[5] Before the creation of the Hive brand, British Gas had been trialling a remote control heating service, starting in September 2011, using technology from AlertMe.

Hive was established when parent company Centrica, owner of British Gas, formed its Connected Homes sector in 2012.

[10] In February 2015, British Gas purchased the connected home firm AlertMe in a deal worth £65 million.

[11][13] This meant Hive could more closely compete with similar platforms used by rivals such as HomeKit, Project Brillo and Nest Labs.

[16] In 2015 the company announced future plans to use the Honeycomb platform to support and allow integration with third-party products including a Samsung camera.

[25] On August 11, 2016, the company announced a partnership with IFTTT (If This, Then That)[26] to allow the smart thermostat to connect to 300 additional products and services through expanded recipe-based automation.

[27] In September 2016, Hive announced it will partner with Amazon Echo, allowing customers to use Alexa voice control to activate lighting, plugs and heating.

investigation claimed that the Hive app was a "burglars dream"[37] because it was sending data that was unencrypted, including heating schedules and away settings, posing a security risk to customers should their Wi-Fi be tapped into.

[27] Hive faced consumer backlash when in July 2022 they announced their security and leak line of products were being discontinued and remotely disabled.

Consumers had minimal options for refunds and left many with devices which were working perfectly fine but have since been remotely disabled by Hive.