Hive Scale — Smart Beehive Scale & Weight Monitoring
A scale under the hive is the simplest way to know what's happening inside a colony without opening it. Beekeepers call this a scale hive: its weight tells you about the honey flow, the honey crop and stores consumption across the whole apiary.
What hive weight tells you
- Start and end of the honey flow. Weight goes up by 1–5 kg (2–11 lb) a day as the bees bring in nectar. When the gain stops, the flow is over — time to think about harvesting or feeding.
- Strength of the flow. The daily gain shows which nectar source is producing right now and whether it's worth moving the apiary to a new location.
- Winter stores consumption. A slow, steady weight loss means normal wintering. A sharp drop — or consumption stopping altogether — is a reason to check that colony first in spring.
- Swarming. A sudden loss of 2–4 kg (4–9 lb) within a few minutes is almost certainly a swarm. The app sends a notification about any sharp change in weight.
- Theft or a fallen hive. A zero or erratic weight is a sign that something has happened to the hive.
How Beehive scales work
The scale sits under the hive and measures weight and temperature on a schedule by itself. Readings are stored in the scale's memory, so no data is lost even when nobody is around.
Offline — via Bluetooth
Come to the apiary, open the app, and your phone pulls the entire stored history over Bluetooth. No SIM card or account needed. This is also where you set up the scale: calibration, tare, measurement interval.
Remotely — via a hub
The hub stays at the apiary, collects data from several scales and sends it to the server over Wi‑Fi or a mobile network (SIM card). You see hive weights in the app from home, and a sharp change in weight triggers a push notification or a message from the Telegram bot.
Charts and history in the app
Each scale is linked to a hive. Weight and daily change are shown right in the hive list, and the scale screen has a table and charts of weight and temperature by hour, day, week and month. From there, one tap opens the hive journal so you can record what you saw during the inspection.
How many scales an apiary needs
To track the honey flow, one scale hive per apiary site is enough — put the scale under a colony of average strength. If you want to monitor every colony (for example, in a breeding apiary or when rearing queens), place scales under several hives: one hub serves all the scales at a site.
The app works without scales too
Scales are an add-on. The inspection journal, tasks, hive cards and queen rearing timer in Beehive are free and work on a single phone, without internet. Learn more in the article about the beekeeping journal.
