The short answers to the things beekeepers ask before signing up. If your question is not here, email support@whisperbee.app.
You set up a hive, then log inspections by voice (NFC tap → narrate → AI extracts queen-seen, brood pattern, varroa count, temperament, and treatments) or by hand on the mobile app or web portal. Either path lands the same structured fields on the inspection record, and concerns become action items automatically.
Native iOS and Android mobile apps for use at the hive, plus a web portal at whisperbee.app for review, billing, and account management. The mobile app is the source of truth for your data; the web portal reads from the same backend.
No, not in the apiary. Every write works offline — voice recordings, photos, treatments, harvests, and edits all save to a local database on your phone. AI transcription and extraction queue for when the network returns; the inspection shows a "Transcribing…" badge until they finish.
Yes — manual entry is a first-class workflow on both the mobile app and the web portal. Choose Manual on a mobile hive screen, or click Enter Manually next to Record Inspection on the web portal, and fill the form by hand. Every voice-extractor field is a manual-entry field — no microphone or AI quotas involved. Many beekeepers prefer typing for evening review on the web portal even when voice would have worked at the hive.
Up to two active hives on Free, with full voice logging, offline sync, NFC tags, action items, and the hive health engine. That is enough to evaluate the workflow on a real apiary before deciding whether to upgrade.
Speak the wash count, sticky-board count, or alcohol-wash result during inspection — or type it into the inspection form on the mobile app or web portal. The mite count lands as a structured field on the inspection record, plots on the hive timeline, and factors into the hive health rules — so a rising trend surfaces as an action item before it is a crisis.
Yes. Whether you saw the queen and whether eggs are present are structured fields the AI extracts from every inspection. Queen-related events — supersedure cells observed, a queen cell introduced, a queen replaced — land on the hive timeline as discrete events so you can see queen lineage at a glance, and you can attach photos for marking confirmation. Saying "new queen" or "requeened" in your inspection bumps the queen-year on the hive automatically.
A seasonal rules engine reads each inspection in context. Mentioning queen cells during an inspection opens a "split to avoid swarming" action item that links back to the inspection that triggered it; the broader hive-health rules also flag swarm risk based on the patterns in your hive's recent history.
Yes. Treatments (Apivar, oxalic acid, formic, hop guard, Apistan, Api Life Var, thymol-based, amitraz) and harvests (frames harvested, honey/wax/pollen/propolis amounts with weight units, and notes) are first-class records on each hive. The voice extractor captures them when you mention them at the hive; you can also enter them manually from the web portal or mobile app.
Inexpensive NFC stickers you put on your hives. Tapping your phone to one opens that hive in the app — first tap shows the hive detail screen, a second tap auto-starts a voice inspection so you do not have to fumble through menus with gloves on.
Yes — even at two hives, but the real benefit shows up at scale. Once you pass roughly twenty hives, hive names blur together (was that "Lavender" or "Lavender Two"?) and a unique tag eliminates the guess. WhisperBee supports both NFC stickers (tap-to-open, tap-to-record) and QR codes (scan with the in-app camera), so you can pick whichever fits your boxes and gloves.
For reference, the off-the-shelf NFC stickers we use on our own hives: an example pack on Amazon.
Yes. Apiaries are the top-level grouping for your hives, with their own location, notes, and weather context. The Sideliner and Commercial tiers are designed around multi-apiary operations; tier limits apply to total active hives across apiaries, not to apiary count itself.
No. The inspection record is yours — open it on the mobile app or web portal and edit any field you want to change. The AI Disclaimer page documents which providers process which data and what they retain.
Open the inspection on the mobile app or web portal and edit the fields you want to change. Your edit is what shows up on the hive timeline going forward.
For voice extraction: the audio is sent to a speech-to-text provider, and the transcript is sent to a language-model provider for structured extraction; both results land in your account. For the Daily Briefing: we send recent history for that hive, recent weather, and a curated beekeeping knowledge base to the model — never your full account.
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Authentication uses Clerk with Google or Apple sign-in. The mobile app keeps your data in an encrypted local database; the cloud copy is in Amazon RDS in the United States. Photos are EXIF-stripped server-side before storage so location metadata never leaks.
Your hive and apiary GPS coordinates are stored on your account because the app needs them for weather lookups, the map view in your portal, and apiary grouping. They are owner-only — never aggregated, never shared with other users, never visible outside your account. We also precompute an H3 hexagonal grid cell index at resolution 6 (~36 km²) alongside the apiary coordinates, so a future hyperlocal community-intelligence layer can aggregate regional patterns without ever exposing exact addresses.
Yes. A full data export is available from your account settings: inspections, hives, photos, treatments, harvests, and audio recordings. Exports are delivered as a downloadable archive you can keep regardless of your subscription status.
Yes. Account deletion is self-serve from the account screen. It cancels any active subscription, removes your records from active databases, and queues a hard-delete of remaining backups within thirty days. You receive a final export at the time of deletion if you have not already taken one.
Yes. From the hive menu, choose Mark as lost and record the date of loss. When you're ready to file, export the USDA FSA-573 ELAP report — a single PDF with hive identification, apiary GPS region, complete inspection history, treatments, harvests, and embedded photos. Sign it in person at the FSA office at submission.
Looking for billing-specific questions — refunds, downgrades, upgrade pro-rating, annual vs monthly? See the Pricing FAQ.
Still wondering whether WhisperBee fits the way you work?
Read why we built it this way, the founder's guide to tracking varroa, or sign up free and try it on a real apiary.