Apiary Forecast
Bee Weather Intelligence for better beekeeping decisions
Across Apiary Forecast today
Apiary Forecast questions and answers
What you get
You get access to the member only tools Inspection Outlook, Forage Outlook, Queen Mating Outlook, Trends, My Apiaries, Colony Management, Hives Today and Apiary Visit!
When you join, you enter your postcode which gives you a base area centering on that postcode with a 20 mile radius (1250 sq miles), approximately.
Within that area, you have a number of preset settlements (cities/towns/village) that can help you to confirm the base area is correct.
You get up to three private saved apiary locations with a forage radius of around five miles each (78.5 sq miles) that you can set in your base area. This is where the accuracy is best.
The weather forecast is then based on the private saved apiary location, so it’s the very definition of hyper local, and so too is the forage mapping.
What you get in general terms:
Forage Outlook has official researched forage profiles for your area with information from Plant Atlas published by The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland.
Inspection Outlook uses hyper local forecasting from International and National weather forecasting providers via Open Meteo, advising you of good, bad, and maybe days for your hive inspections and advising you how weather affects other activities.
All tools highlight the effect weather may have on your beekeeping decisions.
You can use it like any website, on your PC, laptop, tablet or mobile. It’s also available as a Progressive Web App (PWA).
Try it first with a two week free trial.
Swarm Outlook is available to anyone.
About Apiary Forecast
What is Apiary Forecast?
Apiary Forecast is a practical weather-intelligence service for beekeepers.
It turns local forecast weather into beekeeper-focused guidance for swarm awareness, inspection suitability and forage access. Normal weather forecasts are written for people. Apiary Forecast looks at weather through a beekeeping lens.
Who is Apiary Forecast for?
Apiary Forecast is for beekeepers who want a clearer, quicker view of weather-related opportunity and risk.
Newer beekeepers can use it to understand why some days are better suited to inspections, swarm awareness or forage activity. More experienced beekeepers can use it as fast triage, especially when managing more than one apiary.
What tools are included?
Apiary Forecast currently includes Swarm Outlook, Inspection Outlook, Forage Outlook, My Apiary Trends, Queen Mating Outlook, Hives Today, Apiary Visit and Colony Management.
Swarm Outlook helps you understand whether the weather may support swarm activity if colonies are already preparing to issue.
Inspection Outlook helps you judge whether conditions are suitable for opening or checking colonies.
Forage Outlook helps you understand whether bees are likely to have useful access to forage.
My Apiary Trends gives you a view of recent weather aspects, helping you identify trends you may need to manage, such as prolonged bouts of poor weather contributing to a dearth.
Queen Mating Outlook allows you to track queen events for each of your saved apiaries. These can include events such as swarming colonies, splits, virgin queen sightings and other stages of queen development. Queen Mating Outlook then helps identify the days with better, and less favourable, weather for mating.
Colony Management lets you keep practical records for the colonies in your saved apiaries, including inspections, feeding, treatments, stores, colony strength, queens and queen development. It also brings these records together into Colony priorities, highlighting useful things to check or follow up at your next visit.
Apiary Visit is designed for actually working through your hives at the apiary. Start a visit and Apiary Forecast gives you a simple working list of the active colonies there, including current priorities and useful recent observations. You can inspect colonies one after another, skip a hive, work in a different order, or leave the visit and resume it later. Previous observations are shown for comparison, but they are never automatically copied into a new inspection.
Queens recorded in Colony Management keep a permanent reference so their history can be followed over time. You can also give them a friendly name of your own, or use Suggest a name if inspiration is lacking.
Each tool looks at the same apiary, weather and beekeeping situation from a different angle, with Colony Management adding what you have actually observed and recorded at the hive.
You can also embed your BroodMinder and Beehive Monitoring shared graphs in your private saved apiaries, so you have one convenient location to check them.
How much area does Apiary Forecast cover, and how many apiaries and colonies can I use?
Why is Apiary Forecast an annual membership rather than a one-off purchase or free service?
Apiary Forecast has ongoing running costs, so a one-off purchase would not be a very sustainable way to operate it.
The service uses live weather data and regularly processes forecasts for member locations, saved apiaries and other features across the site. There are continuing costs for hosting, server processing, scheduled forecast generation, data storage, email delivery, backups, security, software maintenance and support.
