Getting started as a beekeeper

What you need to do

1. 1

   Create a free account

   You need an email address and the address you want to catch swarms around. You can also use Continue with Google, which runs through the same setup so your account always ends up with a location on it.

2. 2

   Set the area you will travel

   Your radius is the distance you are genuinely willing to drive for a swarm, up to 100km or 62 miles. Set it honestly rather than optimistically: a swarm usually moves on within a day, so a claim you cannot reach quickly helps nobody. In busier areas, signup suggests a distance that matches what beekeepers near you actually collect.

3. 3

   Choose how you hear about a swarm

   Email is free and always will be. Text and WhatsApp reach you faster, which matters when several beekeepers get the same alert, and are available to Contributors. Adding a phone number also gives new beekeepers a few free text alerts so you can see the difference before deciding.

4. 4

   Join your association, if you have one

   Pick your group from the list during signup, or add it later in Settings. You can do this even if your association has not formally partnered with Swarmed yet. If it has, you also receive the swarms reported through their own form.

Who can join

Any beekeeper who wants to catch swarms. You don't need to belong to an association, you don't need a certain number of hives, and there is no approval queue. You do need somewhere to put a swarm once you have collected it, which in practice means a spare box and frames ready before the season starts.

Staying in control

• Pause alerts whenever you need to, without deleting anything.
• Decide whether you want reports of established colonies inside structures, which are a different job from a swarm. See the difference between a swarm and a colony.
• Choose to hear only about reports where an image check has confirmed honey bees, if you would rather have fewer and surer alerts.
• Your contact details are only ever shared with the person whose swarm you claim.

Units and language

Your measurement units and display language are set from the address you sign up with, so a beekeeper in Germany gets kilometres and a beekeeper in Texas gets miles. Both are changeable under Settings, and the language selector sits at the foot of every page.