Locations: keeping track of your hives and queens

If you keep bees in more than one place, QueenBees helps you stay organized. Think of it as a way to keep track of which hives are where, just like you might use a notebook - but easier.

Understanding locations and areas

A location is anywhere you keep hives - your backyard, a farmer’s field, or that spot by the woods.

Within each location, you can create areas (called “sections”) to organize your hives. Maybe you put mating nucs on the north side and production colonies on the south side.

How it’s organized

Your Apiary
├── Home location
│   ├── North side (mating nucs)
│   ├── South side (production hives)
│   └── Main area (everything else)
└── Smith farm
    ├── Upper field
    └── Main area (everything else)

Getting started

• You need at least one location to place hives
• Each location automatically gets a “Main area” when you create it
• You can only remove empty locations (no hives left there)
• Location names need to be at least 3 letters long

Adding your next location

When you first set up your account, you’ll create your main location. After that, you can add more whenever you get access to new sites.

How to add a new location

1. Click on your locations summary in left navigation
2. Choose “Add new location” from the list
3. Give it a name that makes sense to you
4. Click Save

Your new location will have a “Main area” ready for hives.

Naming your locations

Pick names you’ll recognize right away:

• Home yard - where you started
• Back forty - if it’s behind your property
• Miller place - if you’re keeping bees on someone else’s land
• Cedar grove - simple numbering or landmarks work too

Organizing areas within your locations

Areas help you keep track of different groups of hives in the same location. Like keeping your breeder colonies separate from your honey production hives.

Why organize into areas?

• Keep breeding stock separate - your reproductive queens away from the queens naturally inseminated
• Group by purpose - training hives in one spot, mating hives in another
• Follow your location layout - front and back, east and west sides - you can experiment with different setups
• Different types of hives - classic hives separated from mini-plus type
• Control what count - exclude certain areas from your ‘ready to sell’ statistics

Adding areas to a location

1. Open the location you want to organize
2. Look for the “+” button in right bottom corner and choose “Add area”
3. Give the area a name that allows you quick identification
4. Decide if these hives count for sales - usually yes, but if you have reproductive queens or the ones in evaluation, you might want to turn this off
5. Save it

About “counting for sales”

This just means whether hives in this area should be included when the app counts how many queens you have available to sell. Turn this off for:

• Hives you’re not using for production
• Your personal breeding stock you don’t sell from
• Experimental or research colonies
• Areas used for storage or wintering

When an area is excluded from sales counting, it also won’t appear in your main production statistics and forecasts. This keeps your numbers accurate and focused on what you’re actually selling.

Moving between your locations

Quick switching

Use the location name at the top of the screen to jump between locations. The app remembers which location you were looking at last.

What you’ll see for each location

When you look at a location, you’ll see:

• How many hives you have there
• Which hives are empty and ready for new queen
• Your queen count - how many are ready to sell

Location overview

Each location shows you:

• Queen counts in each state - mated queens, virgin queens, cells developing
• Hive status - which ones are working, which are empty
• Available queens - how many should be ready soon
• Location efficiency - percentage of queens sold versus lost

Working with multiple locations

Moving hives around

Sometimes you need to move hives from one location to another:

1. Select the hive you want to move
2. Choose “Edit” from the options
3. Pick where they’re going - which location and area
4. Confirm the move

Removing a location

You can only remove a location after you’ve moved all the hives out of it. Hives might be moved one by one, or from section

Before removing a location

1. Move all hives to other locations or mark them as sold/dead
2. Check all areas are empty

How to remove it

1. Go to location overview (look for the three dots icon on location card)
2. Click “Delete” action

Simple ways to stay organized

Start small

• Begin with one location and add areas as you need them
• Use names that make sense to you - don’t worry about being fancy or too accurate
• Group similar hives together - makes your work easier
• Add new areas when you expand - no need to plan everything up front

Support and optimization

Questions or location management assistance:

• Contact our support team for calendar and planning questions
• Visit the contact page for workflow optimization consultation or new language request
• WhatsApp support for new features suggestions