Authoritative project documentation
ApiaryLens Product Overview and Capability Whitepaper
Status: Public Preview 1 product narrative. For the concise audience-facing version, see the Marketing Overview.
What is ApiaryLens?
ApiaryLens is an open-source apiary intelligence platform for beekeepers. Public Preview 1 tracks apiaries, hives, queens, equipment, inspections, health observations, photos, mite counts, feeding, treatments, harvests, follow-ups, and long-term hive history. It is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and is not GA or a stable release. Features and workflows may change as Preview updates arrive, sometimes multiple times per day.
Keep backups current during Preview 1; do not make ApiaryLens the sole copy of irreplaceable hive records or media.
ApiaryLens is designed to be simple enough for a family getting its first hive and powerful enough to grow into bee club, research, and commercial use.
Why It Exists
New beekeepers need more than a notebook. They need a way to remember what happened in each hive, understand seasonal tasks, track queen performance, watch for health issues, and learn from mentors.
ApiaryLens turns hive records into a living history.
Who It Is For
- New beekeepers
- Families
- Bee clubs
- Mentors
- Commercial apiaries
- Extension offices
- Educators
- Researchers
Current Product
The first usable Public Preview focuses on practical family and hobbyist hive management. The accepted MVP Definition and UAT Contract establishes the exact release boundary; the broader capabilities below include post-MVP roadmap direction and are not all launch requirements.
Current MVP capability surface:
- Multi-apiary tracking
- Multi-hive tracking
- Hive equipment tracking
- Box and frame records
- Queen tracking
- Inspection logging
- Private original photos and thumbnails
- Hive health observations
- Varroa mite tracking
- Feeding records
- Treatment records
- Honey harvest records
- Manual weather snapshots
- Sharing with family or mentors
- PWA support
- Offline-first design
- Docker self-hosted deployment
- REST API
- Guided installation, backup, restore, updates, and data export
- Authenticated family synchronization across phones, tablets, and computers
- Safe public synthetic demo
Weather history, regional bloom intelligence, video, QR workflows, and native mobile clients remain in the broader roadmap rather than the MVP acceptance boundary.
Future Capabilities
ApiaryLens should grow into a full apiary intelligence platform.
Future features:
- AI photo review
- AI inspection summaries
- Brood pattern analysis
- Queen detection
- Swarm risk flags
- Honey flow forecasting
- Native iOS and Android apps
- Bee club mode
- Research mode
- Optional community galleries or registries if later justified; no marketplace is committed
- Home Assistant integration
- Hive scales and sensors
- Route planning
- Commercial reporting
- Optional hosted SaaS
Photos and Video Almanac
ApiaryLens should preserve the visual story of each hive.
A beekeeper should be able to look back over time and see:
- What the brood looked like
- How the queen performed
- When pests appeared
- How honey stores changed
- What the entrance looked like
- How the hive responded through seasons
This creates a practical photo and video almanac for each hive.
Weather and Bloom Intelligence
ApiaryLens should connect hive performance to the local environment.
The system should track:
- Historical weather
- Rainfall
- Heat and cold events
- Frost dates
- Bloom timing
- Nectar and pollen sources
- Weather impact on inspections
- Weather impact on honey production
Open Source and Self-Hosted
ApiaryLens should be free or as close to free as possible for families and bee clubs.
Core principles:
- No required paid cloud account
- No required AI subscription
- Runs locally or on a small server
- Docker Compose deployment
- User owns the data
- Exportable data
Future SaaS Possibility
ApiaryLens is not SaaS at launch.
But the architecture should allow a future hosted version for users who want easy onboarding and do not want to self-host.
The open-source project remains first-class even if a hosted version exists later.
Public Web Experience
apiarylens.orgis the project, learning, documentation, release, and community home.apiarylens.appis the safe public demo. A managed application or SaaS offering remains a possible future direction.apiarylens.devis the developer, API, integration, SDK, and contributor portal.apiarylens.comredirects to.orgwhile reserved for future commercial use.
All official public frontends are hosted on Cloudflare. The open-source server and self-hosted deployment remain portable and do not require Cloudflare.
Brand Positioning
ApiaryLens means seeing the hive clearly.
Possible tagline:
ApiaryLens: Open-source insight for every hive.
Alternative tagline:
ApiaryLens: See every hive. Understand every colony.