Feed Management & Bloom Calendar

Feeding colonies at the right time and understanding local nectar flows are two of the most important seasonal management tasks in beekeeping. HiveBook™ brings both together with Feed Management, the Bloom Calendar, and Split & Swarm logging.

Feed Management

Go to More → Feed Management to log feeding events for your colonies. Recording feeding helps you track which hives needed supplemental nutrition and correlate feeding timing with colony strength trends from your inspection records.

For each feeding event you record:

• Hive — which colony was fed
• Date — when feeding occurred
• Feed type — the type of supplement provided (sugar syrup, fondant, pollen patty, etc.)
• Quantity — how much was given
• Notes — observations about the colony's response or need for additional feeding

Feeding records help you spot patterns across seasons. If a particular hive consistently needs autumn feeding, that may indicate a queen issue, poor forage area, or a management adjustment is needed.

Bloom Calendar Pro

The Bloom Calendar (More → Bloom Calendar) is a Pro feature that lets you track local nectar and pollen sources for your apiary. You can add bloom entries for flowering plants in your area, recording when they start and end, and how significant the nectar flow is.

Over time, your Bloom Calendar becomes a local phenology record — a picture of what flowers when in your specific location. This is invaluable for:

• Planning your management around nectar flows — adding supers at the right time
• Understanding when dearth periods occur so you can plan feeding in advance
• Matching inspection and treatment timing to nectar flow windows
• Correlating bloom events with harvest yields from your hives

The Bloom Calendar also appears in the Apiary Calendar view so you can see bloom events alongside inspections, treatments, and tasks in a unified timeline.

Split & Swarm Log

The Split & Swarm Log (More → Split & Swarm Log) records hive splits, swarm captures, and colony combines. This is important for maintaining an accurate history of how your hive population has grown and changed over time.

For splits, you record:

• Source hive — the parent colony that was split
• New hive — the daughter colony created from the split
• Date — when the split was made
• Queen situation — whether the new colony has a queen, queen cells, or is queenless
• Notes — reason for the split, frames moved, or other observations

Swarm records capture:

• Whether the swarm came from one of your hives or was a captured stray
• The source hive (if known) so you can track which colony swarmed
• The new hive record created for the swarm
• Date and any notes about the swarm event

Tracking splits and swarms keeps your hive count accurate and preserves the parent-daughter relationship history for future reference.

Next: Learn how to track expenses, revenue, and equipment.