Colony died, absconded or was sold — which to choose

You change the state on the colony card, under “State”:

• “Active” — an ordinary working colony;
• “Laying workers” — no queen, and the workers are laying unfertilised eggs;
• “Died”, “Absconded”, “Sold” — the colony is gone;
• “Merged” — set by the merge operation.

When you switch to “Died”, “Absconded” or “Sold”, the app warns you that the hive will be freed up and the queen periods will be closed. After that the hive can be populated again, and the colony’s whole history — inspections, harvests, pedigree — is kept.

You can bring a colony back with the “Return to service” button, if you set it to “Died” by mistake, for example. It comes back with no hive and no queen, so you will need to introduce a queen and move it into a hive yourself.

There is no need to delete a colony just to get it out of the list — that is exactly what the states are for.