What Information Should I Track About Each Hive?

Three inspections ago, your hive had spotty brood on frame four and a mite count of five. You won't remember that.

A single inspection captures today. A record of them tracks what memory can't hold: mite counts building toward a threshold, stores shrinking ahead of winter, a brood pattern that's been spotty for three visits in a row.

Queen Status

Record whether you saw the queen and, if you did, what her laying pattern looked like. Tight, solid brood across the comb means a healthy queen. Scattered, spotty capped cells with many empty gaps mean she's failing or running low on viable sperm.

If you didn't see the queen, note whether you found fresh eggs. Eggs confirm a queen was laying within the last three days. That's enough to verify presence even without spotting her.

Bee Inspector's Queen Score Card rates eight specific traits, including production, temperament, brood pattern, and hygienic behavior. Log it each season to compare the same queen over time, or build a record that supports a requeening decision before the colony goes queenless.

Brood Pattern and Stages

A healthy brood nest has capped cells in a compact, consistent oval with few gaps. Record what you see on each brood frame: eggs, young larvae, older larvae, capped brood. Seeing all four stages confirms the queen has been laying without interruption for at least 21 days.

Population and Coverage

Count frames of bees: frames where bees cover most of both sides, not frames with a sparse cluster in one corner. A five-frame colony in an eight-frame box has room to grow; a ten-frame colony in a ten-frame box needs another box before your next visit.

Also note the ratio of adult bees to brood. A colony running low on nurse bees relative to open brood will show it in this count before other symptoms appear.

Stores: Honey and Pollen

Note how many frames carry honey and how many carry pollen. A colony needs, at a minimum, one full frame of honey per week during winter, and two to four frames of pollen visible in spring. If stores are low in fall, feed before the nectar flow ends.

Track which part of the hive the honey is in. Stores clustered away from the winter cluster can starve a colony even when honey exists in the box: the bees can't cross a cold gap to reach it. That detail only shows up in a log.

Available Space

Record how many drawn frames remain empty, which supers are in place, and what you added or moved. A queen with six frames of brood in an eight-frame hive will run out of laying room within weeks.

A hive that fills its available space faster than you add to it is a hive preparing to swarm.

Mite Count

Log your Varroa count separately from the general inspection fields. An alcohol wash or sugar roll measures mite load per hundred bees. Three percent (three mites per 100 bees) is the treatment threshold for most of the season.

One count gives you a number. Two counts three weeks apart show direction: mite load building, holding, or dropping after treatment. Track the number and date; Bee Inspector color-codes each result green, yellow, or red based on the 3% threshold.

Treatments and Actions

Record every treatment: product name, application date, dose, and end date. ApiVar strips stay in 42 to 56 days. Oxalic acid dribble goes in once; vaporization repeats every five days for three rounds. The log is the only way to know when to pull strips or stop treatment.

Also record what you did: added a super, moved frames, combined colonies, found and destroyed swarm cells. These actions change what you expect to see at the next visit.

Temperament

Note whether the colony was calm, defensive, or running on the frames. A defensive hive can be reacting to a failing queen, disease, or robbing pressure. One cranky inspection means little. Three in a row means something changed.

Putting It Together

Bee Inspector organizes all of this into a single inspection record per visit and shows you the last visit's data before you open the hive. Tap the NFC sticker on the box, and the app opens straight to that hive's card: the brood pattern from last time, the mite count from six weeks ago, the super you added in May. You see it all before you lift the first frame.