Review

Beekeeping apps in 2026

A digital hive record is no longer exotic: the choice is not between a notebook and a phone any more, but between a dozen mature products with different prices, different prospects and very different attitudes to your data. Over the past two years a wave of new mobile apps has joined the veterans — some of them can turn a dictated inspection into text right on the phone, with no internet. Here is what actually works at the apiary rather than only in the marketing.

Checked against developer websites in September 2026

What to compare

App store descriptions all look alike, because every one of them can "record inspections". The differences show up in seven places.

Does it work without a signal

An apiary stands where the forage is, and that is not always where the network is. An app that needs the internet for the entry itself is one you will fill in at home in the evening from memory — which means you will not fill it in at all.

How long one entry takes

Count finger movements, not features. An inspection with twenty fields, half of which are two taps, gets kept up. A form that takes a minute in sticky gloves does not.

Where the voice is processed

Voice input is common in 2026, but some apps process the recording on the phone itself and work with no signal, while others send it to a server. At the apiary that is the difference between a feature and a screenshot in the store listing.

Can you take your data out

Five seasons of observations are your asset, not the developer’s. Test the export before you put your history in, not after.

Does it fit your scale

Five hives and 500 hives are different problems: the first needs a journal, the second needs routes, crews and reporting. An app that is good at one is usually bad at the other.

Platforms and price

Subscriptions almost always grow with the number of colonies, and the spread is huge: from $15 a year to well over a hundred. At twenty hives the difference is invisible; at three hundred it is a line in your budget — work it out in advance, not after the first payment.

Language and terminology

Machine translation turns capped brood into "printed brood" and a super into a "housing unit". An interface like that will trip up even an experienced beekeeper, and a beginner will simply stop opening it.

What happened to Beetight — and why it is the main lesson here

For fifteen years Beetight was one of the best known free record-keeping services: web plus iOS and Android apps, tens of thousands of users and hundreds of thousands of hives. Registration closed in June 2024, the service went read-only in October, and on 2 February 2025 it was switched off for good — together with its users’ data. The cause was neither money nor competitors: one person was carrying three platforms on an ageing architecture while app store requirements kept growing.

The lesson is not about Beetight but about all of them: any app may shut down one day — and that applies first of all to the young products in the second half of this review. What matters is not a promise to be around for ever, but the ability to export your records at any moment into a file that opens without that app.

The apps one by one

We picked products that are alive, updated and available beyond a single country. First those that have been on the market a long time, then the wave of mobile apps of recent years — that is where everything interesting with voice and AI is happening.

Long established

Apiary Book

The best known, and almost everything at once

Platforms
Android, iOS, Web
Offline
Yes
Voice
Yes
Free plan
1 apiary, up to 9 hives

A Romanian product that has held on to the mass market longer than the others: Android, iOS and web, with an interface in some twenty languages. Inside are apiaries and hives, queens, tasks with reminders, QR codes, stock, voice notes and CSV export, and on top of that a community, a mentoring programme (advice from an experienced beekeeper on the PRO plan) and a marketplace. One important detail: the developer warns that some features exist only in the Android version, and that not everything is available on iPhone, iPad, Huawei devices or the web.

Strengths

  • One of the widest sets of features and languages in a single app
  • A living community and a mentoring programme — rare in this market
  • CSV export and a web version for working at a computer

Weak spots

  • Features are uneven across platforms: the full version is Android
  • A crowded interface — easy for a beginner to get lost in
  • Subscription price is tied to hive count — do the maths for a large apiary

Best for: Hobby and small commercial apiaries, if you want everything in one place and contact with other beekeepers.

ApiNote / Beekeeping Diary

A simple journal you do not have to learn

Platforms
Android, iOS
Offline
Yes
Voice
Yes
Free plan
up to 5 hives

An Android and iOS app with a clear model: free up to five hives, then an inexpensive subscription. Inspections, treatments, feeding, extraction, weather, an apiary map, QR codes and shared access for family or workers. AI arrived in 2026 — a voice assistant for hands-free entry and a chat for beekeeping questions. The developer does not say where that AI runs, on the phone or on a server, so test how the voice features behave offline yourself before the season.

