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Official Launch of Hive Tracks

34K views 103 replies 46 participants last post by  dixiebooks 
#1 ·
Hi All - My name is Mark Henson. I'm a software developer and beekeeper in the western mountains of NC. I've been working for almost 2 years on a new online application for beekeepers. Hive Tracks (www.hivetracks.com) will have its official launch and débuted at the Eastern Apicultural Society (EAS) meeting in Boone, NC on August 2, 2010. Hive Tracks is a FREE service. Its not just a website. It’s a powerful online database where each user can track their yards, hives, weather, inspections, feedings, medications and more. Please take a look at it and give me your brutal, honest opinion.
 
#30 · (Edited)
I know some of this has been called out already:

Reports Would be awesome with printing as well
apple app so i can take my iPad to the yard
Harvest by hive/ yard tab
Treatments tab hive/ yard
swarm info hive swarmed/ created from
hive split
blossom information

on the queen info selection for hive created
pictures, you did not give size limitation so it took me a while to figure out why some of the pictures were causing an error. The error did not say picture to large.
Add pictures does not work for hives only for yards.

I have completed my yard #1
 
#31 ·
Small typo:...to create you first bee yard. If you're already logged in then follow the links to at the top of this page to your bee yards or your account. ENJOY!

Definitely change out the pic in the upper left corner. It looks like a drone with butterfly wings.

As for source of bees, it'd be nice to see Trap Outs and Cut Outs on there.

On the Hive Builder, I'd be nice to see migratory tops, homemade top.

I do like the inspection part of it. :)
 
#33 ·
The picture upload was the last thing developed and needs work. It fails to display errors. All pictures must have a unique file name at the moment even across hives and yards. That may be why you could not upload a hive pic. We will be working on that section asap to work out the kinks.

Your list of feature requests matches the top 10 on our list too so you should begin to see some of these over the next few months. Thanks for taking the time!
 
#34 ·
under hive inspection you list various pests/diseases and then a level such as low med or high... would be nice to have a level value for each pest/disease. maybe high in mites but with the sac brood, an addition for natural comb in step 3 of inspections for foundation type, varroa spelled wrong in step 4, in step 5 addition of a "none" choice.. otherwise great site! ive set up my colonies on it!
 
#36 ·
Thanks for the spell check. There has ben a lots off tipos founded.... thats my fault... I'm a coder not a speler. I'll look at your request for more detail in pests and see if I can slip that in before our official launch at the EAS show. We are a bit spooky about updating the sight so close to the big launch... where I stand in front of the 400 of the biggest experts on the east coast and try to convince them that Hive Tracks is not a toy:)
 
#38 ·
So it seems you are intending to only focus on Langs. at least for now. With a big presentation, I can see wanting to put a streamlined, best foot forward. I do hope that there may be consideration of adding other choices for hive types in the future.

Big Bear
 
#40 ·
Here's some notes from someone with only 4 hives (and likely to stay that way for a while).

It's sloooooooow. Frustrating to use since it takes so long for my entries to update. I'm used to a much faster response time with online interfaces.

In the hive options, when I hit "save" I expected it to save all changes in all tabs, not just the active tab.

It would be really nice if the date fields ignored me when I typed "/" and just entered the numbers. I screwed up nearly every date entry because I was speed-typing, and out of habit added the "/".

It would be very cool to have a quick way to enter in scale hive weight (which could be a sharable value when you get a mapping interface incorporated).

Don't include my password in the account confirmation email!!!!

For Queen options, it would be nice to have an option for "homegrown". I made a walk-away split so I'm sure that my queen's a pure-bred mutt.

I'd like to have a place to note honey-related values; % capped honey, amount harvested, quality or type.

It'd be handy for me in the "inspections" area to have an "actions" step to note what I did to the hive that may not fall into the pre-set categories. I'm still fiddling with my setups so I keep notes on such things.

It'd also be handy to have a "to-do" list, perhaps tagged for e-mail reminders. For example, I made a nuc, then I date a month down the road to check for queenright (and Hive Tracks emails me x days prior so I know when to look).

Shelley
 
#43 ·
I'm loaded up. Would like to see:
1. a way to differentiate langs from nucs.
2. an inventory system for unused frames, deeps, mediums, etc. I can't ever remember how many unused frames I have and what I have in hive parts before I split and need to make more woodenware and place an order.
3.Would like to see a function where you can track the amount of honey in lbs that comes out of any given super.
4. Would also like to see a revenue/cost section...how much did you pay for your equipment? How much did you sell your honey for (if you did)?

I'll have more feedback shortly.

Tom
 
#44 ·
It will have ads one day and the data will be mined for geographic trends but NOT for personal info. We have a Google-esk ideal of "do no evil" and a "build it and they will come" business model. Actaully, it started out as an app to fill our own needs and grow from there.
 
#45 ·
These are all excellent points Shelly. Thanks for taking the time. I will address the password in e-mails thing now.

The speed thing is something we are working on all the time. When we get out of debug mode it will be faster but not as fast as it shoud be.

