🏷️ Registering and Marking Your Hives

About this simulation

In Great Britain, beekeepers can register their apiaries on BeeBase, the National Bee Unit's voluntary database. A registered apiary gets a unique reference number, and each hive within it can be marked so inspectors, neighbours and the keeper themselves can trace a colony back to its records during a disease outbreak or theft investigation. This scene models a simplified apiary yard where hives carry a physical registration tag once they're logged.

How it works

• Each hive is either registered (green tag, lit marker, linked to the apiary post) or unmarked (dim grey tag, no traceability link).
• The central post displays the simulated apiary reference number, mirroring how a BeeBase registration anchors every colony in the yard to one traceable record.
• Traceability links are dashed lines from each registered hive to the post — turn them off to see how much harder tracing becomes without registration.
• Inspector spotlight mode dims the yard and lights only the hives, the way a National Bee Unit inspector's visit focuses attention colony-by-colony.

Controls

• Hives in apiary — how many colonies sit in this yard (4–14).
• Registration coverage — the share of hives that carry a registration tag.
• Traceability links — toggle the record-linking lines from marked hives to the apiary post.
• Inspector spotlight mode — switch to a focused inspection lighting rig.
• Click any hive to open its simulated BeeBase-style record card. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

Did you know?

BeeBase registration is free and voluntary in England and Wales, but it is the main channel the National Bee Unit uses to warn beekeepers of nearby notifiable diseases like European and American foulbrood — an unregistered apiary can be missed entirely during an outbreak response.