Honey Bee Colony Assessment Criteria

There are several methods in common use, BIBBA, L&RBKA and GALTEE. The BIBBA one is probably the longest established and goes into great detail.

	As of July 2006 this page will not be further updated. All future updates will occur on the replacement page which is now situated at http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/assessmentcriteria.html which will open if you click on the link.

The version used by the Leicestershire Association is slightly simpler and the most recent example.

The one produced by Michael MacGiolla Coda of the Galtee Group is one the simplest and to my mind the one most likely to be adhered to by those (like me) that believe records are important, but then do little about it. This method has worked for Michael for more than 20 years and is the one I, at least, intend to follow for the rest of my beekeeping.

Chris Slade's cards are designed to fit into a Filofax and is about as simple as you can get without seriously compromising the idea, as any less columns would result in insufficient data.

The various behaviors mentioned in the card systems are listed in the left hand column. (A few of these pages are recent additions and may have little content as yet.) There are other behaviors that are listed along with most of these on the Behaviour page.

The record cards that are mentioned can be downloaded and printed along with various morphometry tools by visiting the Downloads page.