Crownboard help

Revised 15 September 2026.

Crownboard is an iPhone app distributed through the App Store. It is laid out for iPhone alone; there is no iPad version, and nothing runs on a computer or in a browser. The notes below follow roughly the order of a season, and the address to write to is at the end.

Setting up a yard

Create an apiary for each place your hives stand, then add hives to it. For a yard of many, "Add several hives" on the menu beside the apiary's name makes a numbered run at once. Every hive in every apiary appears on the first screen.

Recording a visit

Swipe a hive's row to the right and tap Inspect, or open the hive and tap "Record an inspection". The Shortcut "Record a hive inspection" does the same from the Action Button or by voice. No field has to be filled: a visit with only its date still marks that you were there. Queen, eggs, open brood, capped brood and queen cells each start at Didn't look and change only when you tap them, so a sign you did not check is never recorded as missing. Temperament, strength, frames and the work done are pick lists and counters. After saving, a bar offers the next hive in the apiary.

Mite counts

A varroa count is kept together with its method and its sample. A wash or a sugar roll is shown as mites per 100 bees; a sticky board is shown as mites per day. A count saved without a sample size is kept exactly as entered, and no rate is calculated for it. The app sets no threshold and does not say whether a count calls for treatment.

Photographs

Take a photo inside a visit, choose one from your library, or use Photo only on a hive to save a visit that is just a picture and fill in the rest later. Crownboard copies each picture into its own store, so tidying the camera roll takes nothing out of the record. On a picture's own screen, Keep a copy in Photos puts it back into your library.

Reminders and search

A reminder is a note and a date you write for a hive, delivered as a notification scheduled on the iPhone. The optional backup reminder counts from your last full backup; it prompts you and does not back anything up by itself. Search covers hive and apiary names, hive notes, where a queen came from, equipment, and the notes, actions and photo captions of every visit.

When a colony ends

There is no need to delete it. Open the hive, choose Archive, and pick the reason: died out, absconded, combined, sold or given away, or shut down, with a note if you like. The hive moves to Archived hives with every visit and picture intact, stays in exports, and can be brought back.

A second iPhone, or a new one

Use one Apple Account, with iCloud on, on each iPhone, and the apiaries, hives, visits, equipment, reminders and photographs appear on both through a private iCloud database that belongs to you. A change reaches the other iPhone the next time it has a connection. Sync costs nothing and needs no purchase.

If an iPhone is not signed in to iCloud, or iCloud is switched off for Crownboard, the app records on that iPhone alone and carries on working. What happens to records already on an iPhone when its Apple Account signs out or is changed is handled by iOS rather than by Crownboard, so make an export before doing either.

To move without iCloud, use Export & backup to write a full JSON backup, then Restore from backup on the new iPhone. Restoring replaces every apiary, hive, visit, photograph and reminder on that iPhone with the contents of the file.

Printing and exporting

A single visit shares or prints as a PDF from its own screen. "Share or print history" on the hive's menu produces the hive, its queen, its equipment and every visit, with or without the photographs. Export & backup also writes a CSV of every inspection for a spreadsheet. Every file goes through the iOS share sheet, and the app deletes its working copy once sharing finishes or is cancelled.

The lock

The lock is off until you turn it on. In Settings the switch reads "Shut the yard when the app is put away". Turning it on asks for Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode straight away; after that the yard is shut whenever the app goes to the background, covering whichever screen was open. iOS performs the check; the developer cannot open the lock on anyone's behalf.

Keeping more than two hives

Two active hives come with every feature at no cost. One optional in-app purchase, paid once and never renewed, lifts the limit. It changes nothing else: export, backup and restore, PDFs, the CSV, photographs, reminders, search, archiving, the lock and iCloud sync never depend on it. Once reinstalled, or on a further iPhone using that Apple Account, tap "Bring a purchase back" in Settings or "Already bought it? Bring it back" on the More hives screen. Apple deals with any refund.

What Crownboard leaves to you

The app keeps your own observations. It is not advice and not an official return, and it holds no treatment schedules, mite thresholds, registration rules or seasonal calendar. It never calls a colony queenless, and it does not diagnose disease or pests from a count, a note or a photograph; if you suspect a notifiable disease, the authority where your bees stand says what to do. Where a record is required for legal, veterinary or trading purposes, check what form is accepted where you keep bees. Crownboard makes no automatic backups, so keep an export somewhere other than the iPhone.

The app is licensed under Apple's Standard End User License Agreement, including its sections on warranty and on limitation of liability. As far as the law where you live allows, Crownboard is provided as it is, and the developer is not liable for lost colonies, honey, records or income that follow from using it or from relying on what is written in it.

Writing to the developer

Email alex@bukhalov.com with Crownboard in the subject. Say which version of the app and of iOS you have, and what you were doing when the trouble started. Requests for something the app does not do yet are welcome at the same address. Aleksei Bukhalov reads these himself, so an answer can take a few days.