hivemunk documentation

Everything you need to get started with hivemunk — from setting up your first apiary to managing inspections, treatments, and team members.

Getting Started

Welcome to hivemunk

hivemunk is a beekeeping management platform for backyard hobbyists and sideliner apiarists alike. It helps you track your equipment, colonies, inspections, treatments, and more, whether you run a single hive or dozens across multiple yards.

You can map your apiaries, build digital representations of your hives, track queen genetics, record voice-narrated inspections, monitor feeding schedules, and manage varroa mite treatments.

Creating Your Account

You have two options for creating your account:

• Continue with Google – Sign up instantly using your Google account
• Email & Password – Create an account using your email address and a secure password

Before signing up, you'll need to accept our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Policy.

The Onboarding Flow

Once you've created your account, we'll guide you through a quick setup process:

1. Basic Details – Enter your first and last name.
2. Organization Invitations – If you've been invited to join an existing organization (by a beekeeping partner or club, for example), you'll see pending invitations here and can accept or decline them.
3. Create Your First Organization – An organization is the main container for your beekeeping operation. It holds your members, apiaries, hives, and all related data. Give it a name, select your country, and optionally add a description.

After completing these steps, you'll be taken to your organization's dashboard where you can start adding apiaries and building your hive inventory.

Core Concepts

Organizations

An Organization is your top-level container in hivemunk. It represents your beekeeping business, apiary operation, or collaborative team. All your apiaries, hives, equipment, and members belong to an organization.

Roles:

Permissions by Resource:

† Only Owner can assign Admin/Owner roles or transfer ownership.

Legend: Member = Basic access, Manager = Can invite members, Admin = Can manage roles & settings, Owner = Full control, Billing = Billing Manager (Admin or Owner with billing access)

Apiaries

An Apiary is an outdoor location where your beehives are placed. Each apiary has a name, address, and geolocation coordinates.

Features:

• Map view of all your apiary locations
• Hive count per apiary
• Search and filter capabilities
• Bulk actions (relocate, merge, delete)
• Delete protection: apiaries must be empty before deletion

Hives

A Hive represents a physical beehive with its complete equipment assembly. Hives are placed at apiaries or facilities.

Key Features:

• Equipment Assembly Editor – Drag-and-drop interface to visually configure your hive's woodenware stack (bottom boards, hive bodies, covers, queen excluders)
• Color Coding – Paint equipment parts to match your real-world setup
• Accessories – Track insulation wraps, entrance reducers, and other add-ons
• Frame Capacity – Supports 10-frame, 8-frame, and 5-frame (nuc) configurations

If you don't name a hive yourself, it's automatically named after its bottommost super.

Colonies

A Colony represents the bee population living in a hive. Track colony health, queen status, and origin.

Colony Tracking:

• Queen Status – Queenright or queenless
• Origin – Established, package, nuc, or swarm
• Queen Details – Name, genetics, fertility status, and marking
• Actions – Install queen, terminate queen, dissolve colony, split colony

Facilities

Facilities are off-apiary locations used for storing equipment, overwintering hives, and processing honey. Examples: honey houses, equipment sheds, and climate-controlled wintering buildings.

Facility Types:

• Storage – General equipment storage
• Processing – For honey extraction and processing
• Overwintering – Climate-controlled environments for winter hive storage

Equipment & Inventory

Equipment Management

Track and manage all your beekeeping boxes (supers) in one place. The Supers page gives you a full view of your equipment inventory.

Equipment Categories:

• Assigned – Supers currently attached to active hives
• Orphaned – Supers not currently assigned to any hive, apiary, or facility
• Decommissioned – Equipment removed from service (disease, damage, etc.)

Super Types:

• Deep Super (9⅝" height)
• Medium Super (6⅝" height)
• Shallow Super (5¾" height)

Features:

• Search equipment by identifier
• Filter by location, capacity (5/8/10 frame), or status
• Bulk selection for batch operations
• Visual representation with color coding

Identifier Best Practices

When naming your supers, use alphanumeric identifiers (a letter prefix followed by numbers) rather than numbers alone.

Why alphanumeric?

When supers are stacked, you'll often refer to them as a sequence. With pure numbers, spoken boundaries become ambiguous:

• Unclear: 34-67 — Spoken as "three four six seven" — is this 3-467? Or 34-67?
• Clear: A34-B67 — Spoken as "A thirty-four, B sixty-seven" — no ambiguity

Characters to avoid:

Some letters and numbers look similar when handwritten or printed, which can cause confusion:

Tips:

• Keep identifiers short for quick field reference
• Use a single letter prefix (A, B, C...) followed by numbers
• Examples: A34, C7, D105, E22

Hive Templates

Create reusable hive templates that define the structure of your hives. Instead of building each hive from scratch, use hive templates to quickly assemble consistent setups.

Template Components:

Creating a Hive Template:

1. Name your template and add an optional description
2. Select the frame capacity (10, 8, or 5 frame)
3. Add components in stack order
4. Preview your configuration
5. Save for reuse when creating new hives

Note: Deleting a hive template does not affect any hives already created from it.

