Digital hive card as an app, even offline at the apiary
Design the form freely, record inspections, varroa and feeding at the colony, mobile and offline.
The iBeekeeper digital hive card replaces the paper card under the hive lid. You design the form yourself, fill it in directly at the colony in the app, even without a network, and see the same entries at home in the browser. For up to 5 colonies this is free for good.
What belongs on a hive card
On the hive card you record, for each colony, what you see and do at every inspection. Typical entries are the date, queen or eggs, brood, colony strength, feed, gentleness, calmness on the comb, swarming tendency, queen cells, varroa and the measures you have taken.
The Bee Specialist Centre of the Bavarian State Institute for Viticulture and Horticulture also recommends such records for just a few colonies. Its printable hive card has columns for combs covered with bees, brood, gentleness, calmness on the comb, swarm, honey, feed, varroa and diseases. You create exactly such fields yourself in iBeekeeper.
How to choose the entries sensibly, rate them consistently and record them regularly is covered in detail in our guide Keeping a hive card.
You design the form yourself
Every beekeeper works differently, so iBeekeeper does not give you a rigid form. You create your own fields, as a text line, number, yes/no, date, selection list or multiple selection, and structure them with headings and dividers. For the queen there is a field for the marking color, plus fields for bee race and hive type. You do not need any programming knowledge.
You do not have to start from scratch: take a ready-made template or the template of another beekeeper and adapt it. You can share your own form with a friend or release it for all beekeepers. You group nucs, production colonies or breeding colonies in colony groups, and each group gets its own form.
At the apiary, even without a network
In the Bienenvölker app for iPhone, iPad and Android you fill in the hive card directly at the colony. If there is no reception, the app saves the entries on the device and syncs them by itself as soon as a connection is available again. At home you see the same entries in the web application in the browser. If you wish, you can create the same hive card entry for several colonies at the same time.
Frame grid, voice note and iBee
In the Frame grid you mark, comb by comb, what you see: brood, honey, pollen and queen cells. iBeekeeper calculates the brood area in cm² and estimates the number of brood cells; both are then shown in the hive card.
With a package you record observations as a voice note instead of typing with gloves on. During the trial period and with a package you can speak the whole inspection, and the assistant iBee fills in the fields of your hive card. You check every value before the card is saved. iBee needs an internet connection for this.
A history instead of a pile of notes
The Chronicle shows everything for each colony on one timeline: inspections, feedings, treatments, harvests, migrations and queens. From your varroa counts, iBeekeeper calculates the mite drop per day and shows it in the Varroa history together with the treatments. In the Weight check, a chart shows weight and feedings from a day you choose. This way you can see over the years how each colony develops.
Treatments with all required details
The hive card itself is voluntary. What is mandatory is recording every treatment with veterinary medicines under Article 108 of Regulation (EU) 2019/6, including date, medicine, amount, supplier, proof of purchase, withdrawal period and duration of treatment, to be kept available for inspections for at least five years. In iBeekeeper, a treatment is therefore a separate entry at the colony, with batch, supplier, receipt number, veterinarian and applied by. This produces the Medicine record book (Germany) as a PDF, per apiary and year. The reports as PDF are available with a package and during the trial period.
Print, export, import
You output the hive cards of a colony as PDF or CSV, even without a package. For the apiary without a phone, you print blank hive card templates as PDF. You export all data as CSV, JSON or ZIP. If you have kept your hive cards in a spreadsheet so far, you import them from CSV, XLS or XLSX files and assign the columns to your form.
How to get started
- Register for free, with no credit card.
- Create your apiary and your colonies.
- Choose a template for the hive card and adapt the fields.
- Install the Bienenvölker app on your phone and log in with the same account.
- At your next inspection, make your entries directly at the colony.
If you want to try iBeekeeper first without entering your own colonies, “Load sample data” under Settings creates sample colonies with hive cards, feedings and treatments. “Delete sample data” removes everything again.
Paper hive card and digital hive card
| Feature | Paper | iBeekeeper |
|---|---|---|
| At the apiary | lies in the lid | on the phone, also offline |
| Fields | printed and fixed | freely designable |
| Many colonies | each card individually | one entry for several |
| Review | Leafing through a binder | Chronicle per colony |
| Medicine record book | transferred by hand | PDF from the treatments |
| Printout | is already paper | as PDF, also blank templates |
Replace your paper hive card, free for good for up to 5 colonies.
Try it freeFrequently asked questions
Is the digital hive card free?
Yes, for good for up to 5 colonies, with no credit card and no expiry date. This includes your own forms, templates, colony groups, export and import. For more colonies there are packages whose price depends on the number of colonies.
Can I adapt the hive card to the way I manage my bees?
Yes. You create your own fields, use templates and give nucs, production colonies or breeding colonies their own forms through colony groups, without programming knowledge.
Does the digital hive card work offline?
Yes. In the app you make entries at the apiary even without reception. The data syncs by itself as soon as a connection is available again.
Can I print the hive card?
Yes. You output the hive cards of a colony as PDF, and for the apiary there are blank hive card templates as PDF.
Can I use it to replace my paper hive cards?
Yes. If your existing cards are in a spreadsheet, you import them from CSV, XLS or XLSX files. You enter paper cards by hand, ideally first for the colonies you are currently managing.