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new 5746f2e6 Blog post: introduce CamelBee, route topology and message
tracing for deployed Camel applications. (#1784)
5746f2e6 is described below
commit 5746f2e6175fbbaf36249d42df9c474e61f68170
Author: Ege Karaosmanoglu <[email protected]>
AuthorDate: Mon Sep 21 13:03:26 2026 +0300
Blog post: introduce CamelBee, route topology and message tracing for
deployed Camel applications. (#1784)
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+---
+title: "CamelBee: Route Topology and Message Tracing for Deployed Camel
Applications"
+date: 2026-09-21
+draft: false
+authors: [egekaraosmanoglu]
+categories: ["Community", "Tooling"]
+keywords: ["apache camel", "observability", "debugging", "tracing", "route
topology", "quarkus", "spring boot", "camel k"]
+preview: "CamelBee is an open-source library that serves a debugger UI from
inside a running Camel application: live route topology, a per-hop latency
waterfall, and message tracing with redaction on by default."
+---
+
+Apache Camel keeps raising the floor of what ships in the box. [Route topology
+diagrams](/blog/2026/06/camel-route-topology/) and the [Camel
TUI](/blog/2026/07/camel-tui/) both
+arrived in 4.21, and both are very good at what they are for: understanding a
route while you write
+it, on the machine you write it on. As the TUI announcement puts it, it is "a
development and
+troubleshooting tool, not a production monitoring solution."
+
+[CamelBee](https://github.com/camelbee/camelbee) is an open-source
(Apache-2.0) library for the other
+side of that line: after a route has been deployed somewhere you cannot attach
a terminal to. You add
+it as a dependency, and the application itself serves a debugger UI over HTTP.
There is no sidecar,
+agent or collector to install. The UI shows the live route topology, a latency
waterfall per hop, and
+traced messages with their request and response bodies, whether the app runs
on a laptop, in a test
+environment or in a Kubernetes pod.
+
+## Why this exists
+
+Route source tells you what the code says, not what actually happens when a
message runs through it:
+which path it takes, what each endpoint returns, and where the time goes. Logs
can answer some of
+that, but only for what someone thought to log in advance, and correlating
them by hand is slow.
+CamelBee watches the running application instead: open the topology it
reports, switch tracing on,
+reproduce the request, and follow it through the routes, in the same
deployment where the problem
+showed up. It does not keep a history; it records only what flows through
while tracing is on.
+
+This matters more now that a growing share of integration code is written with
AI assistants.
+Generated routes are often long and plausible-looking, and reading them line
by line to understand
+what they really do takes time. Seeing the topology they produce, and watching
real messages move
+through it, is often a quicker way to understand that code and to check that
it does what was asked.
+
+## Route topology and message tracing
+
+CamelBee asks the running application which routes and endpoints it has and
draws them as an
+interactive graph. When tracing is on, messages animate along the connections
as they flow. Tracing
+is switched on and off from the UI, with no restart, and every traced exchange
can be inspected in
+full: headers, body, request and response, with a timeline to step back and
forth through.
+
+
+
+Exchanges created by `wireTap`, `multicast`, `split`, `recipientList` and
`seda` are linked back to
+the exchange that started them, so one request reads as one flow instead of
many unrelated messages.
+Failures are recorded on consumer-started routes too (timer, file, JMS), where
there is no caller for
+the error to be reported to.
+
+CamelBee collects this through Camel's `EventNotifier`, so it works at
endpoint boundaries: what
+arrived, what was sent to each endpoint, and what came back. It does not step
through individual
+processors inside a route; for that, the TUI and the developer console are the
right tools.
+
+## The waterfall: where the time went
+
+Every hop is drawn as a bar, positioned by when it started and sized by how
long it took. A wide
+parent bar over a few near-instant children is waiting rather than working,
for example on a
+redelivery delay, and that is visible at a glance instead of being worked out
from log timestamps.
+
+
+
+Selecting a bar highlights the matching connection on the topology graph, and
selecting a connection
+scrolls to its bars in the waterfall.
+
+## Running it outside development
+
+A tool that runs where real traffic runs needs safe defaults:
+
+- **Login is required by default.** If no password is configured, one is
generated and logged at
+ startup. It can be turned off when the endpoints are already protected by
the host framework.
+- **Tracing starts off**, and once switched on it turns itself off again after
a configurable idle
+ period.
+- **Sensitive values are redacted by default**: passwords, tokens, API keys,
card numbers and more,
+ based on a configurable key list. Bodies can be left out of capture entirely.
+- **Capture can be limited to one transaction.** Give CamelBee an order id or
correlation id and it
+ records only the flow containing that value, plus the exchanges that flow
spawns. Nothing else is
+ recorded.
+
+
+
+## Getting started
+
+CamelBee supports Quarkus, Spring Boot, standalone Camel and Camel K. For
Quarkus, add the core
+library:
+
+```xml
+<dependency>
+ <groupId>io.camelbee</groupId>
+ <artifactId>camelbee-quarkus-core</artifactId>
+ <version>4.1.0</version>
+</dependency>
+```
+
+Enable it in `application.yaml`:
+
+```yaml
+camelbee:
+ notifier-enabled: true
+ route-configurer-enabled: true
+ context-enabled: true
+ tracer-enabled: true
+ password: change-me
+
+quarkus:
+ index-dependency:
+ camelbeecore:
+ group-id: io.camelbee
+ artifact-id: camelbee-quarkus-core
+```
+
+Then start the application and open `http://localhost:8080/camelbee`. The
+[README](https://github.com/camelbee/camelbee) covers the setup for the other
runtimes, the full
+feature set with screenshots, and every configuration property with its
default.
+
+## Feedback welcome
+
+CamelBee is a young project, and feedback from people running Camel in real
environments is the most
+useful thing it can get: what is missing, what is confusing, and what would
make it worth adding to a
+deployment. Issues and discussions are welcome on
+[GitHub](https://github.com/camelbee/camelbee/issues).
