Beeline to OpenTelemetry Migration

Step-by-step guide for migrating from Honeycomb Beelines (now End of Life) to OpenTelemetry instrumentation.

Status

Honeycomb Beelines have reached End of Life and are archived. All new instrumentation should use OpenTelemetry. Existing Beeline users should migrate as soon as practical.

Migration Strategy

Migration follows a two-phase approach that allows incremental, service-by-service migration without breaking distributed traces.

Phase 1: Enable W3C Trace Propagation (All Services)

Before migrating any service to OTel, all services must support W3C trace headers. This enables Beeline and OTel services to share trace context.

1. Upgrade each Beeline to the minimum version supporting W3C headers
2. Configure each Beeline to use W3C propagation format
3. Deploy all services with W3C enabled
4. Verify: Traces still link correctly across services

Minimum Beeline versions for W3C support:

Phase 2: Migrate Each Service to OTel (One at a Time)

After all services support W3C headers:

1. Choose a service to migrate (start with leaf services — fewest dependencies)
2. Replace Beeline SDK with OpenTelemetry SDK
3. Configure OTLP exporter to point to Honeycomb
4. Add auto-instrumentation libraries
5. Replicate any custom Beeline instrumentation in OTel
6. Deploy and verify traces still connect
7. Repeat for next service

Key rule: Complete Phase 1 across ALL services before starting Phase 2 on ANY service.

W3C Propagation Configuration

Go Beeline

beeline.Init(beeline.Config{
    HTTPPropagationHook: propagation.W3C,
})

Python Beeline

beeline.init(
    http_trace_propagation_hook=beeline.propagation.w3c.http_trace_propagation_hook,
    http_trace_parser_hook=beeline.propagation.w3c.http_trace_parser_hook,
)

Node.js Beeline

const beeline = require("honeycomb-beeline")({
    httpTraceParserHook: beeline.w3c.httpTraceParserHook,
    httpTracePropagationHook: beeline.w3c.httpTracePropagationHook,
});

For Java and Ruby configurations, consult ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/beeline-migration/references/w3c-propagation.md.

Service Migration Checklist

For each service being migrated from Beeline to OTel:

• Beeline version supports W3C (Phase 1 complete)
• Install OTel SDK and OTLP exporter packages
• Configure OTLP endpoint and headers for Honeycomb
• Set OTEL_SERVICE_NAME to match existing service name
• Add auto-instrumentation libraries (HTTP, DB, etc.)
• Port custom spans: Beeline startSpan() -> OTel tracer.start_span()
• Port custom attributes: Beeline addField() -> OTel span.set_attribute()
• Remove Beeline dependency
• Deploy and verify: traces link across Beeline and OTel services
• Verify: custom attributes appear in Honeycomb

Migration Safety Checklist

• Complete Phase 1 across all services before starting Phase 2 — mixed propagation formats break trace linking across service boundaries
• Keep OTEL_SERVICE_NAME identical to the Beeline service name — Honeycomb uses this as the dataset name, and changing it splits your data into a new dataset
• Audit all Beeline addField() calls before removing the Beeline SDK — each one needs a corresponding span.set_attribute() in OTel to preserve your query dimensions
• Compare OTel auto-instrumentation field names against Beeline field names — OTel may use different attribute names (e.g., http.request.method vs request.method), and dashboards or SLIs referencing the old names will need updating

Additional Resources

Reference Files

• ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/beeline-migration/references/migration-steps-by-language.md — Detailed migration code for each language
• ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/beeline-migration/references/w3c-propagation.md — Complete W3C configuration for all Beeline languages

Cross-References

• For OTel SDK setup after migration, see the otel-instrumentation skill