An annual membership also helps make the service more reliable over the longer term. One-off software and free online services can work perfectly well, but if there is no continuing income behind them it can become difficult to justify hosting costs, maintenance, security updates and development. That is one reason some useful services eventually become outdated or disappear altogether.
The annual fee gives Apiary Forecast a more sustainable basis. It helps pay for keeping the service running, maintaining compatibility as technology changes, fixing problems when they arise and continuing to improve the tools.
I’ve deliberately kept the membership relatively inexpensive for a specialist beekeeping service. The annual fee isn’t about charging repeatedly for the same product. It helps fund a live service that needs to keep processing data, running servers, and being maintained throughout the year, while offering excellent value for money.
What do I need to do first?
When you first join you need to set your location.
All three tools use an area of about 20 miles around your chosen postcode location.
If your apiaries are further away from your home, use the postcode nearest your apiary area when registering. During registration, you will be asked for your broad location and postcode so Apiary Forecast can set your forecast area.
Members can also save up to three private apiary locations within that area for more localised weather and forage forecasting.
How the tools work
Why can the tools give different answers for the same day?
They’re giving different answers to different questions. Swarming, inspecting and foraging need different conditions.
A day may be good enough for bees to work sheltered forage but still too windy, cool or unsettled for a comfortable inspection. Another day may support swarm movement but still be awkward for opening a hive.
Apiary Forecast separates those decisions so the guidance is more practical.
What does Swarm Outlook show?
Swarm Outlook gives a weather-aware view of conditions that may support swarm activity.
It is not a swarm prediction. A high Swarm Outlook means the weather may be supportive if colonies are already preparing to swarm. Colony condition, queen cells, congestion and beekeeper observation remain the deciding factors.
What does Inspection Outlook show?
Inspection Outlook helps you judge whether the weather is suitable for opening or checking colonies.
It considers practical conditions such as temperature, feels-like temperature, rain, wind, light, pressure, dampness and time of day.
A good Inspection Outlook does not mean you must inspect. It means the weather is more supportive if there is a reason to open the hive.
Why does Apiary Forecast sometimes seem cautious about inspections?
Why does Apiary Forecast sometimes seem cautious about inspections?
Opening a hive is disruptive at any time, but especially in cool, windy, damp or changeable weather. Experienced beekeepers may sometimes choose to inspect in marginal conditions for a specific reason, but Apiary Forecast is designed to highlight better, lower-stress windows for routine inspections rather than the lowest conditions a experienced beekeeper might tolerate.
The UK National Bee Unit advises that colonies should not be inspected below 10°C, although quick checks may be made between 10°C and 14°C where the other conditions are suitable.
In practice, that means the forecast looks at more than the air temperature. Rain or shower risk, wind, gusts, damp air, poor light and the time of day can all reduce the quality of an inspection window.
This is why a forecast can be downgraded even when the temperature looks usable. A 15°C or 16°C day with showers, gusts or dull damp conditions may be more disruptive than the temperature alone suggests. The main limits show what reduced the score; the potential risk explains why that matters when opening the hive.
Bear in mind that the colony has to recover afterwards. Removing the roof and opening the brood nest can affect temperature, humidity and airflow inside the hive.
Chilled brood risks stunted development as well as brood loss, and even a short inspection in marginal weather can leave the colony doing extra work to restore stable brood-nest conditions.
Apiary Forecast offers guidance, and highlights potential risk. It is not an instruction, and each beekeeper can and must still make their own judgement, especially where an inspection is urgent.
For routine inspections, however, this service will not advise opening the brood nest when the forecast conditions suggest avoidable risk to the colony.
That is deliberate. Apiary Forecast is designed to favour good, lower-disruption inspection windows for the bees, and keep to official recommendations.
Why can bees be flying when Inspection Outlook is cautious?
Bee flight and hive inspection are not the same thing.
Bees may be active in conditions where exposing brood, opening the colony or handling frames is still less suitable.
Some bees flying is not the same as the activity you see on a very good day.
Inspection Outlook focuses on the conditions needed for a sensible colony check, not whether some bees can fly.
What does Forage Outlook show?
Forage Outlook gives a practical view of whether bees are likely to have useful access to forage.
It brings together plant-side potential, weather-adjusted pollen and nectar conditions, bee flying weather, local forage profiles, stores pressure and local-development timing.
Forage Outlook brings value as flowers may be present while weather, season, site exposure or plant conditions still limit what bees can use.
Does a warm day always mean good forage?
No. Warmth helps, but the full picture matters.