Medication Inventory

Maintain detailed records of your treatment product inventory for regulatory compliance. Most beekeeping regulations require documentation of medication purchases, batch numbers, and application locations.

Inventory Tracking:

• Product name, manufacturer, and formulation
• Batch/Lot number
• Supplier and invoice reference
• Purchase date and expiration date
• Current balance vs. quantity purchased

Hive Inspections

Regular hive inspections help you monitor colony health, track honey production, and catch problems early.

Recording an Inspection

Manual Inspection:

1. Navigate to your hive's detail page
2. Click Manual Inspection to open the inspection form
3. Click on boxes and frames to record observations

Voice Inspection (AI-Powered):

1. Click Voice Inspection from the hive detail page
2. Upload an audio recording from your inspection
3. Our AI transcribes and analyzes your notes, automatically populating the inspection data
4. Review and adjust the AI-generated data as needed

Frame-by-Frame Observations

For each frame, record detailed observations for both front and back sides:

Cell Contents (percentages):

• Drawn Comb, Honey, Nectar, Pollen/Bee Bread
• Eggs, Larvae, Capped Brood
• Empty (calculated automatically)

Frame-Level Observations:

• Drone Frame – Mark if this is a drone frame
• Queen Cells – Note if queen cells are present
• Queen Observed – Record if you spotted the queen

Inspection Details

Alongside frame data, you can record:

• Date & Time – When the inspection occurred
• Temperament – Calm, Neutral, or Aggressive
• Notes – Free-form observations

Viewing Inspection History

Your inspection history is displayed on the hive detail page:

• Use prev and next buttons to browse past inspections
• See who performed each inspection
• View notes and AI-generated summaries
• The visual hive diagram shows frame data from the selected inspection

Recipes & Treatments

Feeding Recipes

Create custom feed formulations for your bees with precise ingredient ratios.

Recipe Types:

• Sugar Syrup – Liquid feed for stimulation or winter stores
• Pollen Patties – Protein supplements for brood rearing
• Fondant – Hard sugar candy for emergency winter feeding

Creating a Recipe:

1. Navigate to Recipes from your organization menu
2. Click New Recipe
3. Select the recipe type
4. Name your recipe and add ingredients with amounts
5. Add notes and save

Applying Treatments

When you apply a treatment to a hive, hivemunk automatically debits your medication inventory.

To apply a treatment:

1. From a hive's detail page, click Apply Treatment
2. Select the medication batch from your inventory
3. Enter the quantity used
4. Set the application date/time and expected removal date (if applicable)
5. Add notes and save

Multimedia & AI Features

Uploading Audio/Video Files

Record your hive inspections by voice and let hivemunk turn them into structured inspection records.

How It Works:

1. Record your inspection – Use your phone's voice recorder while inspecting
2. Upload to a hive – Navigate to any hive and upload your audio file
3. AI processes your recording – The system transcribes and extracts structured data

Supported Formats: MP3, FLAC, WebM, and more

How AI Transcription Works

Understanding Credits

AI transcription uses a prepaid credit system.

Pricing: $0.015 per minute of audio processed

How Credits Work:

• Prepaid balance: purchase credits in advance (they never expire)
• Pay-as-you-go: each transcription deducts from your balance
• Purchase credits from the AI Credits page in your organization

Note: If your balance goes negative due to processing delays, it will be reconciled with your next purchase.

Team Management

Organization Roles

See Organizations for role definitions and the permissions table.

Billing Manager

An additional capability that can be granted to Admins (or the Owner) for access to:

• Subscription management
• Invoice history
• AI Credits purchasing
• Billing address settings

Inviting Team Members

1. Navigate to Organization → Members
2. Enter the invitee's email address
3. Select a role
4. Click Invite

Invitation links expire after 24 hours.

Billing & Subscription

Plans and Pricing

hivemunk uses a pay-as-you-grow pricing model.

Free Tier:

• Up to 10 hives and nucs
• 1 team member
• No credit card required

Scaling Costs (CAD, monthly):

All prices are in CAD and exclude applicable taxes.

Managing Your Subscription

Upgrading:

• Changes take effect immediately
• Prorated charges for the remainder of the billing cycle
• Small prorated charges under $0.50 are waived

Downgrading:

• Difference is credited to your account balance
• Members: Cannot reduce below your current member count without first removing members
• Hives: You may downgrade below your current hive count; excess hives become inaccessible until you upgrade again

Invoices

View all billing activity from the Invoices page.

Invoice Statuses:

Appendix

Supported Equipment

Hive Types:

• Langstroth hives (10-frame, 8-frame, 5-frame nuc)

Bee Species:

• Apis mellifera (Western honey bee)
• Apis cerana (Eastern honey bee)

Current Limitations

hivemunk is designed for Langstroth equipment and standard beekeeping practices. The following are not currently supported:

• Non-Langstroth hive types (Top Bar, Warre, Flow Hive)
• Walkaway splits
• Retroactive inspections where the hive assembly looked different at the time
• Advanced queen breeding and genetics tracking (coming in future updates)

Getting Help

We monitor errors and metrics closely and will reach out if there's an issue that affects your account.

For questions or feedback, contact us through the help section in the app.