Who we are
My Apiaries is published by Ben Arscott, United Kingdom. For anything in this policy, write to support@myapiaries.co.uk. For UK data protection law, Ben Arscott is the data controller for any personal data described below.
What the app stores
Everything you enter — apiaries and their locations, hives, queens, inspection records, notes, photographs, equipment counts, packing lists and calendar entries — is written to your device's local storage.
If you have iCloud enabled for My Apiaries, that same data syncs through your own iCloud account so it appears on your other Apple devices and is included in your iCloud backup. It is held under your Apple account and governed by Apple's privacy policy. We cannot see it, and we never receive a copy.
Location
The app asks for location access so it can centre the map on you and place an apiary where you are stood. Location is used on the device to draw maps and to work out how close published disease findings are to your sites. Apiary coordinates are your data, stored as above. Your location is not transmitted to us and is not used for advertising or tracking. You can refuse or withdraw the permission at any time in iOS Settings; the app still works, you just place sites by hand.
Photographs
If you attach a photograph to an inspection, it is stored with that record on your device and in your iCloud, in the same way as the rest of your data.
Data the app fetches
To show disease alerts and maps, the app downloads published information from third parties: bee disease and Asian Hornet findings from the APHA National Bee Unit / BeeBase, and map tiles from Apple Maps. These requests are ordinary internet requests, so the provider may see your device's IP address and the area of the map being viewed. Nothing about your hives, notes or apiaries is sent with them.
Disease information contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Analytics and advertising
None. My Apiaries contains no advertising, no third-party analytics and no tracking software. We do not build a profile of you and we do not share, sell or rent data to anyone.
Apple provides aggregate download and crash statistics to us through App Store Connect. That reporting is anonymous and we cannot identify individual users from it. It is subject to whatever you have chosen under Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics on your device.
This website
This site is a plain set of pages. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics and loads nothing from a third party — every image, stylesheet and script comes from myapiaries.co.uk itself. Our web server keeps ordinary access logs containing IP address, page requested, time and browser user-agent, which are used only to keep the site running and secure.
Children
My Apiaries is a general-purpose record-keeping tool and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone, of any age.
Your control and your rights
Because your records stay with you, you hold them directly. Delete a record in the app to remove it. Delete the app to remove its local data, and turn off iCloud for My Apiaries or remove its data in iOS Settings → your name → iCloud to clear the synced copy.
Under UK GDPR you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability. As we hold no personal data about you, there is normally nothing for us to disclose or delete — but if you believe otherwise, write to us and we will respond. You may also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Changes to this policy
If the app ever changes how it handles data, this page will be updated and the date at the top will change. Material changes will also be noted in the app's release notes.