Everything you need to get started and get the most out of Ultimate Bee Management — from installing the app to tagging your first hive to reading your AI health analysis.
Ultimate Bee Management is a Progressive Web App (PWA). You install it directly from your browser — no app store, no waiting, no account fees. It works offline and runs like a native app once installed.
Chrome is required on Android for PWA installation. Samsung Internet also works. Firefox on Android does not support PWA installation.
Ultimate Bee Management uses Google Sign-In — no separate password to create or remember. Your apiary data is tied to your Google account and backed up automatically to a secure cloud database.
On first open, tap "Sign in with Google" and select your Google account. That's it. If you later install the app on another device, sign in with the same account and all your data reappears immediately.
If you share an apiary with someone, they sign in with their own Google account and you invite them to your apiary from within the app. They do not need your login details.
After signing in you'll be prompted to create your first Apiary. An apiary is a location — your home garden, your out-apiary, a friend's site. Give it a name that makes sense to you.
You can add as many apiaries as you have. Partner sharing is also per-apiary — so you can give your helper access to the home garden but not the out-apiary.
From your apiary, tap "Add Hive". Give the hive a name, select the hive type (National, WBC, Langstroth, Smith, Commercial, Warré, or other), and add any notes. Equipment is auto-generated for the hive type.
Named hives — The Duchess, Bramble End, The Colonel — are easier to talk about than Hive 1, Hive 2. It also makes inspection history more readable at a glance.
Open any hive and tap "+ New Inspection". The form is designed to be completed at the hive, before you close up. Most fields have sensible defaults.
Tap Save. The inspection is saved immediately, even offline.
Open a hive and tap "+ New Inspection". Work through the form from top to bottom at the hive, before you close up. Most fields have sensible defaults — only fill in what changed or what you observed.
The health score is for quick filtering. The free-text Notes field is where the useful detail lives. Even two sentences about what you saw makes the record dramatically more useful six months later.
The varroa section lets you log a drop count (mites per 24 hours on a board) or a sugar roll / alcohol wash count (mites per 300 bees). The app calculates the infestation rate automatically.
If you applied a treatment during this inspection, select it from the list. 14 types across 7 categories — Apiguard, OAV, MAQS, Apivar, drone brood removal, and more. For multi-day treatments, log the start date and the app tracks when it's due to finish in your calendar.
From any hive, scroll to the Inspection History section. Entries appear in reverse chronological order with a summary card showing date, health score, queen status, and your notes. Tap any entry to expand it fully.
Open the inspection you want to edit and tap the edit icon (pencil). All fields are editable. Changes save immediately. To delete an inspection, open it and tap the three-dot menu, then "Delete inspection".
From the main apiary view, tap the search icon and type anything — a hive name, a keyword from your notes, a date, or a health score. Results pull across all hives in that apiary.
Any NTAG213 or NTAG215 NFC sticker will work. Buy a pack of 100 online — around 1–3p each. White, self-adhesive, the size of a 5p coin. The brand doesn't matter.
Hold your Android phone near any tagged hive, super, or piece of equipment. The app intercepts the scan and opens the linked record instantly. NFC scanning works offline — no connection required.
NFC antennas are usually on the back of the phone, near the centre or top. If scanning feels unreliable, try the phone in a slightly different position. Thick phone cases can reduce range.
When you create a harvest record, the app generates both an NFC link and a QR code you can print and attach to jars. Scanning either one opens a public trace page — no login required for the customer. QR code works on any phone including iPhone; NFC requires Android.
NFC stickers will eventually get covered in propolis inside the hive. This doesn't stop them working — NFC reads through propolis fine. Most beekeepers find the inside of the roof to be the best spot.
Open any hive and tap "Analyse Health". The AI reads your recent inspections — health trends, queen sightings, brood pattern descriptions, varroa counts, treatment history — and produces a plain-English assessment flagging anything that needs attention.
The output typically covers: overall colony health trend, queen status assessment, varroa pressure and treatment timing, swarm risk indicators, and suggested actions for your next visit.
Health analysis works best with at least 3 inspections logged with decent notes. The free-text field is the most valuable input — "lots of bees, queen seen, brood very solid, super 70% full" gives the AI much more to work with than a health score alone.
