Add photos to your hive card

Photos of combs, brood or the queen, linked to the colony and to the inspection at which they were taken. Photos are available with a package.

When a photo is worth it

Not every inspection needs a picture. But there are situations in which a photo is worth more than three lines of notes:

• Unusual brood pattern. Patchy brood, sunken cappings, discoloured larvae: things like that are better judged by comparison than from memory.
• Before and after an intervention. What did the colony look like before you removed brood, and what did it look like two weeks later?
• When buying or passing on colonies. A picture of the brood nest at the time of handover settles later discussions.
• When you are unsure. A photo can be shown to a bee health expert or an experienced beekeeper without anyone having to travel.

Suspected disease

If you suspect American foulbrood, a photo is no substitute for testing: reporting it to the veterinary office and taking a food-crown sample remain mandatory. For a first assessment of whether there is any reason for suspicion at all, though, a sharp picture of the brood nest is often the quickest way to a second opinion.

Development over the season

Because the pictures are attached to the colony and not lost in your camera roll, they are in the same place next time. After one season you have a series of pictures for each colony instead of a folder of four hundred comb photos where nobody knows any more which one belongs to what.

Together with the note

A picture shows the condition, but not what was going through your mind at the time. Combined with a voice note, it becomes a record that still makes sense a year later.

Mind the storage space: depending on the package, there is a limit on file size and on the number of documents. The details are in the price overview.