Beekeeping Manual
Beekeeping Manual
Beekeeping Manual
March 2003
Bidata manual version 3.0
page nr. 2
Software download
HTTP://apimo.dk/download1.htm
PREFACE
The first beekeeping software for maintaining hive notes was offered to the Danish beekeeper society in
1987. Since then the software has been extensively redeveloped, thanks to the help I have received from
the Beekeeper Society in Denmark and feedback from the software users. Criticism has always been
welcome and I have listened to it with great interest, because the software is intended to meet the needs
of beekeepers.
Thank you to all who have contributed with criticism, suggestions and ideas. I hope that users of the
software will continue to forward their ideas and suggestions to me, so that the software can be as useful
as possible.
Bidata is a DATABASE PROGRAM specifically developed for use in beekeeping, for both normal hive
note use and queen breeding.
The purpose of the software is to make hive note writing simple and efficient, and to assist the beekeeper
in judging the various qualities of the queens, based on notes taken throughout the bee year. The
Program makes use of the judgement scale from the Danish Beekeeper Foundation and is inspired by the
Official Hive Note card distributed in 1990 by DBF.
INTRODUCTION
Bidata is a program that can run by itself (No runtime module is needed). The database is a Borland
Paradox database and it is possible to make an SQL search in the various databases. The software is
multilingual and the language can be changed from the Tool menu. The default language is English. The
Bidata program, when run for the first time, will ask you to select a language for the software.
Bidata is a database containing records that can be seen as electronic Hive Notes containing data
entered after visiting the beeyard.
The Bidata database can be seen as a card file with predefined index cards.
Each new bee year a new card file is generated. The card file is in two parts; daily hive notes, and
calculated index cards.
The Bidata software is complex in its functions. Although considerable effort has gone into making the
interface as simple as possible, it is strongly recommended that you read the manual in its entirety.
System requirements:
Bidata is developed for use on an IBM or IBM Compatible PC running Microsoft WindowsTM . The
software might run on other computers but it is required that Microsoft WindowsTM is installed or that the
platform is compatible with the Microsoft Windows TM platform.
It is recommended that the computer is provided with at least an Intel 386dx processor. An Intel 486dx
100 or better is preferable. Memory requirement is 4 Mb or better.
The set-up will ask several questions suggesting defaults: It is recommended to use default directories.
If you have purchased the software you will have received the registration.
If you got the software from a friend, or have received the Demo software, just enter what you like as a
serial number. All inputs are accepted, but only the correct registration number will turn the software into
registered software.
typical which will install both the Bidata software and the Pollen database and all language files. This will
use 10 Mb of your hard drive.
compact which is recommended for normal use. Only the necessary files needed for running the program
are installed and only Danish and English language files will be installed. (Use Selective installation to
install other language’s.)
Selective here you have a custom installation and install only the components you need.
It is highly recommended that you choose to reboot the computer. This will ensure that the computer will
launch all necessary files and enable newly installed files.
When you launch the software for the first time you will be presented with some information screens.
Please read these in their entirety. They give information about program behaviour, limitations, addresses
and so on. Some Bidata software packages contain incorrect registration fee information. The registration
fee is DKr 650.00 (Danish Crooner), which is approximately US $100.00 for a full registration, or DKr 275
(Danish Crooner), which is approximately US $45 for a 40-hive registration
When you have passed the information screens, you will be asked to enter details in a personal form,
comprising two input fields. One is for your initials, which are used for naming the queens. The queen
name is constructed from your initial and the hive number. This is the Buckfast method of naming queens.
The second input field is a password used to protect your data. There is no password stored in the data
files, it is used if you want to create a new database, empty a database and some other functions
involving potential loss of data.
You will also be shown a form from which you can choose to let Bidata act as queen breeder software or
just as normal hivenote software.
I suggest that you keep Auto create queen numbers checked, even if you are not a queen breeder. The
queen number is very like a civil registration number. This assures a unique identification of the queen.
This is needed when I add a family tree to the software. The queen number is combined from your initials,
the year the queen in introduced, the race of queen, a serial number and a number of the hive where the
queen is introduced. If you decide to uncheck this, then only your initials will be used as queen number.
If you have registered the software by now, the program should appear as registered, otherwise you will
find a menu item enabling you to register the software package.
This is the most important part of getting your program to perform to your requirements. A database
program is only as useful as the quality of input data allows it to be! You must discipline yourself to input
all the necessary data with care and accuracy.
Make your hive notes in the bee yard and then enter the data at your earliest opportunity. To help you in
collecting data the ‘quick entry’ screen and the work list printout have the same layout. As you enter hive
details in the database the hives will appear in the bee yard work list. The work list is meant to be taken
with you to the bee yard, where it is used to update your data. It shows the last entries made, so that you
need only input the changes since the last entry. There is also an opportunity to make a printout of a big
hive note card, which you can configure to your needs.