Strengths

  • Learned in an evening, nothing superfluous
  • An honest free plan for a small apiary
  • One of the lowest subscription prices in this review

Weak spots

  • No web version for working at a computer
  • Not stated whether the AI features work without internet
  • Not built for commercial work: routes, crews, stock

Best for: Beginners and apiaries of up to a few dozen hives that need a tidy journal rather than a management system.

BeeInTouch (Willi)

The German record-keeping standard, reporting included

Platforms
Web, Android, iOS
Offline
Yes
Voice
No data
Free plan
2 apiaries, 5 colonies

The leader of the German-speaking market: web plus apps, a free plan for two apiaries and five colonies, paid plans by colony count from around €3 a month up to several dozen for an apiary of hundreds of colonies. It stands out for the depth of its inspection record, support for both QR codes and NFC tags, breeding records, stock and finances, and for being built around German treatment-record practice (the Bestandsbuch). Entries can be made offline and sync when a signal returns.

Strengths

  • A very detailed colony record and treatment log
  • Works offline, supports QR and NFC tags
  • Stock and finances in the same app

Weak spots

  • Interface in German, English and French only
  • Price climbs noticeably with colony count
  • Almost no community outside German-speaking countries

Best for: Germany, Austria and Switzerland — and anyone who needs meticulous treatment reporting.

HiveTracks

A market veteran that moved into data

Platforms
Web, Android, iOS
Offline
Yes
Voice
No data
Free plan
yes

One of the oldest services (USA): a web account plus a free mobile app that records offline and syncs when a signal appears. Its strengths are reports, weather by apiary coordinates and team access. In recent years the product has turned towards being a biodiversity data platform for organisations; the company reports around 25,000 beekeepers in 145 countries.

Strengths

  • A full web account, convenient for end-of-season reports
  • A free mobile app with an offline mode
  • Team access to a shared apiary

Weak spots

  • The plan line-up has changed over time — check the current one on the site
  • Company focus has shifted to institutional customers
  • Interface is mostly English

Best for: People who like working at a computer and filing reports, plus associations and monitoring programmes.

BEEP

Non-profit and open

Platforms
Web
Offline
No data
Voice
No data
Free plan
completely free

A project of a Dutch non-profit: the app is free, the source code and design are open (MIT and CC-BY-SA), and the inspection record can be configured to your own methodology. Sold separately is BEEP base — an under-hive sensor platform that records weight, temperature and sound and feeds the data into the same interface. For research groups and associations this is often the only acceptable option: the data stays yours and the format stays open. That openness also pays off in practice: Apian can import a BEEP export, so the history does not have to be retyped.

Strengths

  • Free, with no subscriptions
  • Open source and open data
  • A configurable inspection record and sensors in one place

Weak spots

  • A web app rather than a native one — it feels different from ordinary apps
  • Development moves at non-profit pace
  • We found no official confirmation of how it behaves with no signal at all

Best for: Research groups, associations and anyone for whom openness and data ownership are a matter of principle.

Nectar

For commercial migratory operations

Platforms
Web, iOS, Android
Offline
No data
Voice
No data
Free plan
no

A Canadian platform for operations of hundreds and thousands of hives: an RFID tag on every hive, an app for crews and a shared dashboard for the manager. It has what the journals do not: pollination planning with a map, contracts, reporting for government programmes (ELAP, CFIA), crew supervision, and analytics on queen lines and treatment effectiveness. The model is a one-off hardware purchase plus a monthly subscription. There is no public price list: indirect data suggests roughly $2.50–4 per hive per month, but treat that as a ballpark and work out the real figure for your hive count with the vendor.

Strengths

  • The only system in this review designed around crews and migration
  • Reporting and pollination contracts inside the product
  • RFID instead of hunting for a hive number in a list

Weak spots

  • Not intended for hobby or small apiaries, and not priced for them
  • Requires buying tags and disciplined crews
  • Price is not published — on request only

Best for: Commercial apiaries from several hundred hives with hired workers and pollination contracts.

