Hi everyone, I’ve shared Apiary Tools here before and a lot of the feedback from this sub has shaped what it’s turned into. I wanted to come back and share a few major things I’ve added today.
The biggest one is hive and apiary sharing. You can now invite someone to a hive or an entire apiary by email. That could be a mentor, club member, friend, spouse, or whoever helps you keep records. You can give them view-only access, let them add inspections/photos/notes as a contributor, or make them a co-owner. Pretty handy for club hives, mentor setups or just keeping someone else in the loop. This was suggested by a few people!
I also added swarm logs, so there’s now a proper place to record caught swarms. You can track the date, weather, location, how it was caught, size, whether you saw a queen, follow-up notes and eventually link it to the hive it becomes. Thanks for the suggestion, Bill!
There are also public profiles now. You can claim a handle, add a bio, region, keeping-since year, avatar, and cover photo. You can keep it private, make it unlisted, or make it public. Photos have EXIF/GPS data stripped before upload. This is basically the groundwork for the next thing I’m working on, which is optional public hive stories, so people can share a specific hive’s journey if they want to. Here’s my example profile: apiarytools.com/u/beethos
A few other updates:
- Quick hive journal notes for when you don’t need a full inspection log (thanks, Bill!)
- A refreshed dashboard with better stats and recent activity
- A cleaned-up settings area
- A tools dropdown with the calculators grouped by category
- A collapsible “People with Access” section on hive pages so it doesn’t get in the way
Full changelog is here: apiarytools.com/changelog
Apiary Tools is 100% free and I’d really like to keep it that way.
One thing I’m looking for: if anyone here runs a bee club, helps manage club hives, or is part of a club that might want to test something new, I’d love to talk. I’m working on a club section with member management, shared hives, announcements, and some other club-specific stuff.
Thanks again to everyone here who has given feedback, ideas, or compliments! A lot of it has made its way into the site and I really appreciate it. Looking forward to another great year!