Rain, wind, cloud, dampness, dry soil, poor light, plant type, shelter and local seasonal timing can all affect whether forage is useful to bees.
Forage Outlook is designed to look beyond temperature alone.
Local accuracy and apiary context
What is the local-development timing model?
Apiary Forecast uses a local-development timing model for Forage Outlook.
The model combines latitude, elevation, west-east position, coastal distance and saved-apiary site context where available. This means Apiary Forecast does not treat London, Birmingham, Devon, the Western Isles and inland apiaries as if their forage season develops on exactly the same clock.
This is one of the important parts of the service. It helps the forecast reflect that forage development can run earlier or later depending on place.
How accurate is Apiary Forecast?
For Forage Outlook, it combines weather data, established beekeeping knowledge, phenology principles, regional context, saved-apiary locations, and forage assumptions based on survey data.
The forage assumptions are informed by recognised pollinator and beekeeping sources, including National Bee Unit guidance, RHS Plants for Pollinators material, UK pollinator plant lists, beekeeping forage references and regional habitat knowledge.
It undeniably gives a more useful beekeeper-facing view than a standard weather forecast or simple flowering calendar alone. However, it cannot replace local observation, colony condition, beekeeper judgement or direct checks at the apiary. In fact, it sits somewhere between a weather forecast and you in your apiary.
The forage handling is designed to be practical and locally informed drawing from many official and recognised sources, but it’s not a physical plant survey of your apiary done by us. However, you can provide feedback to improve the service!
Does this affect Inspection and Swarm Outlook?
Not as scoring. The local-development model is aimed at actively improving Forage Outlook’s seasonal forage timing.
Inspection Outlook remains as weather-suitability guidance for opening or checking colonies. Swarm Outlook remains as weather-suitability guidance for colonies already preparing to issue.
Inspection and Swarm use local timing context for seasonal awareness, but their weather scoring remains separate.
Science and evidence
What is the scientific basis for this?
The local-development timing model is informed by established phenology principles.
Hopkins’ bioclimatic rule is an early and well-known way of thinking about how seasonal development changes with latitude, longitude and elevation. Later phenology research has continued to test and refine these relationships using modern observation methods.
Apiary Forecast’s forage source library is supported by recognised beekeeping, pollinator and plant evidence, including Plant Atlas 2020. This helps support source windows and regional forage context for plants such as sycamore, bramble, ivy, willow, heather, gorse, clover, willowherb and meadowsweet. Forage Outlook then combines that plant evidence with weather, season, local-development timing and bee access.
Plant Atlas 2020 is the most comprehensive survey of plants ever undertaken in Britain and Ireland, hosted by the BSBI and UK CEH. Based on over 30 million records, collected mainly by volunteer BSBI recorders between 2000 and 2019, as well as previous nationwide surveys undertaken in the 1950s and 1990s, summarized as 10 × 10 km grid square (hectad) distribution maps for 3,495 species.
What is the June gap?
The June gap is a seasonal risk period where spring forage may fade before reliable summer forage is fully available.
It varies by region, weather, colony strength, soil moisture, local planting and seasonal timing. Apiary Forecast helps flag when that kind of stores pressure may be worth watching.
Weather data
Where does Apiary Forecast get its weather data?
Open-Meteo is an open-source weather API that brings together forecast model output from multiple national and international weather services. Its forecast API combines weather models from providers including ECMWF, DWD, NOAA, Météo-France, JMA, KMA, KNMI, DMI, MeteoSwiss, the UK Met Office, BOM, CMA and GeoSphere Austria.
Does Apiary Forecast make its own weather forecast?
No. Apiary Forecast does not try to replace professional weather forecasting.
The weather forecast data comes from Open-Meteo and the underlying weather models it provides. Apiary Forecast uses that data to answer beekeeping questions: whether conditions look suitable for inspections, whether weather may support swarm movement, and whether bees are likely to have useful forage access.
How accurate is the weather data?
Weather forecasting is never perfect, especially for showers, wind gusts, cloud breaks and very local conditions. That said:
Open-Meteo uses numerical weather prediction models from major weather services and updates its data as new model runs become available. It also stitches model updates into continuous hourly forecast data. That makes it a very strong data source for practical decision support.
For Apiary Forecast, that’s valuable because the tools need detailed hourly weather data, not just a simple daily summary. Temperature, feels-like temperature, wind, gusts, rain, shower risk, cloud, pressure, humidity, elevation and other factors all affect beekeeping decisions.