The new wave: mobile apps of recent years

ApiManager

The cheapest paid plans and 33 languages

Platforms
Web, Android, iOS
Offline
Yes
Voice
Recording only
Free plan
up to 20 hives

Web plus Android and iOS apps that sync with each other: start on an iPhone, continue on Android, review it at a computer. The free plan covers up to 20 hives with all features; paid plans start at about $15 a year for 50 hives and reach $65 a year for ten thousand. Inside: inspection templates, roles and permissions for workers, QR tags, a photo gallery, Excel and CSV export, varroa and queen-status records, and an offline mode that switches itself on when the signal drops. Voice exists, but as a recording rather than automatic field filling. More than 33 interface languages are claimed — nothing else in this review comes close.

Strengths

  • The lowest price per hive among the paid plans in this review
  • More than 30 interface languages
  • Excel and CSV export, roles and permissions for workers

Weak spots

  • Voice notes do not turn into a filled-in inspection
  • The subscription can only be bought through the mobile apps
  • Breadth is not depth: queen rearing and logistics are thinner than in specialised products

Best for: Anyone who needs proper records across several platforms at a predictable, modest price.

HiveBook

For people who live in the Apple ecosystem

Platforms
iOS, iPadOS, macOS
Offline
Yes
Voice
No data
Free plan
1 apiary, up to 5 hives

An app for Apple devices only — iPhone, iPad and Mac: iCloud sync and offline work. The AI runs on the device itself: a daily apiary summary, detection of colonies that look off, and an assistant you can ask questions. Beyond the journal there is inventory and expense tracking with a receipt scanner, plus reports for the tax office. Free for up to five hives and one apiary, then $40 or $80 a year depending on the plan.

Strengths

  • A native app for iPhone, iPad and Mac at once
  • AI runs on the device; data does not go to the cloud
  • Expense tracking and reporting — rare in apps of this size

Weak spots

  • No Android and no web version — the Apple lock-in is total
  • A modest free plan: five hives
  • A young project

Best for: Beekeepers whose kit is all Apple and who care about the money as much as the colonies.

HiveLogger

Everything staked on speed of entry

Platforms
iOS, Android
Offline
Yes
Voice
Yes
Free plan
No data

An iOS and Android app built around a single idea: an inspection, treatment, feed or extraction should be recorded in half a minute. Hence QR tag scanning to open a hive record instantly, batch entry across several hives at once, no mandatory fields, and voice notes that an AI turns into structure. Full offline operation is claimed. Prices are not published on the site — you see them in the app store.

Strengths

  • Batch entry across several hives at once — a time saver on a large apiary
  • No mandatory fields: record exactly what you noticed
  • Full offline operation and QR tags

Weak spots

  • Prices are not published on the website
  • Not stated where dictation is parsed — on the phone or on a server
  • Little information about how mature the project is

Best for: People who walk a lot of hives in a day and will not spend more than half a minute on an entry.

Apian

Our app

Everything a beekeeper needs, and a little more

Platforms
Android
Offline
Yes
Voice
On device
Free plan
up to 250 hives, unlimited apiaries

From the developer: "In Apian I brought together what I know about beekeeping (thanks to my parents, who are professional beekeepers), my IT education (thanks to my parents for that too), and the considerable experience I have with serious enterprise management systems. The result is a modern app meant for real use at the apiary — with a genuinely good modern interface and a set of features that covers what 99% of beekeepers need. First of all that means working without a signal: I remember climbing a tree on a migration to get a text message out. So no internet and no signal is no problem — every feature still works. Next: almost nobody is going to fill in 20–30 fields to record an inspection, so in Apian nothing is mandatory — record what matters to you. To make it faster I added voice entry for inspection results, and without having to touch the screen: it is all driven by your phone’s volume buttons. The whole inspection is processed on the phone itself — both the speech recognition and the parsing of what was said." Beyond that there is thorough queen rearing (a breeding calendar, queen statuses and lineage), QR and RFID tags, treatments, weather, a PDF journal per hive and per queen, 12 languages with beekeeping terminology that has been checked by beekeepers, and a route in from other programs. On scale, the simplest way to put it: Apian suits anyone with fewer than 250 hives — there is bulk entry for treatments or diseases, for instance. Anything above that is commercial beekeeping, which has its own requirements and ways of working with bees — that is the job of ApianOne, still in development.

