The agreement between you and Bee Community

These terms govern your use of Bee Community, an app for beekeepers to log hive activity, keep on top of what each hive needs next, work through field troubleshooting, and share with other members. By creating an account you agree to them and to our Privacy Policy. Bee Community is operated by UnGrounded Innovations LLC ("we," "us"). If we materially change either document, we'll update the effective date above and let you know in the app before the change takes effect. Version 1.9 adds three optional notifications to Section 3, which you can switch off in Settings and pause for 30 days: getting-started tips while you set up, overdue check reminders, and, on the free plan, a Sunday look-ahead. If you last accepted version 1.7: version 1.8 added five free tools to Section 3 — the bring-a-friend referral code, printable QR tags and NFC hive tags, the shareable season recap card, in-app announcements from us, and the club-vouched mentor badge — and the season-opener notification; sets out the rules of the referral month in Section 10 (a month is never taken back, and a referral can be voided for abuse so that no further reward is paid); adds club vouches to the conduct rules in Section 7; and says in Section 8 what a person on our team can do about a vouch, a referral or an announcement, and that a muted or banned member also cannot claim a swarm alert, change its contact number, edit a club's page, roles, ledger or treasury, upload a community photo or vouch for a mentor. If you last accepted version 1.6: version 1.7 added Section 18 for consumers in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Canada (including Québec), rewrote Section 8 to describe how moderation works — reports, the automatic rules, strikes, notices and how to object — stated in Section 10 who sells the paid plans, how refunds and the 14-day withdrawal right work through Google Play and the 7-day trial on Premium yearly, and named our points of contact and representatives page. These notes go back to version 1.7 only; if you last accepted something earlier, the sections below are what applies. Hives and photos you already have are never removed or locked.

Eligibility

You must be 18 or older to create an account. One account per person. By signing up, you confirm the information you provide is accurate and that you meet this age requirement. The community-network features (swarm alerts, area alerts, mentors, clubs) can put members in contact with each other: never arrange to meet a minor through the app, and report any account you believe belongs to one.

Your account

You're responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for all activity under your account. Tell us right away at support@mybeecommunity.com if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission. A copy of your logbook is cached on any phone you sign in on so it works offline; signing out clears it.

The service

Bee Community currently provides: account creation and sign-in; an Account screen where you can change your display name, region and state, manage reminders, export your data and delete your account; a multi-hive logbook with map pins, a glove-friendly quick log, private entry photos, computed stats and offline support; a mite-wash calculator, mite trend chart and treatment picker driven by product-label facts; queen and winter-stores tracking; an Alerts tab and optional local reminders derived from your logbook and your region's season; optional nearby and community notifications sent to your phone — swarm alerts, area alerts and bloom reports whose rough spot falls within the radius you choose around your hive pins, and replies, claims, comments and mentor messages addressed to you; inspection and treatment weather for your yards; an illustrated field guide, equipment guide and treatment-product reference; state apiary-registration and honey-labelling reminders; CSV and PDF exports; a branching troubleshooting tree; a week plan, winter ledger, stores projection and flow tracker built from your own records and your region's calendar; a status light and symptom checker for each hive; a split wizard; a yard board, yard treatment run and wash sheet; apiary books; an importer for records from another app; printable QR tags and NFC hive tags that carry only a hive's id and open that hive on your own phone; a season recap card built on your phone from your own logbook that you can share; a bring-a-friend referral code and invite screen (Section 10); announcements from us shown as a banner in the app, such as news or a plan offer; an optional season-opener notification the week a new season starts in your region; optional getting-started tips while you set up and optional overdue check reminders, and on the free plan an optional Sunday look-ahead notification, which you can switch off in Settings and pause for 30 days; and a community feed and network (bloom reports, swarm alerts, area alerts, mentors — with a badge when a verified club vouches for one — and clubs). The free plan includes every logbook feature for up to two active hives (archived hives and colonies recorded as died don't count), plus the field guide, weather, alerts, the Varroa tools (including the mite projection and the free state mite index), exports, voice quick-log, the all-yards map, calendar reminders, the queen breeding and split trackers, the winter-loss review, the week plan's core card and closed-until line, treatment outcomes, the status light, the symptom checker, the split wizard at any hive count, the yard header line, the plan picker, importing your records from another app, hive tags, the season recap card, the referral code, announcements, the season-opener notification, the getting-started tips, the overdue check reminders, the Sunday look-ahead notification, and the community network. The optional Premium plan (Section 10) raises the limit to 30 active hives and adds honey harvest and sales tracking, day-by-day placement of the week plan by yard with the optional Sunday week-plan push (the free plan's Sunday look-ahead takes its place under the same switch), the fall winter-readiness countdown and its safeguards, the stores projection, the flow tracker, yard treatment runs and the wash sheet, apiary books with a tax-shaped export, the mite benchmark band and comparison, a club co-op ledger and treasury, and 2 GB of photo storage (the free plan includes 100 MB of photo storage); the optional Commercial plan (Section 10) allows up to 1,000 active hives and 10 GB of photo storage and adds the printable work order, the yard walk with hive-count reconciliation, and the Honey Bee Health Coalition yard sampling plan with its yard verdict. Need more than 1,000? Email support@mybeecommunity.com. Bee Community is currently available for Android on Google Play. Hives you already have are never removed or locked if you are over your plan's limit; the limit applies only to adding or reactivating a hive. Photos you already stored are never deleted for being over your plan's photo storage allowance; the allowance applies only to adding new photos, and it is counted across your logbook entries, community posts, swarm alerts and area alerts. We may add, change, or remove features over time; this is a young product and it will keep evolving.

