An iPhone app by Aleksei Bukhalov
Crownboard
Lift the crown board, look, and put down what you found before the lid goes back on. Crownboard is a record of each colony you keep: the apiary it stands in, every dated visit, the mite count with the sample it came from, and the photographs taken at the frame.
One visit, from the lid to the next hive
The first screen lists every hive in every apiary. Swipe a row and tap Inspect, or run the Shortcut "Record a hive inspection" from the Action Button or by voice.
Queen, eggs, open brood, capped brood and queen cells each begin at Didn't look and change only when you tap them. Temperament, strength, frames and the work done are big pick lists and counters that a gloved thumb can hit.
Add a varroa count with its method and sample. A wash or a sugar roll reads per 100 bees, a board per day, and a count with no sample is kept as entered, with no rate made up for it.
Take a photo if the frame is worth one, and save. Nothing on the form is compulsory. If the apiary has more hives, a bar offers the next, so the round goes on without returning to the top.
Between visits
Pictures held by the app
Each photograph is copied into Crownboard's own store, so clearing the camera roll leaves the record whole. Keep a copy in Photos puts any picture back into your library, and Photo only on a hive saves a visit that is just a picture, to be filled in later.
Reminders you write
Give a hive a note and a date, and the iPhone raises it as a notification on the day. A separate optional reminder counts from your last full backup and prompts you to make the next one.
Search the whole record
Search reads hive and apiary names, hive notes, where a queen came from, equipment, and the notes, actions and photo captions of every visit.
Colonies that ended
Archive a hive that died out, absconded, was combined, was sold or given away, or was shut down, with a note and a date. It drops out of the apiary list, keeps its visits and pictures, still goes into exports, and can be brought back.
Paper when someone asks
A single visit prints or shares as a PDF from its own screen. "Share or print history" on a hive's menu produces the colony's whole story, queen and equipment included, with or without the pictures.
A file in your hands
Export & backup writes a CSV of every inspection for a spreadsheet and a full JSON backup that carries the photographs. Restoring that file on another iPhone brings the whole record across.
Where the record sits
In a local database on the iPhone. If the iPhone is signed in to iCloud, also in the private CloudKit database of your Apple Account, which is how the same apiaries, hives, visits and pictures reach each iPhone signed in to that account. Apple hosts that database; the developer cannot see into it and runs no server. No record can be passed to another person, and nothing is written to a public or shared database.
Without iCloud, or with iCloud switched off for Crownboard, the app records on that iPhone alone and keeps working. What becomes of records already on an iPhone when its Apple Account signs out or changes is handled by iOS, not by the app, so export first before doing either.
Nothing asks you to sign up, nothing counts how you use the app, no advert or tracker is built in, and your location is never read. An optional lock, off until you turn it on, shuts the yard whenever the app goes to the background. The privacy policy sets out the rest.
Two hives, and then more
Crownboard is free to download, and two active hives get every feature. One optional in-app purchase, paid once and never renewed, lifts that limit so the app holds as many hives as you keep. That is all it changes: export, backup and restore, the PDFs, the CSV, photographs, reminders, search, archiving, the lock and iCloud sync work the same without it, and nothing already recorded is ever held back. Once reinstalled, or on a further iPhone, "Bring a purchase back" in Settings, or "Already bought it? Bring it back" on the More hives screen, asks the App Store to return it.