HiveScribe: Hive Inspections

Keep your gloves on. Open the lid, start talking, and the inspection writes itself.

HiveScribe is a hive inspection log for beekeepers who are already elbow-deep in a colony. Point the camera at the QR label stuck to the box and you land in that hive's inspection mode. The transcript runs along under your voice, and the silence at the end is the signal to finish: queen seen, brood, queen cells, low stores, the tags land by themselves. One inspection, start to finish, without touching the screen. Sound and vibration mark the beginning, the end and the finished card, so the phone can stay where it is.

Say "Queen seen, brood looks good, two queen cells, stores low" and you have a log card carrying four tags. The sentence you spoke stays with it word for word, and tags or wording can be corrected later at the kitchen table. Play the original audio back whenever you want to check what the recognizer heard.

WHAT STAYS WHERE
Your hive list, every entry in your beekeeping journal and each voice recording sit in this app's own folder on the phone you are holding. The one copy that ever leaves is the backup file you export on purpose. Speech turns into text on the device, through on-device speech recognition only, so an apiary out of signal range behaves the same as your kitchen: QR scanning, voice inspections and the feed math all run. There is no account to sign into and no back end to answer to, and HiveScribe never asks where your yards are. Where on-device recognition is unavailable for a language or a handset, the audio is kept and you tag the log by hand, so an inspection is never lost.

SWARM SIGNALS AND WINTER FEED
The tags do double duty. Queen cells and cups, crowding and how far the season has run feed a swarm-readiness indicator that reads low, watch or high, with the signals behind that reading listed underneath. Count the frames of stores and enter the number: HiveScribe weighs it against the recommended reserve for your climate zone, shows the winter feed shortfall in kg, and gives the sugar and water for a heavy syrup to close it. The figures rest on public beekeeping guidance, the NBU in the UK, UF/IFAS and UGA in the US, Embrapa in Brazil. Open View sources in the app to see which document a number came from. None of it is a prediction. The indicator points you at hives worth a closer look, and the decision comes from the inspection in front of you. Anything to do with pests, treatments or medicines belongs with your local beekeeping association and the official guidance for your area.

QR LABELS FOR APIARY MANAGEMENT
The app lays out your QR sheets: a grid of labels with hive names, ready to print or export as a PDF. Laminate them and fix one to the side of each box. A code carries nothing but an identifier used inside this app, so it reads with no connection, and a reprint scans as the same hive.

There is nothing to set up first. One tap creates a hive, the mic button sits on its card, and the first log card is finished long before the labels come out of the printer. The History tab groups your records by hive and by month, and an inspection interval you set turns into a reminder for the next visit. A backup exports as a single JSON file and loads back intact on a new phone.

HiveScribe is free, shows no advertising, and holds nothing back behind a purchase. The screen is built for where it is used: contrast that survives midday sun, controls a gloved thumb cannot miss, and sound and haptics for the moments you would otherwise stop and look. Larger text, dark theme and reduced animation follow your phone's settings, and TalkBack reads every control by name.

Recent changes:
Keep your gloves on. Just talk with the lid open.