In my Record Keeping Presentation, I suggest two important things to consider in record keeping:
- Enough information that it is useful for purpose
- Simple enough that they are kept
The most important consideration is “What records do you need to keep for your purpose?” You need to know your purpose for keeping records to decide what records you should be keeping. I believe that the first purpose for keeping records is to improve your beekeeping practices so that you can keep your bees alive.
Next, the most important consideration is that the method that you use must be simple enough that they are kept. Notice that I did not rate this as the second most important issue but also said that it is the most important consideration. If you make your record keeping so complex that you do not faithfully record the information, your records are worthless. Thus you must make your record keeping simple to do. This “simple” is in the eye of the beholder. If you have only one or two colonies in the back yard, you can write a couple pages in the notebook for each hive inspection. If, like me, you have eight out yards, 40 full sized colonies and 250 mating/overwintering nucs, 60 seconds is too complex.
I use a bound notebook for recording yard visits, taking up as much space as I need for each visit but when tracking queens for breeder evaluation, I like a loose-leaf notebook with a sheet for each hive which is preprinted with a table of columns of things to record and a row for each visit. I have used the same form as a hive-top card but found that it had to be kept in a zip-lock type bag to protect it from moisture and the bees. (I don’t think the bees like us to keep records on their behavior so if you just place the card on top of the inner cover, they will chew it up to destroy the records.) I found that the time to open the bag, remove the form, record the information, replace in bag and seal took too much time. Thus, I use the loose-leaf notebook with a divider between each yard and then the sheets in order of the hives in the yard, with the hive number at the top of the page. A couple lines of the form are shown below with the abbreviations that I use copied from the bottom of the form. The table of abbreviations on each sheet is a reminder for me at times but especially for my kids if they are doing the hive inspections for me.
I have included links in case you would like to try these methods. The Hive Card Link is for a pdf of the Hive Card with both front and back sides. Printing on both sides with the master flipped vertically will give you two cards per sheet of paper. I have taken this to a printer and had printed on card stock for durability. The Hive Sheet Link is for the Loose-leaf Notebook page version. The Hive Card in Excel Link is for the Excel spreadsheet version so that you can customize it for your use by editing column headings and abbreviations for the things that you use in your process.