Docs
How Beekio works.
Everything you can do in the app, in the order you will do it. Ten minutes to read, and you will not need to read it twice.
- Getting started
- Hives
- Logging an inspection
- Today and Run Plan
- Morning plans
- Ask Beekio
- Reports
- Photos
- Weather
- Exports
- Settings and billing
- Plan limits
- Troubleshooting
1. Getting started
- Sign in at app.beekio.com with email or Google.
- Open Hives and add your first hive: a name, and optionally a location.
- Log an inspection for it. Even a rough one. Beekio's plans get sharper with every log.
- Go to Today and press Run today's plan.
Beekio works well on a phone in the apiary. Add it to your home screen: on iPhone, Share → Add to Home Screen; on Android, the browser menu → Install app.
2. Hives
A hive is one colony. Give each a name you will recognise in the field ("Hive 3, north fence"). A location can be a place name and, if you want weather stamps and live weather, coordinates. Tap a hive to see its history, photos, and last inspection. Hives you no longer keep can be deleted from the hive page; their logs are removed with them.
Hives can be grouped into apiaries (yards) — on every plan, with no cap. Create a yard from the hive form ("+ New apiary") and pick it for each hive that lives there. The Hives page filters by yard, the sidebar and dashboard count them, and renaming a yard is one edit instead of touching every hive. Deleting a yard never deletes its hives — they just become unassigned.
On Keeper and up, a hive's page also prints a QR label for the box. Print it, stick it on the hive, and scanning it with a phone camera opens that hive straight away.
3. Logging an inspection
From Today (the fixed "+ Log inspection" button on mobile) or from a hive's page. Every field is optional; log what you saw and skip the rest.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Date | Defaults to now; change it if you are logging later. |
| Varroa count | Mites per 100 bees from a wash or sugar roll. This drives treatment advice, so use a real count when you can. |
| Honey super % | How full the super is, roughly. |
| Brood frames | Frames with brood on them. |
| Bee population | Weak, moderate, strong, or booming. |
| Temperament | Calm through aggressive. |
| Weight | Hive weight in your unit (kg or lb, set in Settings). |
| Feeding / treatment | Tick if you fed or treated, and what you used. |
| Notes | Anything else: queen seen, eggs, cells, smells, temper. The AI reads these. |
Saving is instant. On Pro and Scaling, the weather at the hive's coordinates is stamped onto the log a moment later, in the background.
No signal in the yard? If a save cannot reach the server, the inspection is kept on your phone and you see "Saved on this phone". It uploads by itself when the connection returns (or the next time you open the app). If your browser blocks storage — a private window, for example — saving simply behaves as normal and tells you when it fails.
4. Today and Run Plan
Today shows what needs attention now, this week, and which hives were inspected recently. Run today's plan asks the AI to read your recent logs across all hives and produce an action plan: urgent actions, routine actions, observations, and when to check next. Each plan is saved as a report. Plan runs per day are limited by your plan (see limits).
On Keeper, Run Plan works per hive from the hive page. On Pro and Scaling it covers the whole apiary at once.
Each action on Today has a checkbox. Tick what you have done — it is saved to your account, survives reloads, and works across devices. Done items sink to the bottom of their group with a strikethrough.
5. Morning plans (Pro and Scaling)
Beekio runs your plan automatically at 5 in the morning in your timezone, so it is waiting when you wake up. If plan emails are on in Settings, you get an email too. Morning plans do not use your daily Run Plan quota. They only run when you have a live hive with an inspection in the last 30 days; dormant accounts are skipped. In Reports they are labelled "Morning plan".
6. Ask Beekio
A chat that knows your hives. Ask about a specific hive ("why is Hive 2 lighter than last week?"), a symptom, a treatment, or a plan. Answers stream in and are saved to Chat History. Daily questions are limited by your plan. Beekio explains jargon the first time it uses it, and answers as an experienced neighbour would: practical, and honest when something needs a professional.
7. Reports
Every plan you run, and every morning plan, is a report. The list shows the date, how many urgent items, and a status you can set: Act now, In progress, Postponed, or Completed. Open a report for the full plan. Pro and Scaling can export a health certificate PDF for chosen hives from the Reports page.
8. Photos (Keeper and up)
Attach up to 3 photos per hive per day on a hive's page, JPEG, PNG, WebP, or HEIC, up to 10 MB each. Photos are stored privately and shown to the AI when they help answer a question about that hive. Tap Ask Beekio on any photo to start a chat about it — the AI looks at that exact photo when it answers.
9. Weather (Pro and Scaling)
With coordinates on a hive, Beekio shows current conditions and stamps the weather onto each inspection log automatically. Plans use recent weather to time treatments and inspections.
10. Exports
- CSV (Keeper and up): inspection logs, from Settings.
- PDF (Pro and Scaling): health certificate per selected hives, from Reports.
- Treatment record PDF (Scaling): varroa treatments per date range and apiary, from Reports.
11. Settings and billing
- Overview: your plan and the plan cards. Upgrade opens Stripe checkout; you come back to Settings with a confirmation.
- Usage: hives, AI questions, and plan runs used today.
- Billing & invoices: opens the Stripe customer portal for payment method, invoices, and cancellation. Cancelling keeps paid features to the end of the period.
- Notifications: plan-ready emails on or off.
- Account: name, timezone (this sets your morning-plan hour), units. Password & security opens your account settings for password, email, and connected sign-ins.
- Delete account: permanent, removes all hive data.
12. Plan limits
| Free | Keeper | Pro | Scaling | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hives | 2 | 25 | 150 | 500 |
| AI questions / day | 5 | 25 | 75 | 250 |
| Run Plan / day | 1 | 5 | 15 | 50 |
| Photos (3 / hive / day) | no | yes | yes | yes |
| CSV export | no | yes | yes | yes |
| QR hive labels | no | yes | yes | yes |
| PDF export | no | no | yes | yes |
| Weather auto-stamp + live weather | no | no | yes | yes |
| Plan-ready email | no | no | yes | yes |
| Automatic morning plans | no | no | yes | yes |
Daily counters reset at midnight UTC. Prices are on the pricing page.
13. Troubleshooting
- "Daily limit reached": you used today's questions or plan runs. Wait for the reset or upgrade.
- Upgrade button does nothing or errors: reload and try again; if it repeats, email us with the time it happened.
- Photo will not upload: check the type (JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC), the size (10 MB), and that you have not hit 3 for that hive today. Free plan cannot upload photos.
- No weather on logs: the hive needs coordinates, and weather is Pro and Scaling.
- Morning plan did not arrive: check the timezone in Settings, that the hive has an inspection in the last 30 days, and that plan emails are on.
- Anything else: support@beekio.com.