Apiary Forecast
Bee Weather Intelligence for better beekeeping decisions
Across Apiary Forecast today
Take your colony records into the apiary
Inspecting several colonies should feel like one visit, not a series of separate trips through an app.
Apiary Visit is the field-working side of Apiary Forecast Colony Management. It brings the active colonies in one apiary together, shows you what deserves attention, and lets you work from hive to hive without repeatedly returning to the main dashboard.
You can inspect a colony, record feeding or treatment, deal with queen work and other colony actions, then move straight on to the next hive.
And because mobile reception and apiaries aren’t always natural companions, Apiary Visit is designed to keep working when the signal disappears.
Plan the visit before you open a hive
Apiary Visit starts with the apiary itself.
The visit planner shows how many active colonies are there, highlights current Colony Priorities and, when Inspection Outlook has a suitable upcoming opportunity, shows the next useful inspection window.
That inspection time links directly to the relevant day for the same apiary in Inspection Outlook.
So before setting out, you can see both sides of the job:
Which colonies need attention, and when does the weather give me a useful opportunity to deal with them?
The National Bee Unit recommends exactly this sort of preparation. Its guidance says beekeepers should have a reason for examining a colony, consult colony records beforehand and prepare whatever equipment the planned work will need.
National Bee Unit: Handling and Examining a Colony of Bees
See what matters before opening each colony
The visit overview gives you the active colonies in that apiary with useful recent context.
That can include the last inspection, recorded strength and stores, current Colony Priorities, Queen Development and treatment information where relevant.
You don’t have to start by digging through the full history of every hive.
The things you’ve already recorded are already there to help with the job you’re about to do.
That’s the real advantage of joining Apiary Visit to Colony Management. The records you’ve kept during the season come back to you when they’re actually useful.
Work through the apiary in the order that suits you
Hives don’t always sit in the order a computer would choose.
Apiary Visit lets you move around naturally.
While you’re working on a colony, Previous, Choose hive and Next let you move directly between the hives in the visit. The hive chooser shows which are current, completed, skipped or still waiting.
So if Hive 4 makes more sense before Hive 2 because that’s where you’re standing, choose Hive 4.
When you’ve entered observations for the current colony, Apiary Forecast also protects those entries if you try to move away before finishing the hive.
One field workflow for each hive
When you open a hive in Apiary Visit, the normal inspection observations and colony actions are brought together in one working screen.
You can record the Rapid Inspection information you need, then add the other things you actually did at that hive.
That can include feeding, treatments, queen work, Queen Development, a split or artificial swarm, uniting colonies, nuc expansion and other normal colony events such as a harvest, swarm observation, equipment change or note.
As you work, Recorded for [hive] gives you a running summary of what’s been entered for that colony.
When you’re finished, one clear action completes the hive and takes you onwards:
Done with [hive] · Open next hive
or, if you want to choose:
Done with [hive] · Choose another hive
On the final colony, you’re taken naturally into the visit review.
It’s much closer to the way a beekeeper actually works.
Feeding rounds don’t need an inspection
Sometimes you’re at the apiary to feed.
That’s the job. Apiary Visit supports that directly.
You can record feeding against each colony and move through the hives without turning a feeding round into a collection of fictional inspections.
The activity for that hive can simply show Fed.
The same applies to treatment work.
A visit can be an inspection round, a feeding round, a treatment round or a mixture of all three.
If Hive A was inspected and fed, Hive B only needed feed and Hive C had a treatment recorded, the visit keeps those differences clear.
That sounds obvious, but it makes the records much more faithful to what actually happened.
Treatments stay in the same working round
Treatment work follows the same pattern.
Record the treatment at the current hive, keep the visit context and move on.
Apiary Visit carries the hive and visit identity with you, so you don’t have to leave the working round, save elsewhere, return to Apiary Visit and find the next colony again.
The treatment still becomes part of that colony’s normal history, alongside the rest of its Colony Management record.
For UK beekeepers, veterinary medicine record keeping remains important in its own right. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate allows the required records to be kept electronically. GOV.UK: Veterinary medicine record-keeping requirements
Your previous observations are there for comparison
When you’re inspecting a colony, Apiary Visit can show the previous recorded observation alongside the new control.
So if Stores were previously Light or Strength was previously Medium, you’ve got that context in front of you while making today’s assessment.
Today’s observation still comes from what you see today and that makes changes easier to notice without turning the previous inspection into a template you mindlessly repeat.
It also keeps Not checked useful. You don’t have to manufacture an answer for something you didn’t assess during that inspection.
Skip a hive and carry on
Maybe one colony doesn’t need opening. Maybe circumstances at the apiary mean you want to leave it until later. You can skip it and carry on with the visit.
An untouched skipped hive remains exactly that: a hive you didn’t inspect on this visit. It can also be brought back into the workflow before synchronisation if you decide to return to it.
