Comb Hollow Hives

Maryne Antt

About this app

Keep a bee colony through a whole year, one week at a time, with every number on the table.

Comb Hollow Hives is a quiet offline simulation about a single hive and the fifty-two weeks it has to get through. Each week you pick one job and see what it does: add or take a box, split the colony, feed syrup, harvest, insulate, open the hive and look, or leave them be. Then the week runs, and the colony answers.

THE COLONY IS A MODEL, NOT A MOOD
Under the art there is a real population model. The queen lays on a seasonal curve, brood becomes adult bees three weeks later, house bees graduate to foragers, and foragers wear out. Nectar and pollen arrive on a forage calendar, capped by the comb space you have given them. Stores are spent every single week and spent hard through winter, so your insulation and your keep-back line decide who is still alive in March.

NOTHING IS HIDDEN
The weather is seeded and shown a week ahead, so you plan against a forecast you can actually read. Crowding plus a spring flow raises queen cells, and you get one week's warning to give room, split, or cut the cells back. Swarms are announced before they happen. Every number that moves has a page in the Guide explaining what it is and what changes it.

TEN SEASONS
Ten scenarios, each with its own fixed seed and goal line, from a late cold spring to a twenty-week winter. Because the seed is fixed, a season is repeatable: you can run the same year again and try a different plan. Ten awards mark the different ways a year can go right. Your progress is stored as the list of moves you made and replayed, so the app rebuilds exactly the year you played.

FIVE TABS
Hive - the colony this week, the forecast and the eight jobs you can do.
Year - charts of population, stores and the forage calendar, week by week.
Guide - plain language for every number in the model.
How - how the simulation works, stated openly.
Awards - the ten ways to finish a year well.

WHAT YOU GET
- A full beekeeping year as a weekly simulation: build-up, flow, harvest, winter
- Nothing hidden: seeded weather shown a week ahead and swarms announced before they happen
- Ten seasons from a late cold spring to a twenty-week winter, each one repeatable
- Charts and a plain-language guide to every number in the model
- Works fully offline, no ads, no accounts, no permissions, no sound

The app runs completely offline. There is no internet connection, no ads, no accounts or sign-in, no permissions requested, and no sound at all - it is made to be played anywhere, quietly.

This is a simplified teaching model of a honey bee colony, built to be readable and fair rather than exhaustive. It is a game about how a hive works through a year. It is not beekeeping advice.

What’s new

Comb Hollow Hives