Health guidance disclaimer

Every health, treatment and regulatory figure in the app names the institution it comes from and links to the state apiary inspector directory. Thresholds, dates and cadences are derived from your own records and your region's calendar; they can be wrong for your yard, your weather or your state. You're responsible for the decisions you make about your own hives. We're not liable for outcomes from actions taken based on the app's guidance.

Automated photo screening

The photo diagnosis assist that earlier versions of these terms described has been withdrawn: the app no longer sends any photo to an AI provider, and a suggestion saved on an older logbook entry is shown as a saved note only, marked as coming from the retired assist — it was never a diagnosis and is not one now. Nothing in the app diagnoses a colony. Confirm anything you see with your state apiary inspector or a qualified expert before you treat, destroy or move a colony, and use the free USDA Beltsville lab for a definitive answer.

Treatment information — the label is the law

Where the app states a label fact — a dose, a temperature range, a removal-by date, a protective-equipment requirement — it takes it from the current EPA-stamped label for that product and shows the EPA registration number and the date of the label it read next to the fact (for example Api-Bioxal, EPA Reg. No. 73291-2, label accepted June 24, 2025; Apiguard, EPA Reg. No. 79671-1, label dated September 17, 2024 with directions from the November 13, 2018 master label). No dose or limit is typed into the app by hand; each one is read from the product record and links to the stamped label PDF. Where a newer label exists that we have not yet reviewed, or where a label's figures could not be verified, the app says so and shows no number at all rather than a guess — follow the label on the package you own. Restricted-use pesticides are shown so you know they exist, with the note that they require a certified applicator; products with documented resistance and products not legal in the United States are labelled as such and are never recommended.

For products whose label carries the signal word DANGER, the app requires you to acknowledge the label's protective-equipment list before it will record a treatment start. That acknowledgement is stored on your entry; it is a reminder, not a certification, and it does not transfer any responsibility for safe handling to us.

Outside the United States — in Canada, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland — the products, labels and rules that apply to you are those registered and set where you keep bees (in Canada, by Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency and your province; in Europe, by your national authority under EU or UK rules). The treatment reference in the app is written from U.S. labels, so a U.S. label fact shown in the app may not be valid where you are; follow the label registered in your country and ask your own apiary inspector or pesticide authority.

Your content & conduct

You own what you post. By posting to the community feed, a club, a bloom report, a swarm alert, an area alert, a mentor listing, a mentor message, or a club vouch and its note, you grant us a license to store, display, and distribute that content within the app so the members it is addressed to can see it — including as the short notification that tells nearby members a new alert exists — we don't use it anywhere else without asking you. Your private logbook, photos, washes, registrations and reminders are yours and are never shown to other members.

You agree not to post content that is illegal, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit, or that infringes someone else's rights, and not to use the app to impersonate another person or spam other members.

