Swarm

Inspiration

Beekeeping is an involved process that requires technical skill and ongoing maintenance. An important aspect of beekeeping is making observations about bee behavior—such as when and where bees are most active. We’ve noticed that, especially for those new to beekeeping, these insights take time to build because factors affecting bee behavior (like nearby flora) may not be immediately obvious. Because of this, we built an app called Swarm to make it easier to generate these insights.

What it does

Swarm is a web-based beekeeper assistant that centralizes hive data, inspection logs, and maintenance tasks so beekeepers can spot trends without years of trial and error. A geolocated map pulls recent pollinator-friendly plant observations from iNaturalist and lets users add them to a floral inventory, tying local forage conditions to hive health. Swarm can automatically analyze this data and provide AI-powered suggestions for better beekeeping. The result is a lightweight dashboard that helps new and experienced beekeepers make smarter management decisions with less guesswork.

How we built it

Built with Next.js and Tailwind, Swarm stores hive and inspection data using Prisma. We used React Leaflet on top of OpenStreetMap tiles and an iNaturalist API proxy to surface nearby forage, then incorporated a lightweight LLM-powered route that analyzes those records for hive-behavior insights.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

We built an interactive flora map that fuses OpenStreetMap, iNaturalist data, and our own inventory actions that enable beekeepers to easily connect hive behavior to surrounding forage—a service we found lacking in the beekeeping world.