Whereabouts of the bees

[DinoHazard]

What exactly are the spawn criteria for beehives? So far I've only noticed they like deciduous forests, but while some will be lousy with bees some have none. Could just be luck, of course, but I'm wondering if there are more specific tricks to finding "bee spots" ?

[Thorfinn]

Exactly? 

		minTemp: 5,
		maxTemp: 35,
		minRain: 0.35,
		maxRain: 0.95,
		minForest: 0.25,

I believe that means not all "Uncommon" or "Almost All the Time" rain locations can have bees.

If you are looking for some game element, if you see wild pigs, you are almost certainly in the right place.

Edited March 21, 2025 by Thorfinn

[DinoHazard]

20 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Exactly? 

		minTemp: 5,
		maxTemp: 35,
		minRain: 0.35,
		maxRain: 0.95,
		minForest: 0.25,

I believe that means not all "Uncommon" or "Almost All the Time" rain locations can have bees.

If you are looking for some game element, if you see wild pigs, you are almost certainly in the right place.

Thanks! I don't have a great frame of reference for what those numbers mean in practice, but it's good to know what it's dependent on. I was wondering if there's more to it than just climate but that doesn't seem to be the case. I've got plenty of pigs running around my base but unfortunately no bees, hah. Looks like I'll have to go on an adventure.

[Broccoli Clock]

20 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

If you are looking for some game element, if you see wild pigs, you are almost certainly in the right place.

That's a good tip, I presume it runs along the same lines of "see horsetail, expect wolves".

 

In a general question about bees, I don't have any nests close to me, but I do have some maybe 150-200 blocks away from me. I assume this game works on chunks in memory so if I place a skep near the nest do I need to stay in that chunk in order for the skep to be populated? 

https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Skep

"After a few days, the bees should have migrated into the skep."

I've collected populated skeps from next to my base, just not from far away.

[Thorfinn]

33 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I do have some maybe 150-200 blocks away from me.

I've heard some of the OG say that once you have visited a place, it remains "loaded" so long as it remains in your view distance. I am not certain enough of it to verify the code myself yet, but I've noticed nothing that makes me doubt it. So I'll live with lag spikes at 1024 or higher if the hive is that far away, but I'll switch back to 768 as soon as I can.

BTW, it is quite possible to sprint past a hive without hearing it. By the time it gets mixed into the sound, you are again out of range unless you ran right underneath it. But if you walk a dozen blocks, stop and listen, and repeat, you can generally hear them 30 away as long as you don't have rain or heavy wind..

[Broccoli Clock]

9 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I've heard some of the OG say that once you have visited a place, it remains "loaded" so long as it remains in your view distance. I am not certain enough of it to verify the code myself yet, but I've noticed nothing that makes me doubt it. So I'll live with lag spikes at 1024 or higher if the hive is that far away, but I'll switch back to 768 as soon as I can.

BTW, it is quite possible to sprint past a hive without hearing it. By the time it gets mixed into the sound, you are again out of range unless you ran right underneath it. But if you walk a dozen blocks, stop and listen, and repeat, you can generally hear them 30 away as long as you don't have rain or heavy wind..

Interesting. When you say 1024/768 is that the draw distance you are referring to?

I've got no probs with finding bees, I don't play with music and it's one of those sounds you can hone in on fairly easily. It's just that there are none near me.

I'm being lazy, btw, I'm asking here rather than just spending 20 minutes finding out for myself. I'll go do that, and will report back to confirm if "distant bees" populate "distant skeps".

 

[Thorfinn]

6 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

1024/768 is that the draw distance you are referring to?

Yes

I usually find bees near home, well within the normal 768. I have a current game on one machine where I decided I would start within ~400 of spawn.(Essentially, the distance at which you can resolve a single block.) Quite a little brush, but no honest-to-God forests for over 1500 blocks. (Max view distance.) I did find bees at somewhere around 2000, so with that understanding, it was unloaded the whole time I was back home. When I came back they were "less than 24 hours" when that should have been way more than enough time to have swarmed.

Makes me wonder if view distance can be used to force the wild hive to recalculate. Put in a stack of flowers, turn your view distance down to minimum, go outside that range for 30 seconds (a common timer value; 6 seconds is another) then go back in range.

[Broccoli Clock]

6 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I did find bees at somewhere around 2000, so with that understanding, it was unloaded the whole time I was back home. When I came back they were "less than 24 hours" when that should have been way more than enough time to have swarmed.

Which would suggest that the chunk needs loading or that there is an upper limit of chunks in memory and new ones are replacing older ones 'on the stack'.

I'm all for creating a couthie wee base; nothing more than some planks, a torch and some storage, and sitting it out. Considering these bees are next to a forest, a forest that is regularly spawning wolves, it might be a chance to grab a decent leather collection.

[Zane Mordien]

1 hour ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Which would suggest that the chunk needs loading or that there is an upper limit of chunks in memory and new ones are replacing older ones 'on the stack'.

I'm all for creating a couthie wee base; nothing more than some planks, a torch and some storage, and sitting it out. Considering these bees are next to a forest, a forest that is regularly spawning wolves, it might be a chance to grab a decent leather collection.

The bees work when the chunk is not loaded. I've gotten bees from 1k away from my base on several play throughs and I just set up the flower area, put down the skep and come back in 7 game days and the skep is populated. 

[dakko]

Sometimes players will say that it takes forever for a wild hive to swarm and that there is no notice of swarm time. That happened to me for the first time (player since v1.6) on my current save, with the hive a short distance from my base. It never had notification and it did take more time that I expected considering the number of flowers I'd placed.

All of that to say, lack of 'time to swarm' is not a reliable indicator of the progression towards swarming. Just a heads up.

Edited March 22, 2025 by dakko