Community network conduct

• No addresses, no precise coordinates. Community records carry your region and, for swarm alerts, area alerts, bloom reports and mentor listings, a coarse area label — a town or county (optional on bloom reports and mentor listings; a club carries its city and state). A swarm alert or bloom report may also carry, and an area alert must carry, a rough spot that the app rounds to two decimal places (about 1.1 km, roughly two-thirds of a mile) before it leaves your phone; that is the only coordinate any community record holds, it is shown to members as a circle, and it should mark where the swarm, bloom or hazard is — not a person's home. Do not put a street address, GPS coordinates or a map link in any text field; the database rejects the obvious shapes and we remove the rest. Share a precise location, if you choose to, only in a direct mentor thread or by phone with the member who claimed your swarm alert.
• Area alerts. Post only what you have seen yourself or had confirmed, choose the kind honestly, and close the alert when it is over. A disease alert must name the inspector or laboratory that confirmed it — a suspicion belongs in a post, not an alert. A theft or vandalism alert describes what happened and roughly where; it must never accuse or name a person. Never use an area alert to advertise, to settle a score, or to send people to a private property. Turning one of your own posts into an area alert keeps a link to the post; the alert is yours to edit (its label and note), close, re-open or delete, and you are responsible for what it says.
• Member notes are opinions. Mentor messages, replies and bloom notes are the opinions of other beekeepers, not advice from us. For treatments follow the product label, the Honey Bee Health Coalition guide and your state apiary inspector; a banner saying so stays on those screens.
• Swarm alerts. Post only a swarm you have actually seen and describe it honestly (height, size, whether it is inside a structure — a colony inside a wall is an established colony, not a swarm, and needs a cut-out, not a collector). Collecting a swarm is at your own risk: you decide whether you are equipped and able to do it safely, and the app's safety card is general guidance, not an assessment of your situation. Claim an alert only when you intend to go; release it if you can't. Close the alert when it's resolved. Do not use a swarm alert to advertise a service.
• Mentors. Listing yourself as a mentor is a statement that you keep bees and are willing to answer questions; it is not a credential. Mentoring in the app is unpaid — do not charge, solicit fees or sell through mentor threads. Be honest about your experience, and say "ask your inspector" when that's the honest answer. The organizers of a verified club you belong to can put the club's name behind your listing as a club vouch: other members then see "Vouched by club" on your mentor card and profile. A vouch is the club's word, not a credential, and not a check we have made. You can decline a vouch from your own listing at any time, and the club can withdraw it; a vouch is not shown while the club is not verified.
• Adults only. Bee Community is for adults (18+). Never arrange to meet a minor through the app, and report an account you believe belongs to one.
• Clubs. A club's organizers set its description and can remove members; club posts are visible to members only. Don't create a club to impersonate an existing organization; a verified badge is applied by us, on request, not by the club itself. An organizer of a verified club may vouch for a listed mentor who is a member of the club — never for themselves — and may withdraw the vouch. The optional note that goes with a vouch (up to 140 characters) is shown to the mentor and to the club's organizers, not on the card; it must carry no address, phone number or link, and it is subject to these terms like any other text you write. Vouch only for a member the club knows and would send a new beekeeper to.
• Reasonable use. Daily posting caps exist on posts, comments, bloom reports, swarm alerts, area alerts, replies and messages so the network stays useful; each alert reaches a nearby member once, and content reported by several members is hidden until a person reviews it. Do not post alerts to make other members' phones ring — every alert should be one you would want to receive.

Content moderation

This section explains how we keep the community safe: how you can report something, which rules the app applies automatically, what a person on our team decides, how we tell you why, and how to ask us to look again. It is also our statement, under the EU Digital Services Act, of how content moderation works on Bee Community.

How to report

You can report any post, comment, bloom report, swarm alert, area alert, reply, mentor listing, message, club or member you believe breaks these terms or the law. In the app you choose a reason — spam, harassment, unsafe, underage, impersonation, location privacy or other — and can add up to 300 characters of detail; you can report each item once. You can also block another member so their content no longer appears for you and they can't message you or reply to your alerts. Photos on community and club posts pass the automated safety screen in Section 5 before they upload; everything after that rests on reports.

Anyone — a member, someone who is not a member, or an organisation — can also report content by email to support@mybeecommunity.com; use email for anything urgent or unsafe, or to tell us about content you believe is illegal. A useful report says which item it is (a link, or where it appears in the app), why you believe it is illegal or breaks these terms, and your name and email address; by sending it you confirm that you believe in good faith that what you tell us is accurate and complete. If you report by email and give us your address, we confirm that we received the report and tell you what we decided. A report made in the app is confirmed on screen when you send it; the app does not currently tell you the outcome — write to us if you want to know it. We handle reports in the order received and without favour; reports sent to harass someone are themselves a breach of these terms.

Rules the app applies automatically

• Text that is refused. The app does not accept community text that contains links, phone numbers, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, or handles for paying or contacting someone outside the app, or text that matches a list of slurs, threats or self-harm patterns that we maintain. The text is not posted; you can change it and try again.
• Photos checked before they are posted. Before a photo attached to a community feed post or a club post is uploaded, Google Cloud Vision's SafeSearch detection checks it. It refuses photos it rates as sexual, violent or gory; it does not read text. The app tells you which of those it found; the photo is not uploaded and the post can still go out as text. If the screen can't be reached, photos can't be attached until it can. Logbook photos and photos on swarm alerts and area alerts are not screened. If you think a photo was refused wrongly, email us and a person will look. See Section 5 and the Privacy Policy for how the photo is handled.
• Hidden after reports. When a post, comment, bloom report, swarm alert or area alert has been reported three or more times, it is hidden from other members automatically until a person on our team looks at it. When one of your own posts or comments is hidden this way, the automatic warning or mute that follows tells you which item (below); a hidden alert carries no notice of its own — write to us if you want to know why.

Strikes, warnings and mutes

Each of your own posts or comments that is hidden after reports counts as one strike, once per item. Only strikes within a rolling 90-day window count. With the standard settings:

• 1 strike — an automatic warning.
• 2 strikes — community features are automatically muted for 7 days.
• 3 strikes — community features are automatically muted for 30 days.
• 4 strikes — no further automatic step; a person on our team reviews your account.