This keeps the visit record honest without slowing you down.
Built for apiaries with poor mobile reception
This is one of Apiary Visit’s most useful features.
While you’re connected, Colony Management prepares your eligible apiaries and active colonies for offline use on the device.
The preparation doesn’t just cache a page. Apiary Forecast checks that the local Visit Action Journal can actually store and retrieve data before showing Offline ready.
Once prepared, you can open a prepared apiary and work through the visit without a live connection.
That includes the Rapid Inspection workflow and the colony actions available from it, including feeding, treatments, queen work and structural colony actions.
Your visit stays on the device until you’re ready to synchronise it with Apiary Forecast.
For remote apiaries, hill sites and the considerable portions of rural UK where a phone can enthusiastically display one bar while achieving absolutely nothing, that’s rather useful.
Your work stays together while you’re offline
Apiary Visit uses a local Visit Action Journal.
That means what you record at the hives is kept as a sequence of actual beekeeper actions rather than as a collection of disconnected forms.
If you inspect a hive, feed it and record queen work, those actions remain associated with that part of the visit.
Even structural work can continue naturally. If, for example, you record a split while offline, the visit can represent the resulting new colony locally so you can continue recording legitimate work against it during the same visit.
When the account is synchronised later, those actions are reconciled back into the normal Colony Management records.
The field workflow stays simple while the history remains properly structured underneath. It does sound complicated but it’s mainly happening in the background.
Review the whole visit before synchronising
At the end of the round, Review visit gives you the complete field record grouped by hive.
You can see the inspection observations and actions recorded for each colony together, rather than checking several different event screens.
That’s a useful final check while the visit is still fresh in your mind.
Apiary Visit stages the working record locally first, including during an ordinary connected visit, so the complete review is available before the account is updated.
When you’re happy with it, Synchronise visit applies the records to Colony Management.
You decide when that happens. We designed it so a returning mobile signal won’t suddenly take over halfway through your work.
Feed, inspect and treat in the same visit
A real apiary visit rarely fits neatly into one category.
You may open one hive for a normal inspection, add feed to another, remove or record a treatment on the next and deal with a queen issue two hives further along.
Apiary Visit is built for that.
The final review stays grouped by colony, so you can see the day’s work much as you experienced it:
- Hive 1 was inspected.
- Hive 2 was inspected and fed.
- Hive 3 had treatment work.
- Hive 4 was skipped.
- Hive 5 had a queen action.
That makes the resulting colony histories much more useful later because they reflect what actually happened on the ground.
Hives Today can take you straight there
Apiary Visit is also connected to Hives Today.
When an apiary has several active colonies, Hives Today can take you directly into Start Apiary Visit. If you’ve already got one in progress, that becomes Resume Apiary Visit.
So the member journey can be very simple:
Open Hives Today, see the weather and colony priorities, then go straight into the working visit for that apiary.
There’s no need to remember which module to visit first.
Prefer paper sometimes? That’s covered too
There are still days when a phone isn’t what you want beside an open brood box.
Apiary Visit can produce Print visit sheets for the active colonies in an apiary.
The sheets use the same core inspection observations as the electronic workflow and can include recent context to help you at the hive.
You can print them normally or save them as a PDF before going out.
Then enter the observations into Colony Management afterwards.
BBKA’s practical apiary guidance specifically lists colony records among the things a beekeeper should take to the apiary, alongside the smoker, hive tool and other working equipment.
From preparation to useful records
The strength of Apiary Visit is that it joins together things Apiary Forecast already knows.
Before the visit, you have the local Inspection Outlook and Colony Priorities. At the hive, you have the colony’s recent observations and a field-friendly way to record today’s work.
Afterwards, inspections and management actions become part of the colony’s continuing history, ready to inform Hives Today and your next visit.
That’s what good record keeping should do. It should come back and help you.
Take Apiary Forecast to the hives
Apiary Visit gives members a practical way to work through an entire apiary from a phone, tablet or prepared offline device.
You can inspect colonies in the order that suits you, record the work you actually do, keep feeding and treatments inside the same visit, review everything by hive and synchronise the completed field record when you’re ready.
New to Apiary Forecast?
Try Apiary Forecast free for two weeks
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Useful UK guidance
National Bee Unit: Handling and Examining a Colony of Bees
The NBU recommends having a reason for an inspection, consulting colony records before opening the hive and preparing the equipment needed for the work you intend to carry out.
Read the National Bee Unit guidance
British Beekeepers Association: June in the Apiary
Practical UK guidance that includes colony records among the essential equipment to take when working at an apiary.
Read BBKA’s June guidance
British Beekeepers Association: June in the Apiary 2023
Useful seasonal advice on assessing colonies individually, checking stores, brood, health and Varroa, and keeping detailed treatment records.
Read BBKA’s June 2023 guidance