>  The best way is to have an assistant but mine are all five years old.

Mine is a bit older...

My wife wields the clipboard, keeps all the notes - and offers advice...

We transfer to Excel when we get home - it works well.  We maintain 2 spreadsheets:
the first consists of a sheet for each apiary and serves to remind us of jobs that need doing on the next visit.  Perhaps even more importantly, it saves valuable time inspecting colonies that do not need inspection;
the second spreadsheet is the Stud Book with a sheet for each queen, where we record everything that we might want to know when assessing breeders.

I gave up writing on hive roofs years ago - roofs can get moved around!
Every brood box has a metal tree tag with a number and every queen is allocated a number when she is clipped and marked (i.e. when we know she is laying properly).
Records then tell us which queen is in which box; by clipping and marking we know whether the queen has been replaced since the last inspection.
We use the Uni Posca bullet point marking pens and find that the paint will last the life of the queen if applied properly; if you dab the paint on, then it sits on the top of the hairs on the thorax and will disappear - the secret is to rotate the pen so that the paint goes on the actual thorax.

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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