The spreadsheet style entry screen is named quick entry screen. Although it looks like a spreadsheet, it
does not function in that way. It is just an interface to enter routine data quickly and easily
If there are no hive notes present in the database, then you will be presented with a hive add request
form. The following is the no queen breeder screen.
Queen Field.
In the Queen field you enter the queen identification name. It is preferable that you use your initials and
the hive number like this: JJ0010, but you can enter whatever you like.
If you have chosen to use auto generation of queen numbers, then this was already filled out with this
new specific number like here in the queen breeder mode screen:
The edit buttons indicates that you can edit the dropdown lists to suit your needs.
Beeyard field.
In the Beeyard field you will enter the name of the bee yard in which the hive is placed. You will
preferably use the name of the location where the bee yard is placed. If you already have bee yards set
up then the dropdown list can be used to select the bee yard.
When you have entered the data into the New Beehive Add Form and press the OK button, you will be
presented with the calendar, where you can select the date for the actual hive note.
When you have selected the date, the next step will be to enter the hive note data into the database. This
is done in the input form, which will pop up next.
As you can see from the picture, the input form is grouped together with relevant data. The first group is
about the most common notes. The second group is about the food and the third group is about the index
criteria, which is the absolute power of this software, and distinguishes it from other hive note software on
the market. Those groups need a little more explanation. Generally when you are visiting the hive you
have a feeling of what is going on. Is the hive easy to work with? Is it going to swarm? Are the bees
bumping at you? And so on. A lot of this behaviour is genetic in nature, and by careful selection among
the queens that produce bees with behaviour you like, you can increase the joy of beekeeping, and also
get much better results, not only in honey harvest but also in handling the bees. I have to mention that
you don't have to judge all of it every time you open a hive. You can limit this judging to what actually is
up. The group is judged by numbers from 1 to 5 where five is the best and 1 is the condition where you
have to do something about it, mainly replacing the queen with a new queen with better genetic traits.
The Steady tendency is the behaviour of the bees when you open the hive, and maybe want to study the
queen. Number 5 is where the bees stay in the hive and only a few bees lift off into the air. The queen is
easy to study; because she continues to do her job and the bees will not try to escape the comb, even if
the comb is lifted out. You can keep the bees under control just by spraying them with a little water. and it
is easy to shuttle off the bees. Number 1 is given if you are getting a lot of bees into the air, the queen is
trying to escape, and when you lift a comb out the bees will try to escape maybe building a lump of bees
on the button stick of the frame and then fall off. It is impossible to study the queen even if she is marked,
because she will run away as far as she can, and maybe run out of the hive too. Your judgement here is
what you feel about the situation.
5. Very quiet, the bees are moving quietly around on the combs, even if provoked. They are easy to
shuttle off the combs. They don’t go into the air even if you shuttle them off.
4. Quiet. The bees a little disturbed on the combs (don’t lift off, but lift off if shuttled). Or they are difficult
to shuttle off the combs.
3. Nervous. The bees are rushing around on the combs and few bees lift off unprovoked.
2. Disturbed. The bees run off the combs. A lot of bees lift off unprovoked
The Swarm Inertness is important because it can be very time consuming to catch swarms and to try to
eliminate swarming which is practically impossible to stop when it gets going: The bees have made swarm
cells and they have started to seal those. Some queens are more up to swarming than others, and the
swarm tendency is a genetic trait. You can limit the swarming physically by taking care of keeping the
balance in the hive. A normal colony is around 30.000 individuals, with 200 drones. If the hive population
increases significantly over that point the colony will think it is strong enough for a natural splitting of the
hive. So by doing a split into two colonies , and giving the split a new mated queen, will have the effect,
that the hive is going back to normal and you can use the swarm catching time better by taking care of
those new colonies. The swarming can also be triggered by a heavy honey flow filling each empty cell up
with nectar, and thereby blocking the egg production of the queen. Be aware that a good queen can
produce around 2000 eggs a day. If she is restricted in this by too little room, the pheromones she
produces will lower and thereby trigger the swarming. A factor is also that the nurse bees will have little to
do, and the balance in the hive is out of order. The ideal situation is where there is room in the broad
chamber for both egg production and the nectar flow. There is work for the building bees as well for the
nurse bees. If these conditions are met some queens will just continue working and the bees will replace
the queen when the time comes (silent queen exchange), but some will swarm at every change given,
maybe even swarm more than once in a year.
