Hives Today: Know what needs your attention today

Beekeeping rarely comes down to one thing. Don’t we all know it!

The weather might be suitable for opening colonies, but only for part of the day. One hive may need a follow-up inspection. Another may be getting low on stores. A queen-development event may be reaching an important point. Elsewhere, there might be nothing urgent to do.

Hives Today brings that information together in one place.

Open Hives Today

Hives Today gives you a practical daily view across your saved apiaries and colonies, combining current bee-weather conditions with the things you’ve already recorded about your bees. When they become important, the get featured.

So instead of moving between forecasts, hive records, queen notes and outstanding jobs, you can start with Hives Today and see what’s worth your attention. Ideal if too much information gives you a bit of a headache.

Start with the weather at your apiary

Hives Today uses the forecast for your saved apiary location, including the important practical weather information you need when you’re deciding whether to work with your bees. You can see the current temperature and feels-like temperature, the wider weather outlook and whether there is a useful inspection opportunity ahead.

If today isn’t suitable, you don’t have to keep checking weather apps and translating the forecast yourself. Hives Today directs you towards the next useful Inspection Weather window instead.

That means the first question is answered answered very quickly, is today a sensible day to open the bees?

See which colonies deserve attention

As mentioned, Hives Today also brings forward information from your colony records so you can see which hives may need attention before you head off to the apiary.

You might have had a recent inspection that left a follow-up job. A colony may have a priority that is now due. Stores information may have become more important as nectar conditions changed. A queen-development event may have reached the point where another check is becoming useful.

Useful inspection windows, not just a weather forecast

Apiary Forecast looks at the combination of temperature, feels-like conditions, rain and shower risk, wind and gusts, light levels, dampness and other relevant conditions when assessing inspection suitability.

Keep stores concerns visible

Stores can become important quickly when colonies are active but nectar income falls. Apiary Forecast already looks at the environmental side through Stores Pressure, using weather and forage conditions to indicate when colonies may be under greater pressure.

If you also use colony Stores Tracking, Hives Today can bring colonies recorded as Getting low or Low into view alongside the conditions affecting them. That helps you connect the two sides of the picture, what the environment is doing, and what you’ve actually recorded in the hive.

Recorded feeding is also taken into account where relevant, so the view reflects the work you’ve done rather than pretending nothing has changed since the last inspection.

Follow queen development without keeping dates in your head

Queen events often involve waiting. After a swarm, split or virgin queen sighting, there may be several stages before another inspection is useful. Hives Today can bring relevant queen-development information into your daily view, alongside the local weather conditions that may affect mating opportunities.

That makes it easier to see when a colony is approaching the point where another check becomes worthwhile, without relying on scraps of paper, calendar maths or memory. For a wider look at weather conditions around mating flights, see Queen Mating Weather.

Your apiaries in one daily view

If you keep bees in more than one place, Hives Today gives each saved apiary its own context. You can see the weather outlook for that location, the colonies associated with it and the things currently worth knowing there.

That’s important because an inspection opportunity at one apiary might not exist at another. 

From overview to colony record

Hives Today is the starting point. When you need the full history of a colony, you can move into Colony Management. There you can keep continuing records for individual colonies, including inspections, stores, feeding, treatments, queen information, events and follow-up work.

Hives Today then uses that recorded information to help bring the important things back to the surface so you can see them easily. Colony Management remembers what happened. Hives Today helps you see what matters now.

And when you’re ready to work the apiary

Once you’ve decided which colonies need attention, Apiary Visit takes the next step.

It gives you a practical hive-by-hive workflow for working through an apiary, recording inspections, feeding, treatments, queen work and other colony events as you go. That means the three parts work together naturally.

• Hives Today gives you the overview.
• Colony Management provides the continuing record.
• Apiary Visit helps you do the work in the field.

Designed around real beekeeping decisions

The point of Hives Today is to reduce the amount of information you have to assemble yourself before making a straightforward decision.

• Can I inspect today?
• Which colony needs checking?
• Are stores becoming a concern?
• Is there a queen-development event I should be aware of?
• Is there anything I actually need to do?

Sometimes the answer will be yes. Sometimes the most useful answer is that nothing needs doing today. Both are valuable!

One place to start

If you already use Apiary Forecast, Hives Today is designed to be the first place you look.

Your weather, colony priorities, stores information, queen-development events and useful inspection opportunities are brought together around the apiaries and colonies you actually manage.

If you’re new to Apiary Forecast, you can start with your saved apiary locations and add your colonies when you’re ready. Hives Today becomes more useful as your colony records build, because it can connect the conditions outside the hive with what you’ve observed inside it.

Make today’s beekeeping decisions with better context

Apiary Forecast membership includes Hives Today together with Inspection Outlook, Forage Outlook, Stores Pressure, Queen Mating Outlook, Colony Management, Apiary Visit, My Apiary Trends, Managed Forage and member alerts.

You can save up to three private apiary locations and manage up to 30 active colonies across your account.

Start your free trial and see what Hives Today looks like with your own apiaries.

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