Queen Management

The queen is the heart of every colony. HiveBook™'s Queen Management tools let you record every queen in your operation — her breed, status, age, and performance — and track replacement history across your entire apiary.

Accessing Queen Management

Go to More → Queen Management to see all queen records across your apiary. You can also view and edit a queen's record from an individual hive's detail page.

Queen Breeds

When recording a queen, you can specify her breed. HiveBook supports all commonly managed honeybee breeds:

Recording breed helps you track which genetics perform best in your local conditions over time.

Queen Status

Every queen has a status that reflects her current condition. Keeping this up to date is important for accurate hive health tracking and for triggering appropriate tasks:

• Laying — the queen is mated and actively laying eggs
• Virgin — a newly emerged queen not yet mated
• Failing — the queen's laying pattern has deteriorated; replacement may be needed
• Missing — the queen was not located during the last inspection
• Dead — the queen has died; the colony is queenless
• Superseded — the colony has replaced this queen naturally

When a queen's status is set to Missing or Dead, HiveBook can generate a task to remind you to check on the colony's queenright status and take action.

Recording Queen Details

For each queen you can record:

• Breed — her genetic lineage
• Status — current condition
• Introduction date — when this queen was installed in the hive
• Marking color — the international year-color code or custom marking you used
• Source — where the queen came from (breeder, raised in-hive, purchased, etc.)
• Notes — any additional observations about this queen's performance

Replacement History

When you replace a queen, HiveBook retains the old queen's record in the hive's history. This lets you build a complete lineage record for each hive — who was queen, for how long, and why she was replaced. Over time this is invaluable for understanding which genetics perform well in your apiary.

Queen Analytics Pro

With a Pro or Premium subscription, Queen Analytics (More → Analytics & Forecasts → Queen Analytics) gives you apiary-wide insights:

• Queen replacement rates across your operation
• Average queen lifespan by breed
• Failure and supersedure rates over time
• Which breeds have the best performance in your local conditions

These metrics help you make data-driven decisions about which genetics to invest in and when to plan requeening cycles.

Next: Learn how to track treatments and varroa mite monitoring.