4. Swarm cells with eggs, but no swarming, and no effort made to stop swarming.
2. Swarm cells with eggs and feed larvae. More than one action taken to stop swarming.
Tendency to sting or Aggressiveness is an important issue to face. Mainly because of the extra workload
and discomfort from working aggressive bees gives, but also to point out that bee poison is poison and it
is wise to limit the stings received from the bees to a minimum, because one can develop an allergic
reaction, and thereby be forced to give up beekeeping. Some bees are very aggressive and some are
very gentle to work with. The ideal is not to receive one single non-provoked sting. With very aggressive
bees one may have to dress for full protection whilst still 50 meters away from the beeyard.
Tendency to Sickness is also important to watch out for, because it is also genetically influenced. This
criteria judges how effective the bees are in keeping the brood chamber free of sick brood. Some bees
are able to keep the most common bee diseases away by quickly removing sick or dead brood while other
colonies break down.
4. You see some nosema or chalk brood and the like but they handle it themselves.
3. You see evidence of tracheal mites or American Foulbrood in action (No medication given)
The right side of the input form is available for you to use if needed. The varroa checkbox is normally kept
checked, at least if you are living in Europe. The varroa count is to be given the daily fall down of varroa
mites, because this is important to know for the treatment of varroa. A guideline for the varroa count is
two hundred times the count, to get a picture of the varroa attachments. Even as little as 2 daily counts
will demand a treatment in one or another way or you will lose the colony, either by breaking down or in a
swarm where all bees will leave the hive in an attempt to get rid of the varroa mites. The Indian bee
handles the varroa situation in this way, and it is genetically built into many normal colonies. The
treatments you use can be tracked in the sickness database, where you can enter the treatment used for
different diseases.
The plus and extra fields are for creative use. The plus fields work in this way. Numbers added will be
accumulated when an index calculation is done while the Diff field will be subtracted. The difference field
is not of practical use, at least I have not found a practical use for it. It is up to you if you use it or not. You
can change the labels of these fields, and here is a suggestion for the plus field labels.
This way you can keep track of success in queen breeding for each hive used for this purpose.
The extra fields can be similarly relabelled, and can be used for private judgement of the colony in other
points than the points meant for index calculation.
You will also find three short notes. Note 1 will come out as a print in worksheet (the field worksheet that
is printed when you press the button with the printer from the front), and can be used for what to do next.
The other two can be short notes about weather, temperature or the like.
The two big notes are big notes, because you have 65000 chars available in each note. I doubt you ever
will need more notes taken when visiting the hive.
When you press the OK button, you will find the hive added into the database, shown in both the upper
half of the screen and in the lower half. The upper half will always contain the last entered hive note and
the lower part will contain all hive notes entered for that beehive.
The navigator buttons are used to navigate through the hive notes and to accept or cancel changes made to
hive notes. The Button Panel functions are (from left):
1. Import queens from previous bee year to current bee year, (It is only visible if you have a database
from the previous bee year).
8. Graphical display of the index cards, (only shown if you have calculated an index for your bee
yards).
14. Update the bee yard list. Must be done if you change language.
15. Bee yard list. Shows the names of the bee yards you have entered into the database and is used to
limit the show of hive notes to a specific bee yard.
16. The two note boxes. Each showing Big notes. The note box can contain up to 65000 characters in
all. I think this is more than you will ever need to enter. There is a total of five note fields available,
but they are only available from the Input data screen. If you click those then a bigger screen will
popup. You can here edit the notes.
17. Prepare for Palm. If you check this then only the hives in grid will be transferred to the palm
handheld. This checkbox is only visible if you have installed the Palm support.
The above shown picture shows the two panels that can be hidden from the show menu item.
1.Select all the hives in grid.
2.Select grouped hives.
3.Undo selection.
The second radio button shows those hives you have grouped.
The third radio button selects the hives not yet grouped.
The repair database button will repair the database if you get a key violation. This should not happen in
this new software.
The print button will print out the grid in report form with the title in the edit books as heading.
The search button will bring you to the search engine.
The filter panel allows you to put an effective filtering on the hives in your database. This is especially
useful if you want to filter hives for manipulation such as multi add hive notes for a group of hives or if you
want to transfer the hives to the Palm Handheld if you have one.
if you do not need the above facilities you can turn those off by selecting the show menu item
Pop Up Menu
Pressing the Right Mouse button will launch a pop up menu at the mouse pointer position. In addition to
the push button panel functions, you can set the chart data you want displayed. This function is limited to
displays that are useful and practical.
As you can see nearly all functions are at your fingertips. You can show
and hide columns, edit the column headings, search the database and a lot
more.
