Best practices to track a number of hives?

[Karim Sahli]

Hi,

I have 4 hives at the moment. Two of them will go to some friends’ backyard.
Following Susan’s advice, I am tracking my inspections on little notebooks I made for each hive.

The way I am naming my hives is simple: [name of the street] + [number]
So I have two hives two hives on Lafayette Street, they are named Lafayette 1 and Lafayette 2.

But things got complicated when Lafayette 2 made a split. Please bear with me.
I managed to catch the swarm and put it in a new hive (“Lafayette 3”). I saw some queen cells in Lafayette 2 so I was hopeful the left over hive would survived. But it did not; most bees died and left a comfy house full of honey. So I put back my old Lafayette 2 queen (now Lafayette 3) back to its old home. Since only a few days past since the split, I decided to name it back Layette 2 again and throw away the Lafayette 3 notebook.

Weeks later I am collecting new hives (cutouts). I was considering naming them from the place I rescued them but it would be even confusing to track them in the future (“Irving 1” may be on Madison some day).
So… My method is not really working here.

I wanted to collect some info on how commercial beeks are keeping track of their “inventory”. How do commercial beeks track their artificial splits? Is there an established nomenclature going on? What’s your advice?

I know I am maybe over thinking this but this kind of little question that help me understand how things work.

[susan rudnicki]

Karim— I track them by the source, which also helps me remember their story of development—Santa Monica Trash can bees, Sherry bees (a woman who got two hives in the same meter box, 9 mos apart, and I took both, so there is Sherry bees #1 and #2) Hive Scale bees, Francoise’s bees, from which I made a split (when THEY make a split, it is called a “swarm”—the reason this is different is because often the beek loses 50% of the bees from the mother hive. When you make the split, this is not the situation. You were lucky. Also, if strong enough, the mother hive will make later swarms unless you address the underlying cause for swarming) Many beeks number the hives, especially beeks with lots of hives. Josip Benko does this.
I know this does not address your notebook issue! Unless you write in pencil, I guess. I am glad you are “overthinking” it—too many don’t keep records at all! Susan

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