Offline hive inspection logs for beekeepers

The idea

Beekeepers inspect every hive every week or two through the season, and the record of what they saw is a pencil note on an index card under the hive lid, or nothing. When a colony fails, they cannot reconstruct the queen’s history or the last mite count. Hobby apps exist, and their reviews all contain the same one-star complaint: the app dies without signal, and beeyards are precisely the places with no signal.

The wedge is boring engineering discipline: SQLite as the source of truth, sync as an afterthought, and a form a person wearing nitrile gloves over leather gloves can complete in 30 seconds. Add the one piece of domain logic that has real money attached, mite-treatment withdrawal periods, and the app stops being a diary and starts protecting sellable honey.

Who pays

Sideliner beekeepers, running 10 to 100 hives and selling honey and nucs at markets, pay 8 USD/month. This is a person with revenue, inventory, and a legal obligation not to sell contaminated honey; 8 USD is trivial against one lost super. Distribution runs through beekeeping associations, county bee clubs, and the r/Beekeeping and Beesource communities, where “works offline, actually” is a complete pitch because everyone has been burned by the incumbents.

MVP scope

• Offline-first SQLite storage with background sync to Supabase
• Apiary and hive management with glove-friendly UI
• 30-second structured inspection form and per-hive history timeline
• Treatment log with auto-generated removal and withdrawal reminders, plus in-app withdrawal warnings
• Free tier at 3 hives, subscription above
• Skip for v1: photos, weather integration, hive scales or sensor hardware, team sharing, web dashboard

Build HiveLog, an offline-first mobile app for beekeepers running 10 to 100 hives. Stack: React Native (Expo), local SQLite as the source of truth, Supabase for auth and sync.

Architecture: every read and write hits SQLite first; the app must be fully usable with airplane mode on. A sync engine pushes and pulls changes to Supabase when connectivity returns, using per-row updated_at timestamps and last-write-wins. Never block the UI on network.

Core flow: home screen lists apiaries, each apiary lists hives as large tap targets (usable with gloves: minimum 56pt touch areas, no small icons). Tapping a hive opens a 30-second inspection form: all fields are segmented buttons or steppers, no free typing required. Fields: queen seen (yes/no/queen cells), brood pattern (good/spotty/none), temperament, stores level, mite count (alcohol wash number), boxes added/removed, and an optional voice-note-style text field.

Treatments: logging a mite treatment (Apivar, Formic Pro, oxalic, etc.) auto-creates two dated reminders from a built-in table: treatment removal date and honey withdrawal end date. Show a red banner on any hive currently inside a withdrawal period so honey supers do not go on by mistake.

Screens: apiary list, hive list, inspection form, hive history timeline, treatment calendar, settings/sync status.

Pricing: 8 USD/month or 70 USD/year via app-store subscription; free tier capped at 3 hives.