Create and manage your bee colonies
Every colony with its own name, its own history and its own numbers – instead of a row of identical-looking hives.
Anyone running more than a handful of colonies knows the problem: at the apiary you still remember which colony was weak in spring and which one swarmed. By autumn you no longer do. Colony management in iBeekeeper holds on to that history, colony by colony.
What belongs to a colony
For each colony you record the details that matter to you: name, hive type, frame size, origin, location, queen. Which fields you see is up to you – the details are freely configurable, just like the hive records.
On top of that comes everything the season brings: inspections, treatments, harvests, photos, tasks. What remains is one continuous record per colony instead of notes scattered across a shed.
Colony groups: more than folders
Nucs, production colonies and breeding colonies need different attention and different details. A nuc in July is judged by other standards than a production colony in the flow.
Colony groups keep these stocks apart – and each group can have its own hive record form. With a nuc you want to know whether the queen has started laying; with a production colony, how many supers are on. The number of groups is not limited.
Search instead of scroll
In the app you find a colony through the search field rather than by scrolling a long list. With three colonies that makes no difference. With sixty across four sites it is the difference between looking something up and giving up.
Colonies that no longer exist
A colony that dies, is united or is sold does not simply disappear. It moves to the archive and keeps its entire history.
That is more than tidiness. Anyone facing spring losses wants to know what those colonies had in common. The site? The queen's year? How much feed they went in with? Once deleted, that question can no longer be answered.
Readable across the years
The real value appears in the second season. Then you see not only how a colony stands today but how it got there – and you can compare colonies with each other instead of relying on the impression of the day.
Why this regularly fails on paper is covered in our comparison of digital hive records and paper.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was hinterlege ich zu einem Bienenvolk?
Bezeichnung, Rasse, Beutentyp, Zeichenfarbe und Zuchtbuchnummer. Dazu kommen Gruppen, Standort und alle Einträge der Stockkarte.
Kann ich Völker gruppieren?
Ja. Gruppen wie Wirtschaftsvölker, Ableger oder Schwärme lassen sich frei anlegen; ein Volk kann mehreren Gruppen angehören.
Was passiert mit aufgelösten Völkern?
Sie lassen sich archivieren, statt sie zu löschen. Die Aufzeichnungen bleiben damit erhalten, ohne die aktuelle Übersicht zu füllen.
What do I record for a colony?
Name, race, hive type, marking colour and stud book number, plus groups, location and every hive card entry.
Can I group colonies?
Yes. Groups such as production colonies, nucs or swarms can be created freely, and a colony can belong to several groups.
What happens to colonies that are gone?
They can be archived instead of deleted. The records stay while the current overview remains clean.