21. Hive Advisor

Hive Advisor reads your inspection data and flags issues worth acting on. It is a rules-based suggestion engine — no AI, no guesswork. Every suggestion is derived directly from the numbers and observations you enter, matched against evidence-based thresholds from apiculture research and best practice.

All Hive Advisor features are free for every Bee Inspector account.

21.1 What Is Hive Advisor?

Hive Advisor evaluates each new inspection against a set of rules covering the five most common colony health concerns: swarm risk, queen and brood status, mite pressure, stores adequacy, and pest/disease detection.

Each rule produces a suggestion card with:

A severity colour — Urgent (red), Attention (orange), Info (blue), or Positive (green).
A short title describing the issue.
A plain-language explanation of what was found and what to consider doing.
The specific evidence from your inspection that triggered the rule.

21.2 Where Suggestions Appear

Suggestions appear in two places:

Post-inspection panel — immediately after you save a new inspection, a panel slides up showing any active suggestions. Review them while the inspection is fresh in your mind and dismiss anything you have already addressed.
Hive overview card — on the hive detail screen, a "Hive Advisor" card sits above the Supers section. It shows suggestions based on your most recent inspection. The card does not appear when there are no active suggestions.

lightbulb

Tip: The hive overview card updates automatically when you record a new inspection. Open the hive detail screen after inspecting to see an up-to-date summary.

21.3 Rule Categories

Swarm Risk

Rule	Condition	Severity
SW-01	Swarm cells detected	Urgent
SW-02	Swarm cells plus eggs seen — swarm may be imminent	Urgent
SW-03	Colony covering more than 80% of brood-box frames in spring	Attention

info

Note: Frames covered (SW-03) counts only brood-box frames. A 10-frame double-deep hive has 20 brood-box frames. The 80% threshold applies to that total.

Queen & Brood

Rule	Condition	Severity
QB-01	No eggs or larvae seen — possible queenlessness	Urgent
QB-02	No eggs seen but larvae present — queen may have stopped laying	Attention
QB-03	Supersedure cells detected	Attention
QB-04	Queen not seen for two consecutive inspections	Info

QB-01 and QB-02 are suppressed for newly introduced queens (within 30 days of the introduction date) and after recent splits, since brood absence is expected in these situations.

Mite Pressure

Rule	Condition	Severity
MT-01	Mite wash result above 3% (3 mites per 100 bees)	Urgent
MT-02	Mite wash result 2–3% — approaching action threshold	Attention
MT-03	No mite wash recorded this season during the critical window (Aug–Oct northern / Feb–Apr southern)	Attention

lightbulb

Tip: A mite wash uses either alcohol or soapy water to dislodge mites from a sample of approximately 300 bees (about ½ cup). Count the mites and divide by 3 to get mites per 100 bees. Many extension services recommend treating at or above 2 mites per 100 bees (2%) during the late-summer brood-rearing period.

Stores & Feeding

Rule	Condition	Severity
FD-01	Honey stores rated Low or Critical entering autumn	Urgent
FD-02	Honey stores rated Low or Critical during late summer dearth	Attention
FD-03	No pollen stores recorded — no protein for brood	Info

Pests & Disease

Rule	Condition	Severity
PS-01	American Foulbrood or European Foulbrood detected	Urgent
PS-02	Small Hive Beetle detected	Attention

21.4 Dismissing Suggestions

Tap the X on any suggestion card to dismiss it. Dismissals are synced to your account so they persist across devices and sessions.

A dismissed suggestion will not reappear for that specific inspection. If the same issue is still present when you record your next inspection, Hive Advisor will flag it again based on the new data.

info

Note: Dismissing a suggestion does not mark the underlying problem as resolved — it only hides the card for that inspection. Keep addressing the issue in subsequent inspections until the condition clears.

21.5 Beekeeper Region

Some rules are season-specific — for example, mite warnings are more urgent in late summer when there is still brood to treat before winter. To enable seasonal rules, tell the app where you keep your bees:

Go to Account → Preferences.
Tap Beekeeper Region.
Select the option that best matches your location.

Region	Examples
Northern Temperate	Canada, USA, UK, Europe, Northern Asia
Southern Temperate	Southern Australia, South Africa, temperate South America
Southern Hemisphere	New Zealand, Southern Chile and Argentina
Tropical / Year-Round	Central America, Northern Australia, Southeast Asia

If no region is set, only year-round rules fire. Seasonal advice is disabled until you set a region.

21.6 Suppression Logic

Hive Advisor suppresses rules in specific situations to avoid spurious warnings:

New queen (within 30 days) — brood-absence rules (QB-01, QB-02) are suppressed. A newly introduced queen needs up to 30 days from introduction before she is expected to be laying confirmed workers.
Recent split (within 30 days) — swarm-risk and brood-absence rules are suppressed, since the split colony will be building up from a small population.
Active queen cells — QB-01 and QB-02 are suppressed when swarm cells or supersedure cells are already flagged, to avoid duplicate alerts.
Already dismissed — dismissed suggestions are hidden for the current inspection.
Season — rules tagged as seasonal only fire in the relevant part of the year for your Beekeeper Region.

21.7 Turning Hive Advisor Off

If you prefer not to see suggestions, go to Account → Preferences and toggle off Hive Advisor. The post-inspection panel will not appear and the hive overview card will be hidden. Toggle it back on at any time to resume advice.

← Previous