Trust & Privacy: Beehive Safety

How flights actually work.

Beehive Safety operates its drones under the FAA's Part 107 small unmanned-aircraft rule, with Remote ID broadcast on every flight. Where a community sits within controlled airspace, flights are authorized in advance through the FAA's LAANC system.

Coverage frequency depends on your drone count relative to your property's size. Beehive doesn't sell a fixed coverage percentage. A modest deployment runs scheduled surveys within daylight hours; a large enough fleet for the area covered can approach continuous coverage during those hours. We don't yet have validated data on full overnight (full-darkness) operation, so we don't market that as a default capability. If a page on this site ever implies guaranteed continuous coverage regardless of drone count, or implies overnight/full-darkness operation, that's a bug in our copy. Please tell us so we can fix it.

Street-facing and common areas only.

Beehive Safety captures still and video imagery of street-facing property and common areas. That's it.

What's in scope

Street-facing exteriors (paint, structures, signage)
Driveways and street parking visible from the road
Common areas the association controls
Conditions matched to your uploaded CC&Rs

What's never captured

Audio, of any kind
Thermal imaging
Backyards, pools, or other non-street-facing areas
Facial recognition or biometric identity matching

Non-street-facing areas incidentally in frame during a survey flight are automatically masked and are never part of the compliance record.

We don't identify who a person is.

Beehive Safety does not perform facial recognition or biometric identification of any person, ever. Detections are based on objects and conditions: a vehicle, a bin, a garage door position, a piece of signage, not on identifying who a person is.

Real-time vehicle alerting is the one exception worth stating plainly: it reads a vehicle's license plate and matches it against your community's registered-vehicle list. That's vehicle matching, not person identification. Beehive does not run a plate against any DMV, registry, or law-enforcement database, does not look up who owns a vehicle, and does not build a record of a person's identity from it. See Real-Time Alerting below for how this feature works end to end.

How long footage is kept.

This is the default for every community. It's not something a board elects into or out of, and we don't offer indefinite retention as an option.

Footage type	Retention period
General survey footage, no flagged condition	30 days, then deleted
Footage tied to an open violation	Through resolution and any appeal window, capped at 12 months
Vehicle images tied to a real-time alert	30 days, the same as general survey footage, unless your community's staff flags it for a specific reason
Indefinite retention	Not offered

Objections are handled directly, not punted to the board.

Residents may opt out of any imaging that isn't limited to the street-facing view of their property (for example, a masking request for a side yard visible from a public way) by contacting Beehive Safety directly, in writing. No board approval is required. Opt-out requests are honored within one business day and logged.

Real-time vehicle alerting works from the same street-facing view as the rest of the service, so it isn't something an individual resident can turn off separately: it's a community-level decision your board makes, the same way your general survey schedule is. If your community has it enabled, that's disclosed to residents at onboarding alongside the survey schedule.

How evidence is protected.

Footage and evidence packets are encrypted at rest.
Multi-factor authentication is required on all board and management accounts with dashboard access.
Every view of an evidence packet is logged.
Real-time alerts are delivered as a notification with a secure link, not as an image or video file sent directly to a phone or inbox. Viewing the underlying footage goes through the same logged, authenticated access as any other evidence.

We deliver evidence. Your association issues the notice.

Beehive Safety compiles flagged conditions into an evidence packet (photos, timestamps, geotags, and the specific governing-document clause each one relates to) and delivers it to your community's manager or board. Your management company or board reviews it and issues the actual violation notice. Beehive does not practice law, and does not draft or send legal notices on an association's behalf.

Real-time alerting: what it does, and what it doesn't.

Beehive Safety flags vehicles that don't match your community's registered-vehicle list during the hours you configure, and sends a notification to your on-site security staff or a board-designated contact. Your community's own staff decides what happens next.

Beehive never contacts law enforcement, and never takes any action on an alert. An alert is delivered to your designated contact and nowhere else.
Beehive does not review or verify an alert before it's sent. Your community's own staff is the first and only human in the loop.
This is a detection aid, not a security service. It does not replace patrols, alarms, locks, or law enforcement, and it will not detect every event. Don't reduce other security measures on the assumption that it will.
It follows the same capture scope and retention limits as the rest of the service: no audio, no thermal, no indefinite retention. See Identity & Biometrics for how vehicle matching works and what it doesn't do.

Every legal and privacy question, in one place.

Beehive Safety operates its drones under the FAA's Part 107 small UAS rule, with Remote ID broadcast on every flight. Where a community falls within controlled airspace, flights are authorized in advance through the FAA's LAANC system. How much coverage you get depends on your drone count relative to your property's size: a modest deployment means scheduled surveys within daylight hours, and a larger fleet for the area can approach continuous coverage during those hours. We don't yet have validated data on full overnight operation.

The general survey schedule is set with your board and disclosed to residents at onboarding. We don't publish an exact minute-by-minute flight log in advance, but the schedule itself is not hidden from residents.

Footage is encrypted at rest. General footage is retained 30 days; footage tied to an open violation is retained up to 12 months, through resolution and any appeal window. We do not offer indefinite retention. See Data Retention above.

Flights can operate through dawn and dusk twilight, not just full daylight. We do not use thermal imaging at any time, day or night.

No. Beehive Safety does not capture audio under any circumstances.

Residents may opt out of any imaging beyond the street-facing view of their property by contacting Beehive Safety directly, in writing. No board approval is required, and requests are honored within one business day. See Resident Opt-Out above.

No. See Identity & Biometrics above.

For real-time vehicle alerting, yes: a plate is matched against your community's registered-vehicle list to determine whether a vehicle is on it. That's vehicle matching, not person identification. Beehive doesn't run a plate against any DMV, registry, or law-enforcement database, and doesn't look up who owns a vehicle. See Identity & Biometrics above.

No. Beehive delivers an evidence packet; your association's manager or board authors and issues the actual notice. See Evidence Packets, Not Legal Notices above.

Yes. It flags vehicles that don't match your community's registered-vehicle list and notifies your own security staff or a board-designated contact. Beehive doesn't review alerts before they're sent and never contacts law enforcement; your community's own staff decides what happens next. See Real-Time Alerting above for the full picture, including what it doesn't do.

How Beehive Safety handles privacy, data, and legal compliance.