Beekeeping, there's an app for that!

On slowing down

It's been a while since I wrote a blog post and one of the reasons is that I'm living a bit slower than before. My job as a web development lecturer has become quite hectic over the last few years and I needed to take a break from client work to manage it all. I remember writing about how life is really moving fast and about things you can do to slow down earlier on this blog. That post is already three years old and man, does time fly.

Slowing down as a web developer is something of a contradiction with all the new frameworks and tools being released at the blink of an eye. In an effort to balance my day job with something a bit more slow moving, I decided to pick up a beekeeping course. One of my friends has been a beekeeper for the past five years and I was intrigued by how intelligent these little creates are.

On top of that, they give us sweet, healthy honey! I guess what really attracts me to beekeeping is the fact that it's the complete opposite of my day job. Beekeeping is a skill that never ages, it's been done for thousands and thousands of years and many of the techniques that were used back then are still valid today. That's something you can hardly say about web development. The web app you built out ten years ago probably isn't something you want to put on your resume today.

MyBeekeeper: beekeeping software for online record keeping

Then again, web development is in my blood and I needed a web app to keep track of my hives. So today I've released MyBeekeeper.com. The web app allows any beekeeper to easily keep track of hive inspections, problems, treatments, honey harvests and so on.

To get the app into the hands of beekeepers as quickly as possible, I've used a number of templates in the frontend and backend, which is something I'll keep iterating on in the next few weeks. I was never a big fan of using templates as a starting point, but given the time it saved me in building out this hobby project, it was definitely a good decision. If you know a beekeeper, make sure to pass the link along. I can assure you that it's sweet as honey. Now off to my hive!