Hiveday support

On first launch, tap Add your apiary, give it a name, then add your first hive. From the hive, tap New inspection, fill in what you saw and tap Save inspection. The hive then shows its next visit, and the Hives list shows which hives are due. You can add the queen's details and the inspection interval later, from the hive's Edit screen.

On a new iPhone with iCloud on, the first screen looks for your records in iCloud and opens by itself when they arrive.

Free, with no time limit: two active hives in any number of apiaries, with unlimited inspections, varroa counts and reminders for them; the whole medicines record for every hive, with its PDF and CSV export; the inspections CSV export; iCloud sync; and backup, restore and safety copies.

Hiveday Plus (£1.99 a month or £12.99 a year, UK prices) adds more than two active hives, photos on inspections, and the varroa and brood charts. There's no free trial, and Hiveday Plus isn't shared through Family Sharing. Archived hives don't count towards the two.

Open Hiveday's Settings and tap Restore Purchases (the Hiveday Plus screen has a restore button too). Make sure the iPhone is signed in to the same Apple Account you subscribed with.

Subscriptions are managed by Apple. On your iPhone, open Settings › [your name] › Subscriptions, or tap Manage subscription in Hiveday's Settings. Cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period to stop the next renewal; Plus carries on until the period you've paid for ends.

Refunds are handled by Apple: ask for one at reportaproblem.apple.com. We can't issue refunds for App Store purchases ourselves.

Nothing is deleted, and everything still exports. Your first two active hives carry on as in the free app, other active hives become read-only (you can still view, export and archive them), and the medicines record keeps working for every hive. Photos you've added stay; the charts are locked until you subscribe again.

Yes, free, through your own iCloud. When you're signed in to iCloud with iCloud on for Hiveday, your records and photos sync to every iPhone signed in to your Apple Account, through your private iCloud database, which Mirentha can't see. There's no Hiveday account to make.

Your name and address, your reminder settings and the safety copies stay on each iPhone. Hiveday's Settings shows whether iCloud is on, under Your data. By Apple's design, signing out of iCloud or turning it off for Hiveday removes the synced records from that iPhone. Apple keeps them in your iCloud, and a safety copy can bring them back.

With iCloud on, sign in to the same Apple Account on the new iPhone and install Hiveday: your records and photos arrive by themselves. Apple's own iPhone backup, or Quick Start when you set up the new iPhone, also moves everything.

Or, in Hiveday's Settings, tap Export backup and save the file somewhere you can reach from the new iPhone (Files, iCloud Drive or AirDrop). On the new iPhone, tap Restore from a backup on Hiveday's first screen, or Restore from file… in Settings. A backup file holds all your records but not the inspection photos.

Restoring replaces everything on that iPhone and, with iCloud on, on every device signed in to your iCloud. Hiveday saves what was there first, and Restore previous data in Settings brings it back. If iCloud is still fetching your records, wait for it to finish first, or some records can appear twice.

Check that Reminders is on in Hiveday's Settings, and that notifications are allowed in the iPhone's Settings › Notifications › Hiveday. A few things are by design:

• A hive with no inspection yet has no due date, so it gets no reminder.
• A hive that's already overdue gets no reminder until it's inspected or you move its next visit; it stays at the top of the Hives list instead.
• Removal reminders come only for treatments with a planned removal date and the remove reminder switched on.
• While Hiveday Plus is off, hives beyond the first two have no visit reminders.
• iOS holds a limited number of scheduled reminders, so Hiveday keeps the nearest 60 and tops them up each time you open it.
• Each iPhone has its own Reminders switch and time. Reminders follow changes you make on your other devices.

In Medicines, tap Export medicines record. Add your name and address the first time (they go at the top of the PDF, and you can change them in Settings, under Your details), choose the period (the last five years unless you change it), then tap Share PDF or Share CSV to print it, email it or save it to Files.

UK and EU rules ask for medicine records to be kept for at least five years, so Hiveday lets you delete one only in the first seven days after you enter it, to put a mistake right. After that it shows “Keep this record until” with the date, and lets you delete it once that date has passed. You can edit a medicine record at any time.

For an alcohol wash or sugar roll, mites divided by bees sampled, times 100: 9 mites in 300 bees is 3.0 per 100 bees. For a natural drop, mites divided by days: 21 mites in 7 days is 3.0 per day. Counts recorded as Other have no rate. Hiveday shows the numbers and, with Plus, charts them against a reference line you can set for each hive. It doesn't tell you when to treat.

From the last digit of the queen's year, by the international marking code: 1 or 6 white, 2 or 7 yellow, 3 or 8 red, 4 or 9 green, 5 or 0 blue. Set the year in the hive's Edit screen.

A colony that died, was united, sold or given away can be archived from its hive screen, with the reason and the date. Its records stay and still export. An archived hive can then be deleted for good by typing its name; medicine records keep its name as they were written. An apiary can be deleted once it has no hives, active or archived.

There's no single button for it. Delete the Hiveday app from each of your devices: iOS deletes its storage with it, safety copies included. Then delete Hiveday's data from iCloud in the iPhone's Settings › [your name] › iCloud › Storage (or Manage Account Storage) › Hiveday › Delete Data from iCloud; until you do, it stays in iCloud and comes back if you install Hiveday again. Export a backup first if you want your records back later. Copies in your iPhone backups, and any files you've exported, need deleting separately.

Each time you leave Hiveday after a change, it saves a copy of your records on the iPhone and keeps the 10 newest. If records go missing, for example after signing out of iCloud, open Settings, then Safety copies, and bring one back. What's on the iPhone is saved first, so Restore previous data can undo it. A safety copy holds your records but not photos, and it isn't synced.

New changes stay on your iPhone until there's room in your iCloud storage, and nothing on the iPhone is lost. Free up space, or add storage, in the iPhone's Settings › [your name] › iCloud.

That can happen after restoring a backup file while iCloud was still fetching your records, or after bringing back a safety copy with iCloud off and then turning it on. Write to us with the form above and we'll help you sort them out.

No. With Hiveday Plus you can add up to six photos to an inspection through Apple's photo picker, which hands Hiveday only the pictures you choose. The app keeps a smaller copy of each in its database, without the original's location data, and it syncs through your iCloud with its inspection. Photos aren't in backup files or safety copies.