VarroaVault Free Trial: What You Get in 14 Days of Access

VarroaVault free trial users who complete all 6 onboarding milestones convert to paid plans at a 92% rate. That number reflects something practical: beekeepers who actually use the trial -- who set up their apiary, log their first count, and see how the threshold system works -- find enough value to continue. The trial is designed to get you to that point in the first 14 days.

Here's what you get, what to do with it, and what happens at the end.

TL;DR

• Varroa monitoring should happen at minimum once per month during active season (every 3-4 weeks)
• Sticky board counts are the least accurate method; alcohol wash is the gold standard
• The 2% threshold in spring/summer and 1% in fall are widely recommended action points
• Monitoring before and after every treatment allows efficacy calculation and resistance detection
• A count from the outer frames or entrance produces lower, less accurate results than brood nest samples
• VarroaVault stores every count with date, method, and result to build a trend dataset over multiple seasons

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What the Trial Includes

The 14-day free trial gives you full access to the Professional plan -- not a limited demo version. That means:

• Unlimited hive records for your full operation
• All monitoring log types: alcohol wash, sugar roll, sticky board
• Treatment log with PHI auto-calculation for all registered products
• Threshold alert system with seasonal context
• Trend graphs and treatment efficacy charts
• Product rotation tracker
• State inspection export (PDF format accepted in 27 states)
• Annual monitoring calendar with reminder notifications
• Data export in CSV format

The only restrictions during the trial: you cannot invite crew members (multi-user access requires a paid Professional plan), and you cannot access the API integration for third-party counting apps (also a paid Professional feature).

Everything else is fully functional.

The 6 Onboarding Milestones

The trial experience is built around 6 milestones that guide you from setup to your first meaningful output. Each milestone unlocks the next relevant feature and builds toward the moment where VarroaVault becomes genuinely useful rather than just potentially useful.

Milestone 1: Set Up Your Apiary

Enter your operation details: location (ZIP code), number of hives, honey super schedule, and organic certification status if applicable. This takes about 5 minutes. Your location is what enables zone-specific threshold timing, and your super schedule is what drives the PHI planning features.

Milestone 2: Add Your Hives

Create a record for each hive: hive ID, queen installation date (or approximate), colony source (package, nuc, swarm, purchased colony), and any notes on the colony's history. If you have prior treatment records from a notebook, you can add them as historical entries so your records start complete rather than from zero.

Milestone 3: Log Your First Mite Count

Enter your most recent mite count result or conduct a fresh alcohol wash and log it. When you log a count, VarroaVault immediately shows you the seasonal context for that result -- what the same count would mean in a different month, and what the threshold action level is for your current date and colony status.

Milestone 4: Review Your First Threshold Alert

If your count is at or above the seasonal threshold, VarroaVault generates a threshold alert with the recommended action and a list of appropriate treatments for your current conditions. If your count is below threshold, you'll see a monitoring schedule showing your next recommended count date. Either way, you get a concrete output from your data.

Milestone 5: Log a Treatment

Log your most recent treatment or a current one. Enter the product, application date, and strip removal date if applicable. VarroaVault calculates your PHI clearance date and adds a post-treatment count reminder to your calendar 30-45 days out. The PHI calendar shows you exactly when honey supers can return.

Milestone 6: Generate Your Annual Calendar

Based on your location, hive count, and super schedule, VarroaVault generates your annual monitoring calendar with all 6 key count reminders, the fall treatment window dates for your zone, and PHI planning markers for each product class. Export it to PDF, Google Calendar, or Apple Calendar.

After milestone 6, you have a populated apiary record, a mite count on file, a treatment record, and a full-year calendar. At that point, you've seen the system work -- not as a demo, but with your actual data.

No Credit Card Required

The trial does not require a credit card to start. You enter your email address and create a password. If you decide not to continue at the end of 14 days, your account simply reverts to a read-only state -- you can still view everything you logged, but you cannot add new entries. No charge, no cancellation needed.

What Happens to Your Data After the Trial

Your data is yours. If you upgrade to a paid plan, all trial data carries forward into your paid account with no interruption. If you choose not to upgrade, your records remain in read-only state for 90 days, during which you can export everything in CSV format. After 90 days, data is deleted per the privacy policy.

You can export your full dataset at any point during or after the trial from the Account Settings page.

Comparing Trial Plans

The free trial gives you Professional plan access. After the trial, you can continue with Professional or downgrade to the Hobby plan. The differences:

Hobby plan ($29/month): Up to 10 hives, all monitoring and treatment log features, threshold alerts, PHI tracking, annual calendar. No multi-user access, no API integration, no commercial reporting features.

Professional plan ($59/month): Unlimited hives, all Hobby features plus multi-user crew access, API integration for counting apps and scale data, bulk treatment log entry, commercial-format state inspection reports, and representative sampling tools for large operations.

Most beekeepers with under 20 hives find the Hobby plan sufficient for full protocol management. Operations above 20 hives or with multiple apiaries managed by multiple people generally benefit from the Professional features.

The varroavault pricing page has the full feature comparison. The varroa mite treatment software overview covers all platform capabilities before you start your trial.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is included in the VarroaVault free trial?

The 14-day free trial includes full Professional plan access with no feature restrictions except multi-user crew management and API integration. You can set up unlimited hives, log mite counts and treatments, receive threshold alerts with seasonal context, generate PHI calendars, access trend graphs and efficacy charts, and export your data at any time. The trial is guided by 6 onboarding milestones that walk you from account creation to a fully functional annual monitoring calendar using your actual apiary data.

Does the free trial require a credit card?

No. The trial starts with just your email address. No payment information is requested until you choose to upgrade to a paid plan at the end of the 14-day period. If you do not upgrade, your account reverts to read-only status automatically with no charge. You can export all your logged data from a read-only account at any point during a 90-day window after the trial ends.

What happens to my data when the free trial ends?

If you upgrade to a paid plan, all your trial data carries forward without interruption. If you do not upgrade, your account enters a 90-day read-only period during which you can view and export everything you logged. After 90 days, account data is deleted per VarroaVault's privacy policy. You can trigger a full CSV export from Account Settings at any point during the trial or the 90-day read-only window.

How do I know if my varroa treatment is working?

Run a mite count 2-4 weeks after the treatment ends and compare it to your pre-treatment count. The efficacy formula is: ((pre-count - post-count) / pre-count) x 100. A result above 90% indicates effective treatment. Results below 80% should trigger investigation for possible resistance, application error, or reinfestation. Log both counts in VarroaVault to track efficacy trends across treatment cycles.

How often should I check mite levels in my hives?

At minimum, once per month (every 3-4 weeks) during the active season. Increase to every 2 weeks when counts are near threshold or after a treatment to verify it worked. In fall, monitoring frequency matters most because the window to treat before winter bees are raised is narrow. VarroaVault's monitoring reminders can be set to your preferred interval for each apiary.

What records should I keep for varroa management?

Each record should include: date of count or treatment, hive identifier, monitoring method used, number of bees sampled, mites counted, infestation percentage, treatment product name and EPA registration number, dose applied, treatment start and end dates, and PHI end date. State apiarists typically expect this level of detail during inspections. VarroaVault captures all of these fields in a single log entry.

Sources

• American Beekeeping Federation (ABF)
• USDA ARS Bee Research Laboratory
• Honey Bee Health Coalition
• Penn State Extension Apiculture Program
• Project Apis m.

Get Started with VarroaVault

The information in this guide is most useful when you have your own mite count data to apply it to. VarroaVault stores every count, flags threshold crossings automatically, and builds the treatment history you need for state inspections and effective management decisions. Start your free trial at varroavault.com.