Built-in safeguards limit the automatic steps. With the standard settings, an automatic mute is not applied unless at least five different members, each with an account at least seven days old, are behind the reports; otherwise a person reviews instead. The app applies at most one automatic step in any 24 hours, and none while a mute issued by a person or a ban is in place or while your account is suspended. We do not currently ban anyone automatically; if we ever switch that on, an automatic ban would only turn off community features — never your ability to sign in — and a person would review it.

If three different members report the same member within 30 days, a person reviews that account; nothing happens to the account automatically.

While you are muted or banned you can't post, comment, like, edit posts or comments, edit, close or re-open your own swarm or area alerts, change your mentor listing, reply to swarm alerts, file swarm alerts, area alerts or bloom reports, message or ask for a mentor, or start or join a club, attach a contact number to a swarm alert or change it, claim another member's swarm alert, accept a new mentee, or upload a community photo; if you are a club organizer, you also cannot edit the club's page or its members' roles, add or edit the club's ledger or treasury entries, or vouch for a mentor. Badges from club vouches are not shown to you while you are muted or banned, except on your own listing. You can still delete anything of your own. You can still read everything, and your hives, logbook and photos keep working as normal.

What a person decides

A person on our team reviews reports and hidden items and can remove a post, comment, alert, message or club, unlist a mentor, issue a warning, mute or ban, lift any of those, or suspend an account. A person on our team can also take a club's vouch off a mentor's listing, void a referral so that no further reward is paid for it (a month already granted stays — Section 10), and publish, change or take down an announcement. When a vouch is taken off or a referral is voided, the reason is kept in our moderation log and no notice is sent today — write to us if you want to know why. A ban issued by a person is normally limited to the community — you keep signing in, your hives and logbook keep working, and you can still read. In serious cases a ban can extend to your whole account, which suspends sign-in until it is lifted. Reporting doesn't guarantee immediate action — we're a small team, and a report may take time to reach a person. If we become aware of content suggesting a threat to someone's life or safety, we report it to the police of the country concerned (or, in the EU, Europol).

Telling you why

When a warning, mute, ban or suspension is applied to your account, or lifted, we tell you by push notification (if you've allowed notifications) and by email (if your email address is confirmed), and the app shows a banner with the same reason. A notice about an automatic step says that it was applied automatically, how many strikes you have and over what period, and may quote the first 80 characters of your own hidden post or comment so you can tell which one it was. The notice says what was applied and for how long, whether an automatic rule detected or decided it or a moderator did, and how to object. A moderator's notice carries the note the moderator wrote (if none was written, the notice says a moderator decided after reviewing reports); today it does not quote the rule of these terms or the law relied on — write to us and we will tell you which rule applied. A suspension can be issued without a detailed notice; you then see only a general message when you try to sign in, and you can ask us the reason by email. If a person removes an item of yours without a warning, mute, ban or suspension, the app sends no separate notice today — write to us and we will tell you why.

How to object

If we've removed or hidden your content, refused a photo, or restricted or suspended your account, and you think we got it wrong — whether the decision was made by a person or by the automatic rules — email support@mybeecommunity.com within six months of the decision, tell us which decision you're objecting to and why, and a person will take a second look; no automatic rule decides an objection. Objecting is free, you can write to us even if your account is suspended, and a person answers every objection by email. You can also take the matter to the courts of the country where you live (Section 15). We do not run a formal complaint-handling system or use out-of-court dispute settlement bodies under the Digital Services Act, which does not require them of a business of our size.

Points of contact

Our single point of contact for members, and for the authorities of EU Member States, the European Commission and the European Board for Digital Services, about moderation and these terms is support@mybeecommunity.com. A person reads it; we answer in English. Our postal address is shown on our Google Play developer page and is available on request at that address. Our legal representative in the European Union under Article 13 of the Digital Services Act, once appointed, is named — with postal address, email and telephone — at mybeecommunity.com/representatives, together with our representatives under the GDPR and the UK GDPR. We tell you in the app before a significant change to these rules and ask you to accept it again (Section 17).

Intellectual property & third-party content

The app itself — its design, code, diagrams and branding — belongs to us. Nothing in these terms transfers that to you. You retain ownership of the hive data, logbook entries, photos and content you create.

Some content in the app belongs to others and is used under licence, with credit on the Credits screen: photographs under public-domain, CC0, Creative Commons Attribution and (as a last resort) Attribution-ShareAlike licences; weather data from the U.S. National Weather Service (NOAA), a U.S. Government work in the public domain; varroa facts cited to the Honey Bee Health Coalition's Tools for Varroa Management, 9th edition, which is published under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 and is paraphrased, never reproduced, in the app and its exports; product-label facts from EPA-stamped labels; and the Fraunces and Figtree typefaces under the SIL Open Font License. Those licences govern that content, and your rights in it are whatever those licences give you — for example, a PDF report you export credits its sources and you may share it, but you may not present the licensed material as your own or strip the credits.

