BeeBookThe Apiary Journal
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Customers & Case Studies
A working library of field stories — commercial operators running 500 colonies, sideliners juggling spring splits, and clubs teaching first-year keepers what to look for in a brood frame.
Stories from the apiary
Find a peer who keeps bees the way you do — commercial crews running multiple yards, sideliners with a backyard and a sideliner road, and the clubs training the next generation of inspectors.
Commercial operator · 540 colonies
Three full-time crew leads, one shared dashboard, and the first spring where queen issues surfaced two weeks before the almond bloom.
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Sideliner · 12 hives
A Saturday morning inspection, a flagged pattern across four hives, and a text to his mentor before lunch.
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Beekeeping club · 64 members
One shared checklist, photos forwarded to the club's master beekeeper, and a season where no mentee lost a colony to a missed mite count.
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Sideliner · 28 hives
What started as a phone full of photos turned into a per-yard forecast her crew actually checks on Sunday nights.
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Field profile
Hollister & Daughters Apiaries has been keeping bees in California's Central Valley for thirty-one years. Last winter was the first one where every yard lead logged the same inspection template on the same day — and the first winter the family came out of February with the colonies they started with.
Brood pattern, queen sighting, mite count, stores, temperament — the same five fields, in the same order, on every yard lead's phone.
Every frame shot taken in the yard uploads the moment a crew lead climbs back into a cell-signal pocket on the way out.
A drop in queen-sightings across Yard 2 surfaced a failing queen pattern on March 4 — well before the almond bloom closed on March 19.
"BeeBook is the first thing I've seen that doesn't punish a crew for working offline. The data shows up the same way it always did — in the truck, on the phone, before we lose it."
— Daniel Hollister, third-generation operator
The study
BeeBook did not pay for this study and did not write its conclusions. The lab ran the protocol, drew the cohort, and published the results. We are sharing the headline numbers because peer-reviewed evidence is what our commercial readers asked us for.
28%
Reduction in winter colony losses across the BeeBook cohort vs. matched control apiaries.
2yrs
Longitudinal study duration, covering two full winter cycles (2023–2025).
412
Apiaries enrolled across Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas — small operators through commercial crews.
9pts
Earlier detection of queen-issue patterns, on average, compared to paper-log apiaries.
Results published in collaboration with the UF/IFAS Honey Bee Research & Extension Lab, Gainesville, FL — methodology available on request.
From our advisory board
"The hive doesn't tell you it's in trouble on a Tuesday. It tells you on the Tuesday three weeks before it dies, and only if someone wrote down what the brood looked like. BeeBook is the first tool I've seen that makes that writing-down part actually stick across a whole club."