Count beehives in an apiary from a photo

Counting beehives across an apiary or a pollination site

Beekeepers count hives across scattered out-yards, at the start and end of the season and for registration or insurance records. Growers who rent hives for pollination often want to confirm how many were set down in the orchard. Hives usually stand in rows on stands or pallets, so photograph along a row from a high angle, or from above with a drone, keeping a sensible distance from the entrances.

A hive is a stack of boxes, and the counter needs to know you want whole hives rather than boxes. Mark one complete hive, from stand to lid, as your example; otherwise tall hives with several supers may be counted more than once. Hives shipped several to a pallet should still be counted by hive, not by pallet. Hives under trees or shade cloth, or painted the same color as the background, are easy to miss, so check each row end. A photo count says nothing about colony strength: a dead-out looks the same as a booming hive.

Record each yard as its own tally row. With Premium, Bulk audit runs the Distinct objects detector over one photo per yard and adds every count to the tally with a grand total. The orchard where the hives stand can be counted from a drone with the tree counter, and other farm stock fits the livestock counter.