have recently treated for varroa, check the product's honey-safe date before any super goes back on.

Winter is mostly decided in late summer: low mite loads, a young laying queen, and enough stores. How much store counts as enough depends entirely on climate — a long cold winter can need several times what a mild one does, so take the figure from a local association rather than a general one. Keep the hive dry and ventilated, give it a wind break and a mouse guard, and heft it rather than opening it in the cold.

Yes, Beekeeping Log is free to download on the App Store and Google Play. The current version is 1.6.0 and the content rating is 4+. It covers hive inspections, multiple hives and apiaries, varroa treatments with withdrawal tracking, feeding, honey harvests and analytics, an apiary calendar, inspection reminders, and a hive advisor you can ask questions in plain English.

Each hive keeps its own inspection, treatment, feeding, and harvest history, and multiple yards can be pinned on an apiary map with a live hive count at each location. Starting a record for a new package, nuc, or split takes seconds. What the app does not do is diagnose disease — the advisor gives general guidance from what you have logged, and serious colony problems belong with a mentor, a local association, or a bee inspector.