Okay, disclaimer first. I'm one of those people who can absorb information very quickly and retain it well. I am also someone who thinks and remembers best in words and not statistics. My system is definitely not the most efficient, and it's still a work in progress (like beekeeping generally, I guess), so I'm not necessarily recommending it to you, Bob, because I'm not sure how well it would actually work for someone else. But obviously, everyone has to figure out what style of record-keeping works for them (like beekeeping generally, I guess,
), so here's what I do. Hopefully it'll at least give you some ideas.
When I'm actually working the hives I have with me a 1 in. binder full of inspection record sheets. When I originally started beekeeping I bought a small spiral bound set of inspection records made by Little Giant, and when they ran out, I used my home printer to copy 2 of them front and back and made the sheets I use today. Here's a picture of one.
I picked the page with the most propolis on it. For me that's as bad as it gets. And yes, the pages are a little sticky, but it's not as bad as you'd think. Each page has the notes for 2 inspections. On the top there are boxes to record the hive ID (for me that is the name of the queen in the hive), the time of day, the weather, how many boxes/supers are on the hive, how many frames are in the hive, whether there is a honey flow on, whether there is a pollen flow on, whether the hive was queenright, the stages of brood that were seen, how good the brood pattern was, the temperament of the hive, the presence of various pests/diseases, the number of frames of brood, honey, pollen, and blanks, whether the hive is being fed, whether the hive is being treated, and an overall assessment of the colony's strength. All this info I fill in after I am finished inspecting for the day. Then on the bottom of the page is a pictorial representation of the hive, and as I'm paging through the frames, I quickly jot down a shorthand version of what I'm seeing. My sister came up with this actually, since she was the original note-taker. Horizontal stripes=a drawn blank, curls=brood, and zigzag=stores. If the brood is drone I just put a D on the frame, if the stores are pollen I put a P, if I see the queen on the frame I put Q, and if I see queen cells I put QC and the number of cells. The info about the frames I write as I am working, and it's enough for me to jog my memory later. I only work a max of 4 hives in one day, so obviously with a lot of hives this wouldn't be practical.
I also have a standard, spiralbound college ruled notebook which is essentially my beekeeping journal. At the end of every day of inspecting I write down everything that I feel I'd like to remember about the inspections. Here's a small sample entry: "7/11/20 Added supers to Berenice and Hip and removed their entrance reducers since they were fanning pretty good. Berenice got box #4 and Hip, box #5 which will soon be #4 since I put the escape board on and will harvest a super tomorrow. I put 2 frames in the freezer since they were half drones, and left 7 in that box, so it should equate to 8 med. frames. It was a time-consuming and challenging rearrange, but got it done pretty well I think. . . ." That entry goes on for another page and a half, but you get the idea. For me this really helps to cement in my mind all that happened that day.
This year, having at most 7 hives now, I found it hard to find specific information looking back at my sheets and journal, so this year I also added a Word file titled "Bee Log", which I use basically as an index for my other notes. Since it's searchable, I can find key information quickly, and I can also easily tabulate information about each hive to compare it at a glance. Here's the entry from this document from the same day as the previous sample from my journal: "7/11 Added 4th box to Berenice, 5th box and triangle escape board to Hippolyta, and removed both entrance reducers." I also used this document to make end of the year overall hive assessments like this one: "Queen Elizabeth/Mary (M&Ms) -- Peak size: 5 boxes. Treated with trapping comb which probably led to a supersedure. Top honey producer, great temperament, managed mites well on own, good brood pattern, 3 boxes of brood at peak. A+"
So that's what works for me, at least at the moment. Hopefully that gave you some ideas to ponder, and hopefully this answer didn't take you an hour to read.