Open-Meteo also supports automatic model selection, so the highest-resolution suitable model can be used for a location.
Does Open-Meteo use UK Met Office data?
Open-Meteo provides access to UK Met Office model data, including UK-focused model output from other sources. For the United Kingdom and Ireland, Open-Meteo’s describes use of the UKMO Global model together with the higher-resolution UKV model with data from other models combined.
Open-Meteo says it uses weather models from more than 15 national weather services, including ECMWF, DWD, NOAA, Météo-France and the UK Met Office, with automatic highest-resolution model selection where applicable.
What does Apiary Forecast add if the weather comes from Open-Meteo?
Open-Meteo supplies weather data. Apiary Forecast turns that data into beekeeper-focused guidance.
A normal forecast might tell you the temperature, rain risk and wind speed. That’s it.
- Apiary Forecast asks different questions:
- Is this sensible weather for opening a colony?
- Could the weather support a swarm issuing if a colony is already preparing?
- Can bees make practical use of forage today?
- Could weather or seasonal timing create stores pressure?
That interpretation layer is the value of Apiary Forecast.
Saved apiaries and privacy
Can I save my own apiary locations?
Yes. Members can save up to three private forecast locations for their apiaries within their permitted area.
Saved apiaries make it quicker to check the sites you actually use and provide the location for features such as My Apiary Trends, Queen Mating Outlook and Colony Management. They also improve the local weather and forage basis of the forecast compared with relying only on named settlements.
Within Colony Management, each active colony can also have its own shared BroodMinder or Beehive Monitoring dashboard, giving you one convenient place to check forecast information, colony records and monitoring data.
Does Apiary Forecast need my exact hive position?
No. Use a sensible forecast location for your apiary area.
Saved apiary locations are used to make the forecast more relevant to you, and shared forecast text is already designed not to publish private saved-apiary details.
Privacy is something we respect and adhere to. Our Privacy Policy is here. You will note we “fuzz” any location you enter by a few hundred feet. So even if you give us the most accurate position possible we still don’t have it. This means that the location is accurate enough for weather, not accurate enough to be a risk to you.
Site type
Site type and additional developmental delay
Not sure / no site type adjustment: 0 days
Normal mixed lowland site: 0 days
Sheltered garden or village edge: can reduce an existing coastal/site component by 2 days
Open or exposed site: 4 days later
Upland or moor-edge site: 5 days later
Valley or frost-pocket site: 4 days later
Exposed coastal / island apiary position: 7 days later
Technical FAQ
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Progressive Web App
Can I use Apiary Forecast like an app?
Yes. Apiary Forecast can be installed as a Progressive Web App, often called a PWA.
That means you can add Apiary Forecast to your phone, tablet or computer so it opens more like an app, without needing to visit an app store.
What’s the benefit?
Installing Apiary Forecast as a PWA gives you quicker access to your forecasts. It can place an Apiary Forecast icon on your home screen, app drawer, dock or desktop, depending on your device.
This is useful if you check Inspection Outlook, Forage Outlook or Swarm Outlook regularly before visiting your bees, you just click the app!
The PWA version still uses the Apiary Forecast website, so you do not need a separate account or a different subscription. Your login, saved apiary locations and membership access work in the same way.
Does it work offline?
How do I install it on my phone or tablet?
On many phones and tablets, open Apiary Forecast in your browser, then look for an option such as:
- Add to Home Screen
- Install app
- Install Apiary Forecast
The wording depends on your browser and device.
On Android, Chrome usually shows an install or “Add to Home screen” option in the browser menu.
On iPhone or iPad, open Apiary Forecast in Safari, tap the share button, then choose “Add to Home Screen”.
How do I install it on a computer?
Open Apiary Forecast in a supported browser such as Chrome or Edge. If your browser supports installation, you may see an install icon in the address bar or an “Install app” option in the browser menu.
Once installed, Apiary Forecast can open in its own app-style window.
Do I still need to log in?
Yes, for member-only features. The PWA is a more convenient way to open Apiary Forecast. Public tools remain public. Member tools, saved apiaries and account features still require you to be logged in.
Should beekeepers use the PWA?
If you use Apiary Forecast regularly, yes. It is especially useful during the active season, when you may want quick access before inspections, swarm checks, forage assessments or stores-pressure decisions.
It is not a separate app with separate advice. It’s a convenient way to keep Apiary Forecast close at hand.