Premium and Commercial subscriptions & billing

The core of Bee Community is free and stays free: every logbook feature for up to two active hives, the field guide, weather, alerts, the Varroa tools, the free state mite index, exports, the community network, and the tools listed as free in Section 3. Because our weather and Varroa guidance come from sources licensed for non-commercial use, those parts in particular remain free of charge and free of advertising.

Bee Community Premium is an optional paid subscription that unlocks up to 30 active hives and the other Premium features in Section 3, and raises your photo storage allowance from 100 MB to 2 GB. Premium is offered at US$3.99 per month or US$24.99 per year (prices may vary by country and over time; the current price is always shown before you buy). Google Play shows the price and currency that apply where you are, and any tax it must include, before you buy. Premium yearly carries a 7-day free trial for members new to Premium, applied by Google Play at purchase — cancel before it ends and you pay nothing; there is no trial on the monthly plan or on Commercial.

Bee Community Commercial is for larger operations: up to 1,000 active hives and 10 GB of photo storage plus everything in Premium, at US$14.99 per month or US$119.99 per year (the same price notes apply). Need more than 1,000? Email support@mybeecommunity.com. Moving from Premium to Commercial is done from the plan screen in the app through Google Play's plan-change flow — the change takes effect at once and the store credits your unused Premium time; moving down is done in your Google Play subscription settings. Everything below about billing, cancelling, refunds and lapsing applies to both plans.

Managing and cancelling. You manage or cancel Premium or Commercial in your Google Play account settings, not inside Bee Community — cancelling stops the next renewal and you keep your plan until the end of the period you already paid for. Deleting the app does not cancel a subscription. Deleting your Bee Community account does not cancel a Google Play subscription either — cancel it in Google Play first, or it will keep renewing.

Refunds are handled by Google under Google Play's refund policy for your country: Google is the merchant, takes the payment and decides refund requests (usually within one to four days), so to ask for one use Google Play's refund request in your Google account. If Google says no and you think the app did not work as described, email support@mybeecommunity.com — we can refund a purchase through Google Play where the law where you live requires it, and we may do so as a courtesy. If a purchase is refunded, the plan ends the same way as a lapse (below): nothing you recorded is deleted or locked.

If you live in the EEA, the United Kingdom or Switzerland

Premium, Commercial and club seat packs are sold to you by Google Commerce Limited (70 Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2, Ireland) through Google Play, under the Google Play Terms of Service and Google Play's refund policy for your country — not by us. In the EEA and the UK, Google's checkout tells you, before you pay, whether you have a 14-day right to withdraw from that purchase without giving a reason or whether you are agreeing to immediate access and giving that right up; to withdraw, use Google Play's refund request or the withdrawal form on Google Play's refund page for your country, and Google Commerce Limited refunds you within 14 days of receiving your statement. Swiss law gives no cooling-off right for online purchases, so a refund follows Google Play's policy. To cancel a renewal, use your Google Play subscription settings. Nothing in this section takes away a refund, cancellation, withdrawal or legal-guarantee right that the consumer law where you live gives you (Section 18).

Choosing a plan. When you finish setting up the app you pick a plan. Start free is always offered, no plan is pre-selected, and nothing is purchased inside the setup wizard — choosing Premium or Commercial opens the ordinary store purchase, which you can leave without buying. A comparison of the plans is available from Home for your first two weeks.

Swarm-season trial. Once per account, a free member who reaches the two-hive limit during their region's swarm season may start a 30-day Premium trial: no card, no store purchase, nothing renews. It is granted as a single-use code on your account and ends on its own; five days before it ends the app tells you once. When it ends you are back on the free plan and every hive you added during the trial stays yours — nothing is locked; the two-hive limit applies only to adding or reactivating a hive afterwards. The trial is offered only in season and only once; it cannot be restarted, transferred or combined with a store trial.

Club seat packs. A verified beekeeping club may buy — through one of its organizers — a club seat pack: a one-time purchase through Google Play, at the price shown before you buy, that becomes a code the club's current members can redeem for one year after the purchase; each of up to 25 redemptions gives that member one year of Premium, counted from the day they redeem it or, if they already hold a plan period, from the end of that period. The pack belongs to the club, not to the buyer, and unlocks nothing on the buyer's own account; the club's organizers decide who gets the code. A seat never lowers a plan a member already holds or shortens a period they already paid for, and when a seat ends nothing that member recorded is locked. Because the store is the merchant, refunds for a seat pack follow the store's policies; a pack that goes unredeemed is not refunded by us.

