We're here to help
Support
The fastest way to reach a real person is email. Write to asterstudio9@gmail.com and we'll get back to you.
Where should I start?
Start with The hive year. Choose a landscape, set the conditions, and the year opens on today's date. Drag along the months at the bottom to move through the year, or press play and let it run. Mini lessons and The bee lens are on the home screen and can be visited in any order.
How do I feed or treat the colony?
You cannot, and that is deliberate. HiveLab is about conditions, not management. Everything you set is fixed on the first of January and never touched again, so whatever happens across the year is a consequence of the place and the conditions rather than of anything you did in the moment. If you want a different outcome, change the setup and run the year again.
My colony died. Did I do something wrong?
No. Colonies that fail usually fail for one of two reasons: they ran out of stores before spring, or they never rebuilt enough young bees in autumn to get through winter. Go back to the setup, change one thing, and use Compare this year to see the same year with and without that change. Watching a colony fail for a reason you can name is the point of the app, not a mistake in it.
Why can I only change one thing in a comparison?
Because with two changes you cannot say which one caused the difference. A comparison always reverts exactly one thing and holds everything else, so the two curves have exactly one explanation.
Why are there no drones in my hive?
Drones are reared in spring and thrown out in late summer or autumn, when the colony's food arithmetic turns against them. If you are looking at autumn or winter, no drones is the correct answer. Scrub back to May and they will be there.
How accurate is it?
The mechanisms are real and follow the standard literature: Seeley's The Lives of Bees, Winston's The Biology of the Honey Bee, and Tautz's The Buzz about Bees. Numbers are rounded for readability, and the colony is a model rather than a particular hive: a real one varies with its queen, its year and its luck. What is guaranteed is that nothing on screen is a hand-authored outcome.
Does it need an internet connection?
No. The app never uses the network. The whole year is computed on your device in a couple of milliseconds, every time you change something.
Accessibility
HiveLab supports VoiceOver and Reduce Motion. The drawings are the point of the app and are invisible to a screen reader, so the nest cross section and the charts say out loud what they are currently showing. If something is not working the way you need it to, please tell us; accessibility feedback is always welcome.
Purchases and refunds
Any purchase in HiveLab is handled entirely by Apple through the App Store, and is shared with your family through Family Sharing. Refunds are Apple's too: visit reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in, and select the purchase.
Still stuck?
Email asterstudio9@gmail.com with your device model and iOS version, and a short note about what happened. We read every message.