Help

How recording works

BeehiveMind listens while you work. Learn ten phrases and you never touch the screen during an inspection.

Open and start

Open the app at the apiary, press record, and put the phone in your pocket. Recognition runs offline, so a dead spot in the field costs you nothing.

Say what you see

Name the hive, then describe it. The app confirms each recognised phrase with a short beep so you know it landed without looking.

Stop and sync

Press stop when the row is done. The inspection uploads the next time the phone has signal, and appears on the website ready to review.

The commands

Quantities are always relative to a whole frame. Say a number and what it describes; the order of the phrases does not matter.

“Beehive number one”beehive <n>

Selects the hive you are about to describe. Everything after this applies to it until you name another.

“Seven frames space”<n> frames space

How many frames the box holds. Say it once per hive.

“Five frames population”<n> frames population

How many of those frames are covered by bees.

“Two frames pollen”<n> frames pollen

Frames of stored pollen. Quantities are always relative to a whole frame.

“Six frames honey”<n> frames honey

Frames of capped and uncapped honey together.

“Three frames open brood”<n> frames open brood

Eggs and uncapped larvae.

“Three frames closed brood”<n> frames closed brood

Capped brood. Recorded separately so you can predict the hive's next three weeks.

“Queen exists”queen exists · no queen

Whether you saw her. Say the year too — “queen twenty twenty four” — to record her age.

“Queen cells”queen cells

Marks the hive as preparing to swarm or replace its queen.

“Varroa”varroa · nosema · american foulbrood · european foulbrood

Names a detection. Say it only when you find it; silence means absent.

When something goes wrong

Ink illustration of a honeybee seen from above

The beep is the confirmation. If it does not come, the phrase was not recognised — say it again rather than carrying on, since the app records nothing it did not understand. Wind noise and a phone inside a zipped jacket are the two usual causes.

Still stuck?

Write to us. A person answers — one of the people who build the software.