If you click the search item then you will get to a new very powerful search screen, but before you get
there you will be asked about creating a new search template. Just type in a name and you will then be
placed in the search screen.
The new engine does not require you to know anything about my database layout. When you have built
your query you click the blitz button, and the result is shown in the grid.
You now have the capability to export the data to text, Html and Dbase format. Those exports allow you to
import into Access, Excel and FrontPage. If you check the “Keep Search” on exit then the quick entry will
adopt the search result. Use the Data model menu to get access to e.g. configuration. This though is a
complicated task, and I suggest you refrain from this if you are not familiar with building queries. It is
however, safe to change group names and reorganize the fields into other groups. If you want to change
the group names then be aware that you cannot use double clicks on the group names. Use click to mark
it then click again to edit. You cannot use spaces in group names. A trick is to write the group name with
spaces in notepad, then copy this group name to clipboard, and then paste into the group name edit.
The index calculation feature distinguishes Bidata software from other hive note programs on the market
and is at the core of Bidata design. Index calculation makes it possible to directly compare queens within
a bee yard and even queens from different bee yards, normally not possible. Accordingly, it is relevant to
search for queens with a specific index in all bee yards. You create a new search template in the search
engine set up for this purpose.
In the search select the index and set the value between what you want. e.g. index bigger than 97 and
index less than 100.
Clicking the blitz button will then show the queens that apply to those criteria selection.
Remember to get this into play you must have calculated index for the hives.
You can multi select by holding down the Ctrl key and then click on the hives you want to select. This
allows you to e.g. add a hive note to all selected just by filling out one note. The same goes for the
disease screen, or selecting for grouping or barcode printout. You can also move and delete multi
selected hives.
It means that if you have treated a bee yard with Apistan then you can multi select the hives in the yard
and then add a disease treatment to all of the hives.
Palm support!
It is possible to use a Palm based OS handheld computer in conjunction with the Bidata software. All
versions of Palm OS can be used.
Palm Support is not installed by default. You have to install this option. When the install loads, you get the
following screen:
Select the Custom install and activate the items you want installed.
After the installation is complete, you will have to download the Palm Bidata to the handheld. This MUST
be done from the ALL Programs\ Apimo Programs\ Palm Support\ Install to handheld Icon:
It is important that the Bidata Palm is installed to the handheld this way, because the Hotsynch manager
needs an entry to be able to connect to Bidata.
If you have data on the Handheld, then this data will be transferred to the PC Bidata when you make a
hotsynch and the Updated database in Bidata PC will then be transferred to the Handheld. Otherwise the
data from the Bidata PC will be transferred to the Handheld Bidata Palm. Bidata PC must be up running
for this to happen. By default all data from Bidata PC will be transferred to the Palm, but having maybe
5000 hives configured will not be easy to handle on the Palm. This is due to the limitation in available
memory on the Palm. Instead, you can search or filter out those hives you have in mind to handle during
the day. This is done from the quick entry screen. You will find a check box that you can check when you
have the hives you want to handle present in the upper grid. When you check the box then those hives
present will be transferred to the Palm Bidata.
You can also make a search, by activating the Button, for the hives you want to work with.
Scanning this will place you immediately on the record for hive nr. 12
I know this might seem an expensive solution but it will be of big help if you have hundreds of hives. The
scanner can of course also be used for other purposes such as stock registration. A Visor handheld can
also be equipped with a scanner, and for other handhelds there will be an add-on available. Search the
web for Palm and scanners.
You can cancel this and then create your own language file based on an open languagefile
You can now from the language menu item sort the language in ascending order and you will now find the
items sorted so that equal items are listed together. This have the benefit that if you translate an item all
equal items are translated at once.
E.g. if you translate the first occurrence of Continue UnRegistered ??, then the remaining equal strings
will be translated too.
It might seems a bit heavy to go through all but doing this kind of work helping me out will not take that
time it at first seems to do. I think it can be done within a few days. And the benefit of this translations tool
is that you can translate the software into the deep of it.
Equal=is equal to
NotEqual=is not equal to
LessThan=is less than
LessOrEqual=is less than or equal to
GreaterThan=greater than
GreaterOrEqual=greater than or equal to
IsNull=is null
InList=is in list
StartsWith=starts with
NotStartsWith=does not start with
Contains=contains
NotContains=does not contain
Between=is between
ttlAny=any
If you meet a & then this means that the letter following is a hotkey letter
In one place you will find && this is not an error and must stay.
I hope for your cooperation in this for me and other users of my software important task.
When you have finished translation the only thing you have to do is to send the translated file to me. It will
have a name of
BidataWin98_Xp.XXX.lng where the XXX stands for your language abbreviation. E.g. ES for Spanish, FR
for French and so on.