A commercial or larger hobbyist apiary is a cluster of independent, high-value assets sitting in one place — which means a single hazard (fire, pesticide drift, disease, theft, or a storm front) can threaten many colonies at once. Incident command plans exist to turn a chaotic emergency into a structured response: someone detects the problem, a decision-maker is notified, and resources are dispatched to protect what can still be saved before the hazard reaches it.
Many real apiary incident-response plans use a simple triage rule: protect the hives nearest the hazard's leading edge first, because they have the least time left — the same "closest at-risk target" logic this simulation's responders follow.
Trigger a hazard — fire, pesticide drift, a colony-collapse contagion, theft, or a storm front — across a model apiary and watch a dispatched response team race to secure hives before the hazard reaches them.
Each hazard spreads differently: radial for fire/pesticide, hive-to-hive contagion for colony collapse, a sweeping line for storms, and targeted strikes for theft. Responders always chase the nearest at-risk hive, illustrating why detection speed and team size change how many colonies survive.
Pick an incident type, set the response delay, team size and wind/spread speed, then click "Trigger incident". Watch hive status lights shift from green to yellow (at risk) to either cyan (saved) or red (lost) as the scenario plays out.
In real incident command plans, the minutes between detection and the first responder leaving base — the "response delay" modelled here — is often the single biggest factor separating a contained incident from a widespread loss.