The Inspection Advisor is designed to be used before you head to the apiary. Open it from the apiary menu and select which hives you're planning to visit. It reviews when each hive was last inspected, what was noted last time, what season it is, and any outstanding flags — and returns a prioritised list of what to focus on.
Inside a new inspection, tap "Scan Frame" and point your camera at a brood frame. The AI analyses the photo and tells you what it sees — brood pattern quality, presence of eggs, honey stores, any signs of disease or unusual cell types. The scan result saves as a photo with analysis notes attached.
Good lighting makes a significant difference. In bright conditions, hold the frame so light falls across it evenly. Avoid shooting directly into sunlight. Works through your gloves — no need to remove them.
The Info Hub is a beekeeping knowledge assistant. It doesn't access your hive data — it's a general Q&A resource you can ask anything: how to do an artificial swarm, what chalk brood looks like, when to apply Apiguard, how to introduce a new queen. Answers are practical and aimed at hobbyist beekeepers.
AI analysis requires an internet connection and is not available offline.
Open a hive and tap "Add Queen". Fill in what you know — you don't need every field to create a record.
White = years ending 1 or 6 · Yellow = 2 or 7 · Red = 3 or 8 · Green = 4 or 9 · Blue = 5 or 0. The app shows the correct colour for any year automatically.
Once a queen record is linked to a hive, the "Queen seen" toggle in inspections automatically shows her marking colour. If you see a queen with a different colour mark than expected, that's an immediate flag — possible supersedure.
Open the hive, open the current queen record, and tap "Replace Queen". The old queen's record is archived — not deleted. Her full history remains searchable. You then create a new queen record for the replacement.
From an apiary, tap "+ New Harvest". Select which hives the honey came from, enter the extraction date, yield, moisture reading, jar count, and any variety notes.
Every harvest gets an auto-generated batch code — format HRV-YYYY-NN. This links physical jars to the harvest record. Print it on your labels, write it on the lid, or encode it in the NFC/QR tag.
Each harvest has a public trace page — showing the apiary, hive(s), extraction date, and variety. No login required for the customer. Encode the URL in a QR code or NFC tag on the jar.
Ultimate Bee Management is built for offline use from the ground up. When you have a connection, the app caches your entire database on-device. When you lose signal — at the apiary, in a field, anywhere — it switches to that local cache seamlessly.
Everything works offline: view all hives, log new inspections, scan NFC tags, take and attach photos, edit existing records, view the calendar. The one thing that requires a connection is AI analysis.
When you reconnect, all changes sync automatically. If two people edited records while both offline, the most recent edit for any field wins.
Until a photo has uploaded, it only exists on your device. Try to get a connection before leaving the apiary if possible.
By default, photos upload on any connection. If you want to avoid using mobile data for uploads, go to Settings → Photo Backup and enable "Sync on Wi-Fi only". App data (inspection records, hive data etc.) always syncs immediately — only photos are affected by this setting.
When you're offline, an amber banner appears at the top of the app. Everything keeps working normally — it's just a notification. When you reconnect, the banner disappears and sync begins automatically.
In Settings you can see last sync time, pending photos, and pending data changes.
From an apiary, tap the settings icon (⚙) then "Manage Members". Tap "Invite Member" and enter the Google email address of the person you're inviting. They'll receive access the next time they open the app and sign in with that email.
Sharing is per-apiary. You can give someone access to one site but not another.
The person you invite needs to sign in with a Google account. Once they sign in with the invited email, the shared apiary appears automatically. No special link needed.
You can change someone's permission level at any time from the Members screen. Changes take effect immediately.
Each user's photos are stored in their own secure cloud backup. When a partner views an inspection with photos attached, those photos load from the photographer's backup.
If two people regularly visit the same apiary, both should install the app, enable photo backup, and test they can see each other's inspection photos before relying on this in the field.
From Settings → Manage Members, tap the member and select "Remove member". Access is revoked immediately. Any records they created remain in your apiary. If someone wants to leave voluntarily, they can tap "Leave Apiary" from the apiary settings.
Ultimate Bee Management is currently available by invitation. Get in touch to join the early access list and try it on your own apiary.