The hive lives here.
Help. Get helped. Watch the process. Granny calls Sheryl, Sheryl calls granny back six months later — and everyone is Sheryl to someone.
Most of this is still scaffolding — the doors are real, the rooms behind them are being built. We don't overclaim. Each section below tells you what works today and what's next.
AI up, bees up — the whole vision.
Why bees are declining and what the math says next, the self-sustaining sanctuary we want to build (someday the most bees in the country — a place you can visit, hike, and get honey from), and an AI anyone can use without fear. The AI side funds the bee side.
Read the plan →Reading Room
Original long-form on AI, markets, and the people building it — read the full piece right here in the hive. Tap any to read.
Karpathy and the Decade of Agents
The clearest voice in AI just told everyone to slow down — and why that's bullish.
Read →The Hands That AI Is Building
The chips and reactors are the brain. This is the body — the hands, wheels, and eyes that turn a model's output into work in the physical world.
Read →Ten Years of Decline: The Numbers Alone
A decade of U.S. colony-loss data, what's driving it, and what the same math says is coming if nothing changes.
Read →Can We Build Bee Formula?
They make baby formula and it works — it isn't milk. Here's the real science on doing the same for bees, so anyone, anywhere can keep a hive.
Read →The Pollinator Protection & Restoration Act — a model bill
A model bill that turns a barely-felt per-unit "pennies" levy on bee-toxic pesticide makers and sellers into a locked, accountable Pollinator Protection Fund — built on the proven Pittman-Robertson template.
Read →The $15,000 Door Problem: Why Rolling-Steel Spring Barrels Need a Serviceable Design
Commercial roll-up doors often bury the highest-wear part inside the hardest assembly to reach. This is the first Apiary priority: make the barrel torsion system easier to inspect, rebuild, and replace without forcing full-door replacement.
Read →Garage Door Counterbalance: Extension Springs, One-Piece Hardware, and Modern Torsion
A field map of old and new spring systems: extension springs, one-piece/vertical hardware, older San Francisco-style doors, and modern torsion shafts.
Read →Why More Spring Can Mean More Cycles: Wire Size, Length, and Fatigue Life
A practical explanation of why a 10k-cycle spring can often be upgraded to a higher-cycle spring by spreading stress through more steel, when the math is verified for the actual door.
Read →Can Garage Door Springs Be Made Better? Coatings, Alloys, Shot Peening, and Field Reality
The next product question after sizing: can spring life improve through better steel processing, corrosion control, surface treatments, and field data?
Read →The forum
Tap a tab. Open a thread. Or hit + New post to start one. Anonymous OK. Helper bees live in the Ask-for-help room.
New bees land here. Introduce yourself, no script needed.
Stuck? Lost? Confused?
The granny button. Always here, always one tap. Designed for the moment of “I have no idea what to do”.
Today this opens the sample hive while the bzzz-routing network gets wired. 40-second auto-rollover to the next helper is coming.
Open community votes
Some calls benefit from outside signal — UX direction, naming, the felt-sense stuff. Tap a side. Committee still decides; you're informing the call, not breaking it.
Recent committee actions
Latest moves across every hive — passes, tiebreaks, reconsiderations. Process visibility = trust. Watching the hive think builds buy-in faster than any pitch.
- PassedAdd 200ms Fade‑In for Modal DialogsUi Design Sector · 3w ago
Introduce a subtle 200 ms ease‑out fade‑in animation when modal dialogs appear, improving perceived responsiveness while staying under 300 ms and automatically disabling the effect for users with prefers‑reduced‑motion enabled. The change is reversible and can be toggled off via a feature flag.
- PassedPilot Early‑Payment Discount for New SubscriptionsBilling Sector · 3w ago
Introduce a 3‑month pilot offering a 5% discount on the first invoice for customers who pay within 10 days, limited to newly created subscription accounts. The discount can be removed after the pilot if it proves difficult to reconcile at month‑end.
- RetiredRetired — Retire the 'rainbow priority pill' pattern from internal dashboardsUi Design Sector · 1mo ago
The rainbow priority pill (red/yellow/green/blue gradient) was useful during v0.1's prototype phase. It now conflicts with the honey-gold accent rule and reads as noise. Retire it; the new single-accent pill ships instead.
- RetiredRetired — Retire the 'net-30 by default' invoicing conventionBilling Sector · 1mo ago
Net-30 was the default invoice term when the business was selling to enterprise. Today's mix is 80% SMB, who pay on net-7 anyway. The default is now friction. Retire it; new default = net-7 with an opt-in to net-30 for enterprise.
- CEO tiebreakTiebreak on "Move from flat-tier pricing to usage-based pricing with an underserved-market discount"Billing Sector · 2mo ago
Dana declined to break the 1–1–1 split. The split itself signaled a values question, not a billing question. Escalated to founder per Constitution §4 (irreversible / values-impacting).
- Reconsideration resolvedReconsider: Recompute sales tax per jurisdiction monthly, not at invoice timeBilling Sector · 2mo ago
Bob filed a reconsideration motion on 2026-05-12: "The recompute is correct but the source-of-truth table is not infallible.
- PassedMake the Apiary status pill clickable, linking to /settingsUi Design Sector · 2mo ago
The pill at the top-left ('Apiary · Active') is a status indicator. One click should jump to settings — that's where users want to go 90% of the time they look at it.
- PassedAdd a gentle late fee with a 5-day grace windowBilling Sector · 2mo ago
Introduce a flat $15 late fee on invoices not paid within 5 days of their due date. The grace window is the differentiator — competitors charge from day one.
AI up. Real bees up.
Apiary's mission curve runs alongside actual bee sanctuaries. Future Buzz Off gatherings will route mission-aligned donations to real pollinator orgs — opt-in, transparent, no skim.
Honest counter. The fund opens when Buzz Off gatherings go live. No fake numbers — we don't overclaim.
Be a helper bee
One-tap sign-up
Not a form. “I'm a helper bee now” → done. Pick what kinds of help you can offer from a short visual list.
Rank-gated activation
Anyone can want to help. Only the proven get live requests. Points come from confirmed-helpful actions — not posts, not lurking.
Toggle, your call
AWAY pauses bzzz-calls but keeps DMs open. OFF respects the off — no nudges, no guilt. Auto-AWAY after idle.
The teaching path in /learn is the front door. The quiet invitation comes when you're actually ready to help without making things worse.
Buzz Off — show up as a bee.
A fly-as-bees concert zone. Shared attention, real-time, ambient. Want to be present but not active? Become a flower. Bees land on flowers gently — no demand to perform. Mission-aligned donations route to real bee sanctuaries.
Post · link · share · find people
Four ways the hive stays connected. All four flow through the same dignity-engine voice — warm, plain, no metric vanity, no like counts.
Short thoughts & asks
Markdown-native, no editor wars. Status updates from any member. Quiet by default — surfaced only when relevant.
Share a URL
One-line context. Other bees can click in. Useful threads, sanctuary news, hive how-to's. No engagement bait.
Your hive, public
Surface your own hive (your project inside the community) so others see what you're building. Invite collaborators without breaking community presence.
Soft directory
Who's helping with what. Who's a delegate. Who just landed. Opt-in visibility — granny isn't required to be discoverable.
All four are scaffolding today. The posting/find surface lands once the helper-bee role and account directory mature — same dignity rules apply.
Looking for something specific?