Strengths

  • Voice inspection with no internet and without taking your gloves off
  • Everything is free, AI included: there are no paid features in the app, and the single limit is 250 hives, with any number of apiaries
  • Queen rearing and queen lineage — a depth that is rare in these apps
  • Records for hive components
  • Separate colony records — the whole history of unions and splits always at hand
  • Hour-by-hour weather forecast for the coordinates of the specific apiary — you can see when a window for treatment or inspection opens
  • A clean, clear, uncluttered interface — noted in reviews on beekeeping forums

Weak spots

  • Android only: the iOS version is in development and there is no web version — here we lose to almost everything in this review, and it is the question we get asked most on forums
  • Voice will not run on an old or weak phone — the app checks and warns you, and then the inspection is entered by hand
  • Import is from BEEP only for now; teamwork, detailed stock control and logistics are in ApianOne, which has not been released
  • A young project: no community or marketplace like Apiary Book’s, and fewer languages than ApiManager

Best for: Any apiary of up to 250 hives — from three colonies in the garden to a commercial one. Especially those with an unreliable signal at the apiary, queen breeders who want the full history of their queens, and anyone who wants to fill in inspections faster by voice.

Summary table

The table scrolls sideways

AppPlatformsOfflineVoiceFree planPaidFor whom
ApianAndroidYesOn deviceup to 250 hives, unlimited apiariesfree; ApianOne in developmentAny apiary of up to 250 hives
Apiary BookAndroid, iOS, WebYesYes1 apiary, up to 9 hivesfrom €80 a yearHobby and small commercial apiaries
ApiNote / Beekeeping DiaryAndroid, iOSYesYesup to 5 hivesfrom ≈€2.99 a monthBeginners, up to a few dozen hives
BeeInTouch (Willi)Web, Android, iOSYesNo data2 apiaries, 5 coloniesfrom ≈€3 a monthGerman-speaking countries, meticulous treatment records
HiveTracksWeb, Android, iOSYesNo datayespaid plansWeb lovers, associations and monitoring programmes
BEEPWebNo dataNo datacompletely free—Research, associations, open-data advocates
NectarWeb, iOS, AndroidNo dataNo datanohardware + subscription, ≈$2.5–4 per hive a monthCommercial apiaries from several hundred hives
ApiManagerWeb, Android, iOSYesRecording onlyup to 20 hivesfrom $14.99 a yearPeople who count the cost and change phones
HiveBookiOS, iPadOS, macOSYesNo data1 apiary, up to 5 hivesfrom $39.99 a yeariPhone, iPad and Mac owners
HiveLoggeriOS, AndroidYesYesNo dataNo dataPeople whose priority is entry speed

Data from developers’ official websites as of September 2026. Prices and limits change — check the site before paying. A ≈ marks prices that are not in an official price list: those are estimates from indirect data. "No data" means we found no confirmation in official sources, not that the feature is missing.

Sensors are not an app

Scales, thermometers and microphones under the hive answer the question "what happened between inspections", but they do not replace a journal: they do not know that you requeened and added a super. The workable approach is sensors on a few control hives plus a journal for all the rest.

BroodMinder

Temperature, weight and humidity, hubs for transmitting data, the MyBroodMinder web account and a subscription; an open data-sharing community lives around the project.

BEEP base

An open under-hive platform: weight, temperature, sound. The data arrives in the free BEEP app.

3Bee Hive-Tech

An Italian system: weight, temperature, humidity and sound, with a free app. The company reports more than three thousand beekeepers in Italy and a presence in 80 countries.

Melixa

An Italian product going back to 2014. Besides weight and temperature it counts bee flight — a figure that shows whether a colony is building up or fading.

Remember the lock-in: hardware you buy usually works only with its own service. The apps in this review expect you to stay inside their ecosystem — none of them is a journal that reads sensors from several other brands. Check compatibility before you buy, not after.

