Hello All,
        I am in my fourth year and increasing hard to become a solid sideline
beeKEEper. My record keeping and colony/queen tracking is probably the
most troublesome area I am dealing with right now. With 4 hives it's
easy, 33 (or is it 35 today?) a couple of trailers a number of fields
and growing becomes more sophisticated and necessary to properly manage
your bees and business.
        I am now using a discarded handheld dictation recorder to take "notes"
in the field, I find it works well and I don't have to figure out how to
annotate something on the spot. I can say what I want and filter the
comments later. In bad weather the whole thing just slips into a ziplock
bag and I record through the bag. (In heavy rain, make sure the drops
don't hit the Bag or you won't hear anything.)

        The trouble I have in particular is a consistent method to track a
colony and daughter colony from season to season and year to year while
remaining coherent enough to be able to quickly note equipment needed in
the morning I am headed out to this field again. Track current location
of the colony in a group with the others in the same field, coordinate
the dates all move to most efficiently rent 'em to make sure I maximize
each colony and I don't promise more than..... You guys know what I
mean.
        In short, I haven't seen a discussion of record keeping. I also note a
lack of symposium/ short course subjects related to record keeping. Any
bites?

Thom Bradley
Chesapeake, VA