We have plans for weight and are working on an "instrumented hive" that will connect to Hive Tracks by wireless and record this and much more automatically.... that's a big deal and is down the road a ways.
 
#47 ·
Site is working wonderfully for me. Quick response time. Pretty intuitive to use. I would like to see a foundation type of foundationless and I will repeat the call for local bred queens as an option, MUTTS for lack of a better term. Also repeat call for blackberry version as well. Thanks for this, I'll just have to remember to use it so it will be useful.
 
#48 ·
I would like to see the ability to use the abc along with number to number the hives and supers
example brood # B10 1
deep super ds 10 1
ss 101
for i number all my hives first number are the number of frames the second part of number after the space is hive number. this is the way that i keep up with my hives works good for me

thanks
 
#51 ·
Hi,
I think you have a terrific product in development and encourage you to continue...it's great! Thank you!

During this beta period you must get swamped with all sorts of "input" as to what people would like to have HiveTracks do for them. I was in the framing business for 30 years and worked with a software vendor in that industry to supply my input. Well as a new beek since early this year here is my 2 cents.

In the hive building section:
-Are you defining the IPM bottom board as a screened bottom board or is that something to add to the list.
-Additional items to consider adding to the component list
- robber screen with an add/remove date and type/brand
- mouse guard/screen with an add/remove date
- SHB traps with an add/remove date and type/brand
- pollen traps with an add/remove date and type/brand
- propolis traps with an add/remove date and type/brand
- venom collection
- royal jelly collection
The reason for the "with an add/remove date and type/brand" feature allows beeks to experiment with different equipment and track the results.

I also agree with the previous poster to expand the # of choices in inspections that can be answered with a range of answers (ie: mites, foulbrood) and give the option for both text answers - low medium high and numeric counts and/or percentages tagged to a time of year and a way to track the results after the diagnosis for the efficacy of the treatment method.

As I am learning there can be slightly different definitions for beekeeping terminology from one beek to another. It would be helpful to be able to mouse over all the buttons, categories, hive components, and inspection terms and have the definition pop-up. It would also include variations on the name/definition. This would be a feature that could be turned on or off. It allows users to understand the definition as presented in HiveTracks and relate it to possible alternatives they may be more familiar with.

For those who choose to use a PDA/Smart-phone device it would be a bonus to be able to have voice to text capability thus allowing a hands-free feature during inspections.

In addition creating a way to insert video into HiveTracks. Both during inspections and also as a live streaming remote from multiple bee yards in scattered locations.

History of quantities of various harvested items honey, wax, pollen, propolis,
venom, royal jelly. depicted as a choice of either graph or chart for multiples within a year or annually.

Tracking for all costs: tools, equipment, feed, medications, etc.

I realize the enormity of such an undertaking and applaud your efforts !

Thanks for reading and all the best,

Tim Hayes
 
#52 ·
I commend you for doing this. I know it is a lot of work but I think this will be the trend for beekeepers, especially as smart phones become more popular.
A thought; Add "Swarmed" to the inspection, This happens to me often enough to be significant and I like to look back at swarm dates for hives.
 
#54 ·
Wow! What an excellent post Tim. Thanks so much for taking the time. Some of the features in your list are quick and some of big development commitments. We are going to continue collecting input for the next month or so. We will have a “Grand Opening” next week at the Eastern Apicultural Society summer meeting right here in Boone, NC. I’m sure tons of feedback will be generated there too. Later in August we’ll sort and rank the feature requests then go back into development. Please keep posting your comments and watching the site. We are making small improvements all the time. We plan to make Hive Tracks an essential part of the restoration of bees of beekeeping around the world.

Sincerely,
Mark Henson
Founder of Hive Tracks
 
#56 ·
Thanks for bringing this important issue to the surface Barry. I have something to say about it:

We are committed, devoted protectors of privacy. We are doing this work (a ton of work) for the better good of the Honeybee and those who love them. We have worked for almost 2 years developing first a prototype then the real thing with no income. Sure, I want and need to get some sort of income stream going; otherwise I will not be able to keep this up. Clearly money is not what motivated Hive Tracks. I (Mark Henson) am the founder of Hive Tracks. I’m saying right here right now officially and without equivocation… www.hivetracks.com is FREE and will stay that way as long as I have something to say about it (and right now I have everything to say about it :)

Hive Tracks will NOT abuse personal information. We will NOT divulge who posted what without prior, explicit permission. We will NOT sell e-mail addresses. Every single page on the site is protected with SSL. We WILL mine the data for trends in diseases, treatments, pests, practices, weather patterns and so on. This again is for the good of the beekeeping community and more specifically our members. That means we will collect and make public stats and trends but names, addresses and contact information of the data contributors will remain anonymous. We will do this by publishing trends at the zip code level (thus our requirement of a zip code at sign up time.) This way our users can tell what is going on in their area but no personal data is disclosed.

Does this sound reasonable?

Thanks again for the input,
Mark Henson
Founder of Hive Tracks
 
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