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Why Excel won't make your apiary business excel.

Utilizing spreadsheets for hive management presents a common challenge: it creates an extra administrative burden to maintain and keep them up to date. While free tools like spreadsheets can automate report generation and offer graphical representations, they often require significant time and expertise to customize effectively for beekeeping needs.

As your business expands, the complexity of managing spreadsheets increases exponentially. Reconciling worksheets and entering data becomes a time-consuming task prone to errors.  Processing dozens of worksheets requires several hours a week of meticulous attention to detail and organizational skills.

Limitations of Spreadsheets 

To reduce the burden, this often leads to shorthand entries and recoding of mere totals for hive deaths and queens replaced, etc., losing the analytical value necessary for identifying and addressing specific issues within your beekeeping operation.  The reason why the totals are changing is essential.  For instance, pinpointing the causes of winter hive losses requires detailed analysis, which may be obscured by simplified spreadsheet entries. 

In some cases, biases or preconceptions can influence perceived causes of problems, as demonstrated by experiences in New Zealand, where identifying the significant role of insufficient feeding in hive deaths challenged conventional wisdom about queen-related issues or varroa being the cause.

The simple fact was hives were not getting fed enough in the spring rounds or could not access the feeder, i.e., there was feed on the hive, but it was too far away from the cluster.  Once identified as a significant factor the solution was a simple management practice fix:  feeding more in autumn or introducing an earlier spring feeding round, and rotating the feeder closer to the cluster.

MyApiary’s data collection capabilities offer a remedy by enabling thorough record-keeping without sacrificing analytical depth.

Moreover, you probably rely on multiple spreadsheets for different types of information, possibly maintained by different personnel in the business.  This leads to fragmentation and further inefficiency, with a messy situation of Multiple spreadsheets, Multiple versions and copies, resulting in disjointed information. 

MyApiary eliminates this by providing a centralized platform accessible to all apiary staff members, enhancing collaboration and decision-making.

Benefits of using an system

Beyond simplifying administrative tasks, MyApiary serves as a versatile tool for beekeeping management.  Its features include regional and yard dashboards, work planners, reporting functionalities, and mapping with turn-by-turn directions.

Each apiary crew carries a device and enters information in the field after they have completed working the site ensures the information is fresh.  Our entry wizard makes quick work of recording what was done, asks six questions about what was seen and collates the final site makeup and hive strengths.

Feedback from users underscores the effectiveness of on-site data entry, which not only minimizes errors but also fosters ownership and engagement among crew members.  By empowering teams with access to timely and accurate information, you can cut out the daily sync meetings and spend more time communicating the real business issues, such as resourcing to get critical rounds completed, too,  what been observed in the hives.  This helps identify a potential issue brewing that can be corrected now.

Overall, this promotes proactive decision-making and enhances overall operational efficiency, with crews being better prepared, knowing exactly what today’s plan is, spending less time on comebacks for missed items and less time getting lost.  This means more time focused on what is happening in the hives, ultimately driving better hive health and productivity.

In summary, while spreadsheets may suffice for basic data management, MyApiary offers a comprehensive solution tailored to the unique needs of modern beekeeping operations.
Ensuring you have the time lift you head and look around at what’s really happing in nature and in your business, providing critical insight to how this season is tracking.

Summary of benefits:

• One-time data entry, even when Offline.  No administration requirement to enter data. ⏱️
• Centralized source of knowledge: everyone has the same information and is on the same page. 
• Cut out the daily sync meetings with our work scheduler and spend more time communicating the issues.  ⏱️
• Site pins and Directions to the job, reducing the amount of time crews get lost. ⏱️
• Reduced loss in translation errors with standardised bi-lingual grading and job templates. 
• Instant analytics and Historical reporting at the click of a button. ⏱️