Why we built the app to be used without looking at it
Every second spent tapping a phone over an open hive is a second the bees are getting warmer and you are getting stung. The interface is the problem.
An inspection is a two-handed job. You are holding a frame that weighs two kilos, wearing gloves, and standing over thirty thousand insects that would rather you left. Any records system that needs a finger on a screen has already lost.
The checklist problem
The traditional answer is a paper checklist and a pencil in your veil. It works, and it produces a stack of sheets nobody transcribes. The digital answer has usually been the same checklist on a screen, which is worse: it takes longer, and you cannot do it in gloves.
So the app does not have a checklist. It has ten phrases. You learn them in an afternoon and then the phone stays in your pocket while you work, confirming each reading with a beep so you know it landed without looking.
Offline, on purpose
Recognition runs on the device. Apiaries are in places without signal — that is usually why they are good apiaries — and a records system that needs a connection to record is a records system that fails on the days you most need it. The inspection uploads later, when the phone finds a network on the drive home.