Beekeeping Calculators

Mite monitoring, honey moisture, hive weight and feeding. 10 calculators for beekeepers. A second honey yield estimator sits over in Gardening.

Varroa mite counts come with a correction most beginners never hear. An alcohol wash of about 300 bees gives mites per 100 bees, and thresholds run from 1% in spring to 3% by late summer. But the wash only sees phoretic mites, the ones riding on adult bees, and roughly 80% of the population is sealed inside capped brood at any moment. The colony’s real load is around five times what came out of the jar. A 3% count is not a mild problem.

Honey moisture settles when to harvest. Below 18.6% honey keeps indefinitely. Above it, wild yeasts ferment the sugars within weeks. Capping is a proxy for moisture rather than the other way round, so a refractometer reading 16% means ready whatever the caps look like, and 21% means wait even on a fully capped frame.

With no meter, use the 80% capped rule and the shake test.

Hive weight and winter cluster pages work in stores rather than frames, because what decides whether a colony survives February is how many kilos of honey are on the hive, and a frame that looks full from the top bar can be half empty behind the comb.