Bring-a-friend referral month. Every member has a referral code (BEE-XXXX-XXXX) on the Invite a beekeeper screen. A new member who enters it under Settings → Have a code? within 30 days of creating their account gets 30 days of Premium at once: a promotional grant on their account — no card, no store purchase, nothing renews. You get 30 days of Premium once that member's first payment for a Premium or Commercial plan bought through Google Play goes through — after any free trial, and never for a trial, introductory or promotional period that cost nothing — and 7 days have then passed without that payment being refunded; we check this each night against the billing records we already hold. Referral months add to each other: if you hold a promotional period, your month is added to the end of it; if you are on a store plan, your month waits — it is applied the night after you no longer hold a live store plan (a plan that keeps renewing keeps it waiting) — so nothing you already hold is shortened or lowered. Up to 12 rewards count in any rolling 365 days. One code per account, one referral per new member for the life of that account, your own code is not for you, and a code cannot be used while either account is suspended. A referral month has no cash value, cannot be sold, transferred or exchanged, and is not tied to a rating, a review or an install — the reward is for a beekeeper who has chosen to pay for the app. If we find that a referral was abused — for example accounts created to farm codes — a person on our team can void it, with a reason kept in our log: no further reward is paid for it and the friend's account cannot use another code, but a month already on an account is never taken back, shortened or lowered. We may change or end the programme for future referrals; a month already granted stays. Sharing your code is your own choice: it goes through your phone's share sheet to the people you pick, and the share text carries a Google Play link. The Invite screen shows you how many members used your code, how many of them have paid and when your month landed, never who they are or what they paid.

If Premium or Commercial lapses or you cancel, nothing you already recorded is deleted or locked away: your data stays readable and exportable, and any photos already stored stay. You simply can't add or reactivate a hive beyond your plan's limit, add new Premium-only records, or store new photos above the free allowance, until you resubscribe. If we ever discontinue a Premium feature, we'll tell you in the app; we don't provide pro-rated cash refunds for changes to features except where the consumer law where you live requires it (for the EEA and the UK, see Section 18), and store cancellation is always available to you.

None of this section takes away a refund, cancellation or withdrawal right that the consumer law where you live gives you (Section 18).

Selling your honey

Bee Community's honey harvest and sales tracker is a private record-keeping tool for your own books. It is not accounting, tax or legal advice, and it does not check or ensure that your honey, your labels or your sales comply with any law. Selling honey is regulated — by the food, labelling, weights-and-measures and sales rules where you sell: in the United States the FDA and your state's cottage-food and food-safety rules, in Canada federal and provincial rules, and elsewhere your national and local rules — and complying with those rules, and with your own tax obligations, is entirely your responsibility. The app's honey-labeling checklist and any figures it shows are general information, not a guarantee of compliance. You are solely responsible for the safety and labeling of any honey you sell and for any claim arising from it.

Suspension & termination

We may suspend or terminate your account if you violate these terms, misuse the app, or create risk for other members. You can stop using the app at any time, and you can delete your account — along with your hives, logbook, washes, registrations, reminders, photos, posts and community-network records — from the Account screen inside the app. If you'd rather we do it, email support@mybeecommunity.com from the address you signed up with. Export your data first if you want a copy; the app offers CSV and PDF exports from Settings. A few records stay after deletion with your identifier removed — among them a referral record you were part of, a vouch you gave as a club organizer, and the consent and moderation records the Privacy Policy lists.

When we restrict or suspend your account, we tell you why and how to object as described in Section 8, except where a suspension is issued without notice, as Section 8 also describes; a community ban leaves your sign-in, hives and logbook untouched, and only an account ban or a suspension stops sign-in. Deleting your account does not cancel a store subscription — cancel it in Google Play first (Section 10). Nothing here takes away a refund right that the consumer law where you live gives you (Section 18).

Assumption of risk, disclaimers & limitation of liability

Does not apply in Québec — see Section 18 for what applies to you.

The next three paragraphs do not apply in Québec — see Section 18 for what applies to you.

The app is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We don't guarantee it will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that any alert, forecast, weather grade, dose calculation, threshold, projection, benchmark, checklist or other output will be accurate, complete, timely or right for your specific situation. Reminders depend on your phone delivering local notifications, and nearby and community notifications — the referral-reward, season-opener, club-vouch, getting-started-tip, overdue-check-reminder and Sunday look-ahead notifications included — on third-party push services; either can be delayed or dropped, so never rely on a notification as the only record of a label deadline or as your only warning of a hazard. Forecasts come from a third-party service and can be wrong. Offline changes sync on a best-effort basis and can be replaced by a later edit from another device.

