Bee hive records using bricks - hive brick code cheat sheet
There are multiple reasons for you to keep track of what is happening within your bee hives, some just simply like to track things and have measurable information to later look up and compare.
Others may need to keep records for regulatory reasons such as when operating as a commercial beekeeper and shifting bees from site to site. As always in beekeeping there are 100 different ways to tackle on how you keep your records on your bees. Some people have a sensational memory, however most people probably probably struggle to recall what they had seen a few weeks or month ago, especially when you are dealing with a few hundred hives and different sites. Others may use Apps using their phones and tablets, but we find it that a sticky situation!
For our more stationary production hives we had adopted using bricks to document and record the bee hive status.
Our life cycle start with an empty or dead out colony. The next step is the unknown status, this happens if we have not found clear indication of a laying queen or another expected result, and can be used to mark a hive that needs attention within a weeks time. This can happen after the mating setting had been set, and after 14 days we still do not see eggs, however the bees had started creating the circle and show indications of a virgin/mated queen present. In some cases its necessary to insert a queen cell, or we simply come across self raised queen cells which have their own tag / code. Assuming all goes well the queen turns into a laying queen and all is happy and well. Especially on approaching autumn and winter you may want to document how well fed your girls honey stores and or if they need supplementary beefing up and are low on feed.
In other cases you may experience the odd laying worker or drone layer. In some cases, especially when raising NUCs / starter hives you also may need to mark hives which need queen, to allow you to track and count how many queens to bring to the site. Other hive records / brick codes could include that the hive needs another super box on top during the next coming inspection round for example.
At present we have not adopted painting the individual brick sides with different colors, such as used when marking the age of the queen. The tricky thing with our code is we only have 4 sides of the brick and the queen age documentation would require a fifth side, of which we are obviously lacking a side, or would have to decide not to raise queen in a certain year, not a very practical idea. You could however mark other informations using colors such as:
- Age of your queen
- Queen genetic line
- Hive used as breeder queen
- Hive used as graft starter hive
- Hive used as graft finisher colony
- Hive strength in regards on how many frames are used.
- Hive is unfriendly / aggressive in temper (do your fellow friends a favor and let them know)
- Hive needs a feed
- How much honey the hive produced
- MORE TO COME
Its really up to your own imagination to come up with what you need to have documented.
In our case we use the bricks locally for decentralized hive records, while once done with the work, we use pen and paper to record the hive numbers and brick codes using site specific templates to gain centralized information about the apiary.
What can end up happening is, that the information about your operational status and hive strength ends up in your crews minds who have attended those particular sites. Assuming you have multiple crew members working at different sites, no one ends up having a full picture of what actually is happening within your beekeeping organization, unless you keep the centralized copies of the local brick status. The bricks allows for fast assessments of how much work is required onsite, and can help with resource planning.
It only takes a few minutes to walk past your hives at the end of the day and update your templates. Assuming you can come up with a marking system which can be easily scanned and automatically updates your spreadsheet / database then you could even further automate your apiary records.
As said there is multiple ways to skin a banana. Some people prefer notepads they keep with them at all times, others prefer their phone and tablet Apps to record their hive information, we however found phones and tablets a sticky situation in the field and have stayed away from them. Also, if the battery is out, your out, and if you happen to have left your charger at home, then it can involve a fair drive to go and pick it up in down under Australia.
Please let us know if this information had been useful on your journey to your first set of bee hives!
Feel free to browse to our complimentary Youtube channel which goes hand in hand with this blog.
Happy beekeeping,
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