What to choose for your situation

First season, 3–10 hives

Plenty of choice — download a few, install them, poke around for a couple of evenings: Apian, ApiNote, the free plan of Apiary Book, or ApiManager, which gives you 20 hives for free.

30–150 hives, the apiary pays its way

Here treatments, per-colony history and speed of entry are what matter. Look at Apiary Book PRO, ApiManager, BeeInTouch (if the language suits) — and our own Apian will cover what you need as well.

You rear queens

You need a breeding calendar, lineage and queen statuses. Most journals have no such depth; in this review only BeeInTouch and Apian do.

Migration, crews, pollination

Nectar is the only product here designed for that work. Hobby-scale journals break down on routes, crews and contracts.

You have an iPhone

The choice is wide: HiveLogger, HiveBook, ApiManager, Apiary Book, ApiNote, BeeInTouch, HiveTracks.

An association or a research project

BEEP: open source, open data, a configurable inspection methodology. HiveTracks if you need to work with organisations and file reports.

You already have sensors

Check compatibility before you pick an app. BEEP works with its own BEEP base platform; the rest are usually closed to themselves — there is no journal in this review that reads sensors from several other brands.

No signal at the apiary

Test offline use yourself, before the season starts: switch on airplane mode and try to start an inspection and dictate a voice note. An app that shows you a spinner at that moment is not for you.

What nobody can do yet

An honest look at the industry’s shared weak spots — they are much the same for everyone, ourselves included.

There is no common data format

Moving from one app to another is done by hand every time, or with an import written for one specific format. Beekeeping has no standard the way accounting does — and while the market keeps growing new apps, it will not get one.

Veterinary reporting

Treatment-log requirements differ from country to country, and almost nobody covers more than one or two jurisdictions. Exceptions such as the German Bestandsbuch in BeeInTouch only prove the rule.

AI advises more often than it works

Plenty of apps now have a chat that gives beekeeping advice, but help at the exact moment you are standing over an open hive is rare: speech recognition on the device itself is very uncommon, and automatic filling of inspection fields is so far almost nobody but us.

Sensors and the journal live apart

Scale readings and the note "added a super" hardly ever come together into one picture of the season. BEEP comes closest, and even there it is two separate screens rather than one conclusion.

Youth as a risk

Half of what is interesting in 2026 is made by teams of one to three people. That is also why Beetight closed. Do not turn down new apps over it — just keep an export.

How to move from your current app without losing anything

  1. 1Export your data from the old app before you pay for a new one. If there is no export, you need to act quickly — your data is not really yours.
  2. 2Open the export on a computer. CSV, XLS, XLSX and JSON are the formats you want.
  3. 3Move one season rather than the whole history: that shows you what gets lost in the move. Apps differ, and they all store data differently.
  4. 4Try running one day at the apiary in the new app. Everything to hand, everything clear, everything working — then move the rest. If something is off, look for another app.
  5. 5Test the export from the new app too — before it becomes the only place your data lives.

In short

There is no universally best app. Apiary Book wins on breadth and community, ApiNote on simplicity, ApiManager on price and language count, BeeInTouch on reporting depth, HiveTracks on the web, BEEP on openness, Nectar on scale, HiveBook on the Apple ecosystem, HiveLogger on speed of entry — and Apian is our attempt to build that best app anyway. About us, briefly: if you have fewer than 250 hives and an Android phone, Apian will cover all your records, free; if you have more hives or you are on an iPhone, choose from the rest. Choose by how comfortable the work is and what you actually need. And whatever you use, export your data once a season and produce a printed journal once a season too.

Try Apian

If you have fewer than 250 hives, Apian will suit you. Free, with no trial period and no card: any number of apiaries, work without a signal, and a voice inspection that fills in the fields itself, right on the phone.

Download

About the sources. Information about the apps is taken from developers’ official websites and pages and was checked in September 2026. User-number claims are as stated by the companies themselves. If you find an inaccuracy, or think we have described your app unfairly, write to us and we will correct it.