Voice dictation in Beentry allows you to record hive inspections simply by speaking. You don’t have to take off your gloves, look for the right tags, or tap on your phone — just describe what you see, and the app will automatically recognize the condition of the bee colony from your speech and fill in the corresponding tags. It works offline right at the apiary.
How to save time when recording inspections?
Every beekeeper knows it — you open the hive, conduct the check, and then you stand there with your phone trying to record what you just saw. You don’t want to take off your gloves, your fingers are sticky with propolis, and the sun shines on the screen so much that you can’t see anything. The result? You make notes only at home from memory, or you don’t make them at all.
Yet continuous notes are crucial for tracking the development of colonies during the season. Thanks to them, you see trends, compare colony strength, and detect problems before it’s too late. With voice dictation in Beentry you now just need to press one button and talk.
How does voice dictation work?
The procedure is simple — when creating a record from an inspection, tap the microphone icon and start speaking. Describe in your own words what you see at the colony. For example:
“The colony is strong, there is a lot of brood on five frames, supplies are sufficient, I saw the queen, the mood is calm, no signs of disease."
Beentry converts your speech into text and analyzes the content using AI. From the description, it automatically recognizes relevant tags — in this case, for example, “strong colony,” “brood 5 frames,” “queen seen,” “supplies OK,” “calm” — and assigns them directly to the record. You then just check and save.
When is dictation most useful?
You will appreciate voice records especially in these situations:
- Gloves on your hands — you don’t have to take them off to tap on the phone
- Quick check of a larger number of hives — walk through the apiary and dictate continuously instead of stopping at each hive with your phone
- Poor screen visibility — dictation is more comfortable than searching for tags on the screen in direct sunlight
- Beginner beekeepers — you don’t have to know the names of the tags, just describe what you see and AI will translate it into the correct categories
Dictation works completely offline — you don’t need a mobile signal. Speech recognition happens right on the phone and AI tag analysis runs as soon as you connect to the internet.
Which tags does AI recognize?
The AI in Beentry works with all tag categories found in the app. It understands descriptions of:
- Colony strength — weak, medium, strong, number of occupied frames
- Brood — open, capped, quantity, quality of brood comb
- Supplies — honey, pollen, sufficient/insufficient
- Queen — seen, not seen, young, old, marked
- Mood — calm, nervous, aggressive
- Health status — varroosis, nosemosis, signs of diseases
- Interventions — expansion, reduction, feeding, treatment, adding frames
You don’t have to use exact names — AI understands natural language. If you say “the bees are gentle and the hive is full,” it will understand just as well as “strong colony, calm mood.”
Can I edit the record after dictating?
Of course. After dictation, a proposal of tags recognized by AI will appear. You can:
- Remove a tag that doesn’t belong
- Add a tag that AI didn’t assign
- Edit the text note
- Add photos
The record is saved only after your review. AI is an assistant, not automatic — the final word is always yours.
Try voice records
Voice dictation has been part of Beentry since version 4.1 and is available to all users — including the free trial period. Download the latest version for iOS or Android and try dictating your next inspection. You’ll see how much faster it is.