Comparison

ApiaryOS vs Beehiveful

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” 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 โ€” "North Yard", "Backfield", wherever your bees live โ€” 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 โ€” queen spotted, eggs/larvae/capped brood, honey and pollen stores, temperament, pests, disease signs โ€” 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 โ€” green below 2%, orange 2โ€“3%, red above. The Varroa story, properly told. **Honey, treatments, feedings.** Track every harvest by frames pulled and weight. Log treatments by product โ€” 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 โ€” 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 โ€” 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 โ€” 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 โ€” 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

Beehiveful

Features
Read full description

Beehiveful is a daily beekeeping advisor built for real beekeepers in the US. Every morning, Beehiveful turns the weather forecast for your apiary into specific, actionable advice: when to inspect, when to feed, when to add supers, when to stay out of the boxes. No more guessing whether the wind will keep the bees grumpy or whether tomorrow's rain will shut down a nectar flow. WHAT YOU GET FREE โ€ข Daily advisory tailored to your ZIP code โ€ข Bloom calendar for your region โ€” what's flowering now, what's coming next โ€ข Plant identification โ€” snap a photo to find out what your bees are working โ€ข Hive and apiary tracking with inspection notes โ€ข Bloom sighting submissions โ€” log what you see in your area โ€ข Community forum to compare notes with other beekeepers โ€ข Frost, wind, and nectar-flow alerts PRO MEMBERSHIP ADDS โ€ข Per-apiary advisories โ€” a separate daily forecast for each yard, keyed to that exact site instead of a shared ZIP โ€ข Voice-recorded inspections โ€” speak your notes, get a clean transcription โ€ข BeeAI assistant โ€” ask anything about your hives, blooms, or local conditions โ€ข Higher daily limits for plant ID and sighting submissions WHY BEEHIVEFUL Most weather apps tell you whether it will rain. Beehiveful tells you what that weather means for your bees. The forecast layer is built around beekeeping decisions: foraging conditions, brood-rearing windows, swarm pressure, treatment windows, and seasonal transitions. Beehiveful is built and maintained by a beekeeper, for beekeepers. Feedback and feature requests are read every day. Privacy: we collect what we need to run the service (account email, ZIP code, the hive notes you choose to save) and nothing else. We don't sell your data. Account deletion is one tap from your Profile. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://beehiveful.com/privacy

Screenshots

ApiaryOS4 screens
Beehiveful4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: ApiaryOS at none against Beehiveful's 2. ApiaryOS also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs every 6 weeks). Beehiveful's advantage is iOS requirement (13.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

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

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Beehiveful sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month. ApiaryOS asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

ApiaryOS ships an update every 4 days, Beehiveful every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 28, 2026 and November 5, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences ยท 3 level
ApiaryOS versus Beehiveful: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterApiaryOSBeehiveful
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 4 days โ€” betterEvery 6 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo โ€” betterYes
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPod
Requires iOS17.013.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size5 MB34 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJW McCulloughCritFusion, LLC

In-app purchases

None

ApiaryOS

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Beehiveful

Subscriptions2
  • Beehiveful Pro Monthly$6.991 Month
  • Beehiveful Pro Annual$69.991 Year

Questions

Is ApiaryOS free?
ApiaryOS is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Beehiveful free?
Beehiveful is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do ApiaryOS or Beehiveful have ads?
Neither ApiaryOS nor Beehiveful shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ApiaryOS or Beehiveful?
ApiaryOS ships an update every 4 days, and Beehiveful every 6 weeks. Most recently, ApiaryOS was updated on October 28, 2026 and Beehiveful on November 5, 2026.

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