Alerts and notifications are unverified and best effort. Swarm alerts, area alerts and bloom reports are written by other members from what they saw or were told; we do not verify them, and a bear, a sprayer, a disease, a flood or a swarm may be reported late, wrongly, in the wrong place, or not at all. Whether a notification reaches you depends on your settings, on a rough spot having been added to the alert, on your hive pins being placed, on your phone and its battery and connection, and on third-party push services (Expo, Google) that we do not control: a notification can be delayed, dropped or never sent, and an alert outside the radius you chose is not sent at all. The rough spot on an alert is approximate by design — it is rounded to two decimal places (about 1.1 km, roughly two-thirds of a mile) before it leaves the poster's phone — and "about N miles from your hive" is measured from that rounded spot to your nearest pin, so it can be off by a mile or more and must not be used to locate a person, a hive or a property. We are not liable for any loss arising from a missed, late, inaccurate, misplaced or false alert or notification, or from anything you do or decide not to do in response to one — closing up, moving, treating, feeding or leaving bees where they are, confronting anyone, or going to collect a swarm.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we and our owners, members, officers and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of bees, honey production, income, profits, data or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of (or inability to use) the app — including anything based on the field guide, the troubleshooting tree, an alert or notification (or the absence, lateness or inaccuracy of one), a swarm alert, area alert or bloom report posted by another member, a forecast, the mite tools, a mite benchmark, the week plan or a work order, the winter ledger, a stores or flow projection, the apiary books or honey tracker, a photo screen's decision, a season recap card, a hive tag that did not open or opened the wrong hive, a club vouch or its absence, a referral that earned no reward or was voided, an announcement, or a treatment applied outside its label — even if we've been advised such damages were possible, and even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose. Our total liability for any and all claims relating to the app is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us (if anything) in the twelve months before the claim, or US$50.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation of certain damages, so parts of this section may not apply to you; in that case our liability is limited to the greatest extent permitted by law. These limitations are a fundamental part of the agreement between us.

Indemnification

Does not apply in Québec — see Section 18 for what applies to you.

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold us and our owners, members, officers and agents harmless from any third-party claims, damages, losses and reasonable costs (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of your use or misuse of the app, your violation of these terms or of any law or third-party right, the content you post (including any swarm, area or bloom alert and its rough spot), honey or other products you sell, and anything that happens when you meet another member, respond to an alert or collect a swarm.

This section does not apply if you are a consumer in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland or Québec; instead, you are responsible under the general law for loss you cause us by breaking these terms or the law. Elsewhere, it applies only as far as the consumer law where you live allows.

Governing law & disputes

Does not apply in Québec — see Section 18 for what applies to you.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Before starting any formal proceeding, both of us agree to first try to resolve the dispute informally — email support@mybeecommunity.com and we'll work in good faith to sort it out. If we can't within sixty (60) days, either of us may bring the dispute in the state or federal courts located in Wyoming, and each of us consents to those courts' jurisdiction. Any claim relating to the app or these terms must be brought within one (1) year after it arises, or it is permanently barred, except where the law does not allow that limit.

If you are a consumer outside the United States

Choosing Wyoming law and Wyoming courts does not take away the protection of the mandatory laws of the place where you live, or any right that law gives you to bring a claim in your local courts. The one-year limit on claims and the sixty-day informal step do not apply to you where that law gives you more time or does not allow them.

• European Economic Area, United Kingdom and Switzerland. Our choice of Wyoming law does not deprive you of the protection of the laws of the country where you usually live that cannot be set aside by agreement (for Switzerland, Swiss law governs your contract with us); those protections apply whatever this section says. You may bring a claim against us in the courts of the country — and, for the UK, the part of the UK — where you live, and we will bring a claim against you only there. The sixty-day informal step is an invitation, not a condition of going to court. Nothing here prevents you from using a consumer body or ombudsman that the law where you live makes available to you.
• Québec. The choice of Wyoming law does not deprive you of the protection of Québec's mandatory rules (Civil Code of Québec, article 3117); you may bring an action in Québec and cannot be made to give that up (article 3149); the Wyoming courts clause and the one-year limit do not apply to you.
• Elsewhere in Canada. Consumer protection laws in other provinces and territories may also let you sue at home and give you more time to bring a claim; where they do, they apply instead of this section.

Complaints and dispute resolution. If something goes wrong, email support@mybeecommunity.com first and we will try to sort it out with you. We are not required to take part in, and do not commit to, alternative dispute resolution before a consumer arbitration or mediation body; if we cannot settle a complaint with you, we will tell you so by email. You always keep the right to go to the courts of the country where you live.

General

These terms, together with our Privacy Policy and the app-store terms that govern any purchase, are the entire agreement between you and us about the app and replace any prior agreements on that subject. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect and that provision is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not transfer these terms; we may transfer them in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets. The sections that by their nature should survive — including intellectual property, honey-selling, assumption of risk and liability, indemnification, governing law, and this section — survive termination.

Nothing in this section overrides Section 18. If we transfer these terms to another company, you will be told in the app before the transfer takes effect, as the Privacy Policy also says.

Changes to these terms

If we materially change these terms, we'll update the effective date and version at the top of this page and let you know in the app before the change takes effect. The app then asks you to accept the new version before you carry on; if you decline, you stay on that screen without being signed out, and you can ask us to delete your account by email, as explained at mybeecommunity.com/delete-account. A subscription is cancelled in Google Play (Section 10).

Does not apply in Québec — see Section 18 for what applies to you.

For changes that are not material — corrections and clarifications that don't change your rights — we update the page without asking again, and continuing to use Bee Community after the new effective date means you accept them.

