Comparison

ApiaryOS vs HiveLog

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

ApiaryOS

Features
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**B-HyveOS is a beekeeping app for people who actually keep bees.** Every serious tool, in one elegant iPhone and iPad app. Built for beginners finding their way through a first season and for longtime keepers tracking a hundred inspections a year. **Your apiary, organized.** Group hives into named yards — "North Yard", "Backfield", wherever your bees live — each with its own location. Weather and bloom predictions come from exactly the right spot. Add hives one tap at a time or pin a whole apiary at once. **Inspections done right.** A guided inspection form walks you through what to check and why — queen spotted, eggs/larvae/capped brood, honey and pollen stores, temperament, pests, disease signs — with short educational notes so you're learning as you log. Temperature auto-fills from the weather at your hive's location. **Live weather and forage predictions.** Apple WeatherKit drives current conditions and a 5-day forecast for every hive. Growing degree days (GDD50) accumulate from your biofix date and power a built-in library of 25+ North American nectar and pollen plants. You see what's blooming now, what's starting soon, and what finished weeks ago. **Serious Varroa tracking.** Log mite counts by method (alcohol wash, sugar roll, sticky board), sample size, and mites counted. Watch the 3% economic threshold color-coded across the app — green below 2%, orange 2–3%, red above. The Varroa story, properly told. **Honey, treatments, feedings.** Track every harvest by frames pulled and weight. Log treatments by product — Apivar, oxalic acid, Formic Pro, Apiguard. Record sugar syrup feedings by ratio and amount. See lifetime totals on each hive. **Voice notes with on-device transcription.** Narrate what you see while you're at the hive. B-HyveOS records audio and transcribes with Apple's on-device speech recognition — your voice never leaves your phone. Attach notes to a specific hive, inspection, harvest, or leave them loose in the Journal. **Checklists for every season.** Eight curated templates — pre-inspection prep, spring opening, summer maintenance, fall prep, winter prep, swarm capture kit, extraction day, quick routine check. Check off items as you work. **Learn as you go.** Beekeeping glossary, seasonal calendar, first-year checklist, and links to the best free resources — Honey Bee Health Coalition's Varroa tools, Bee Informed Partnership, Cooperative Extension, American Beekeeping Federation. **Privacy by design.** Your data lives in your own iCloud — there are no servers because B-HyveOS doesn't need any. Voice recordings stay on your device. Sign in with your iCloud account and it just works across iPhone and iPad. **For the curious beekeeper.** For beginners: the explanations, the first-year checklist, the threshold colors that tell you when something's wrong. For experts: per-hive phenology, GDD correlation, a clean interface that gets out of your way during a 20-minute inspection in full suit. **Requires iOS 17 or later. Free. No subscription, no in-app purchases.**

About

HiveLog

Features
Read full description

HiveLog is the digital hive logbook for hobbyist and sideline beekeepers — fast to log, hard to lose, and smart enough to suggest what's next. Built for the bee suit pocket: large tap targets, glove-friendly controls, fully offline. KEEP EVERY HIVE STRAIGHT • Organize hives under one or more apiaries with map pins. • Configurable box stacks (deep / medium / shallow), frame counts, color tags. • Hive type (Langstroth, Top-Bar, Warre, Flow, other), source (package, nuc, swarm, split, cutout), and status (active, dead, sold, merged, absconded). LOG INSPECTIONS IN 60 SECONDS • Single sectioned wizard — no swiping through pages. • Behavior, brood, queen sighting, varroa pressure, weather (auto-fetched). • Photos and voice notes attached to every inspection. • Designed for gloved hands: tabular numerals, segmented controls, chip pickers. TRACK WHAT MATTERS • Treatments with optional auto-scheduled follow-up tasks. • Feedings — syrup ratios, fondant, pollen patty, dry sugar. • Harvests — honey, wax, propolis, pollen, in metric or imperial. • Mite counts — alcohol wash, sugar roll, sticky board, cappings — with auto-computed rate against your threshold. • Queens with marking colors (auto-suggested by birth year), lineage tree, replacement history. • Splits and swarm helper with daughter-hive setup. STAY ON TOP OF WORK • Tasks and calendar with recurring schedules (weekly, biweekly, monthly, seasonal). • Local reminders that reschedule automatically when you edit. • Searchable journal across every hive. • Per-hive timeline of every event in chronological order. UNDERSTAND YOUR DATA • Insights — mite trend chart with threshold overlay, harvest yield bars. • Year-in-review recap, computed on-device. • Per-hive PDF export straight to the share sheet. • Bloom calendar by USDA zone. • Pest and disease reference guide with photos and treatments. WORK SMARTER WITH AI (Pro) • Photo pest and disease identification. • Voice-to-text inspection notes that auto-fill the wizard. • Beekeeping coach chat with full context of your hives. • Treatment efficacy analyzer (before/after mite comparison). • Smart next-action suggestions. • AI-narrated PDF summaries. WORKS WHERE YOU DO • Fully offline-first — log a wet inspection, sync when you're back on wifi. • Light and dark themes. • Metric or imperial throughout. • Sign in with Apple, Google, Email, or as a guest (link to a permanent account later without losing data). • Share an apiary read-only with a partner or mentor using a one-tap code. FREE vs PRO Free: 2 hives, basic logging, calendar, 3 photos per inspection. Pro: unlimited hives, AI features, insights, voice notes, weather, PDF export, year-in-review, queen lineage, splits, bloom calendar, apiary sharing, 20 photos per inspection. Try Pro free for 7 days on the yearly plan. PRIVACY Your data lives in your Firebase account, isolated per user. Photos and voice notes are stored in your private bucket. We don't sell or share your data. Honey doesn't keep itself. Let HiveLog hold the logbook. This app uses Apple's standard Terms of Use (EULA) https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

ApiaryOS4 screens
HiveLog4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: ApiaryOS at none against HiveLog's 3. ApiaryOS also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs every 3 weeks). HiveLog's advantage is iOS requirement (15.1 vs 17.0). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. HiveLog sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per 7 days. ApiaryOS asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

ApiaryOS ships an update every 4 days, HiveLog every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 28, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences Ā· 3 level
ApiaryOS versus HiveLog: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterApiaryOSHiveLog
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 4 days — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS17.015.1 — better
Further details — not scored
Size5 MB50 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJW McCulloughDF Tech Consulting AB

In-app purchases

None

ApiaryOS

No in-app purchases

3 purchases

HiveLog

Subscriptions3
  • PRO Weekly$3.997 Days
  • PRO Monthly$7.991 Month
  • PRO Yearly$59.991 Year

Questions

Is ApiaryOS free?
ApiaryOS is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is HiveLog free?
HiveLog is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do ApiaryOS or HiveLog have ads?
Neither ApiaryOS nor HiveLog shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ApiaryOS or HiveLog?
ApiaryOS ships an update every 4 days, and HiveLog every 3 weeks. Most recently, ApiaryOS was updated on October 28, 2026 and HiveLog on October 25, 2026.

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