Consumer rights where you live

Mandatory consumer protections

If you use Bee Community as a consumer — for yourself rather than for a business — the consumer protection laws of the place where you live may give you rights that these terms cannot take away. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes those rights. Where a clause of these terms conflicts with such a law, the law applies to you instead of that clause, and the rest of these terms stays in effect. If you use the Commercial plan for a beekeeping business, you may not be a consumer under the law where you live; the rights in this section apply to the extent that law treats you as one.

European Economic Area

Who sells the paid plans. Premium, Commercial and club seat packs are sold to you by Google Commerce Limited through Google Play; refunds and the 14-day withdrawal right are explained in Section 10.

Legal guarantee. The paid plans must work as described in these terms and in the Google Play listing, and you have the rights in Directive (EU) 2019/770 as adopted where you live: for as long as your plan runs — and for at least two years, or longer where your national law says so — we must fix a fault free of charge within a reasonable time; if we can't, or don't, you may ask for a proportionate price reduction or end the plan and be refunded for the unused part. We will supply the updates, including security updates, needed to keep the app working as described while your plan runs. We may change the app for a valid reason — to keep it working, secure and lawful, or to improve it — at no extra cost to you, and we tell you in the app when we do. If a change has more than a minor negative effect on how you can use a paid plan, we will tell you in advance by email or in the app, and you may end the plan free of charge within 30 days of the change (or of our notice, if later) and be refunded for the unused part through Google Play. Tell us at support@mybeecommunity.com; refunds are paid back through Google Play.

Moderation and the Digital Services Act. How we moderate, how to report, how to object, our points of contact and our legal representative are in Section 8. Your data-protection rights are in the Privacy Policy.

United Kingdom

Consumer Rights Act 2015. If you are a consumer in the UK, the Act gives you the right to digital content you pay for that is of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described, to a repair or replacement and, failing that, a price reduction, and to compensation if the app damages your device. Nothing in these terms limits those rights. Your right to cancel a purchase within 14 days is explained by Google Play at checkout; when you agree to immediate access to digital content, that right is lost, as the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 allow.

Online Safety Act 2023. Bee Community is a user-to-user service and we take our duties under the Act seriously in proportion to the size and risk of the app. We protect members from illegal content by screening community photos before they are shown, refusing abusive text, hiding items reported by three members until a person reviews them, removing illegal content promptly once we know of it, and restricting or suspending members who post it (Section 8). Any member can report a post, comment, alert or profile in the app, and anyone — member or not — can report content, complain about a moderation decision, or complain about how we handle these duties by emailing support@mybeecommunity.com; a person reads every report and complaint and replies by email. Bee Community is for adults aged 18 or over. Within the period the Act allows after Bee Community becomes available in the UK we complete a written assessment of whether children could be accessing the app and of the risk of illegal content, and we review that record and these measures at least once a year and whenever we change the community features.

Switzerland

Purchases through Google Play are made from Google Commerce Limited under Google Play's terms; Swiss law gives no cooling-off right for online purchases, so any refund follows Google Play's policy and the warranty rules of the Swiss Code of Obligations. Our identity and contact details are at the top of this page and on our Google Play developer page. Swiss law governs your contract with us as a consumer and you may sue us, and can only be sued, at your domicile (Section 15). Your data-protection rights are in the Privacy Policy.

Canada

If you are a consumer in Canada, the consumer protection law of your province or territory applies to your contract with us where it protects you — including any right to cancel an internet contract — and is not excluded by these terms. Purchases are made through Google Play under Google Play's refund policy (Section 10). Your privacy rights are in the Privacy Policy.

Québec

If you are a consumer who lives in Québec, the Consumer Protection Act and the Civil Code of Québec apply to your contract with us, and any clause of these terms that those laws do not allow does not apply to you. In particular, and as the notices before them say, these do not apply to you: the assumption-of-risk callout and the "as is" disclaimer, exclusions and liability cap in Section 13, in so far as they would free us from liability for our own acts or those of our representatives (section 10 of the Act); the indemnity in Section 14; the choice of Wyoming law, the Wyoming courts and the one-year limit in Section 15; and the "continuing to use" sentence in Section 17.

• Buying a plan at a distance. Premium, Commercial and club seat packs are bought online through Google Play, which shows you the seller, the price and currency with any tax it must include, and the cancellation and refund policy before you pay, and sends you a confirmation. The cancellation rights the Act gives you for distance contracts apply as the law provides.
• Automatic renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically as described in Section 10; Google Play manages renewals and lets you cancel at any time.
• Legal warranties. The legal warranties of quality and fitness in sections 37 and 38 of the Act apply to the paid plans and are not excluded by Section 13.
• Changes to these terms. We tell you in the app before a change takes effect and ask you to accept it; if you refuse, you can stop using the app and delete your account without cost, and cancel any subscription in Google Play.
• Your privacy rights are in the Privacy Policy, together with the person in charge of the protection of personal information.

Contact us

Questions about these terms: support@mybeecommunity.com.