Renewable Bee Hive Harvesting

[Crysta]

I often focus on a lot on renewability so want to suggest a change to the bee hives skeps deleting the clay from the recipe.
I think it might be nice if you got the clay back or/and also could hollow out a log to use as a hive instead. Having both could give multiple cosmetic options for beekeeping which is nice.
It just feels unrealistic for the clay to just get erased completely.

[Syrdiman]

I'm surprised this hasn't been implemented already.

[Thorfinn]

An improved version is in the excellent From Golden Combs mod.

Edited June 3, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Maelstrom]

On 6/1/2025 at 10:58 PM, Crysta said:

It just feels unrealistic for the clay to just get erased completely.

Ummmm.... ok?  Considering the clay becomes hardened/baked in the sun means that it's as resuable as much as a broken coffee mug.  Additionally, you only get a small portion of the 16 reeds back when a skep is broken.  The current mechanic makes a lot of sense... to me.

[GermanicusGoosicus]

Why not just have modern day beehive as well so you don't have to break the whole thing just another more advanced hive that allows bigger bee pops and more honey.

 

[Thorfinn]

On 6/15/2025 at 10:34 AM, GermanicusGoosicus said:

Why not just have modern day beehive as well so you don't have to break the whole thing just another more advanced hive that allows bigger bee pops and more honey.

 

From Golden Combs gives you Langstroth boxes, which is what you are talking about, I think. But have you tried out vanilla beekeeping yet? It is absurdly easy to produce vastly more honey and wax than you can possibly use.

[Bruno Willis]

On 6/5/2025 at 2:19 AM, Maelstrom said:

Ummmm.... ok?  Considering the clay becomes hardened/baked in the sun means that it's as resuable as much as a broken coffee mug.  Additionally, you only get a small portion of the 16 reeds back when a skep is broken.  The current mechanic makes a lot of sense... to me.

I think the issue is that I don't associate bee keeping with mining, but sometimes I have to go dig up a bunch of clay to make new skeps. It feels a bit odd.

I would also like alternative, longer term options for bee keeping, or even to use excess wax instead of clay as an alternative recipe for the existing skeps.

[Bennett Harnisch]

Serious proposal for beekeeping expansion, adding two items to the game:

Bee box - Higher-tech alternative to skeps. Crafted with planks, and consists of two interactable "frames". Once placed, the player must fill the frames by re-investing a small amount of beeswax to act as a foundation for the bees to build on (this also means players can't skip making skeps, and skeps would still be the only way to transport live bees). Once the frames are populated and harvestable, interacting with them will harvest the honeycomb from that frame, and the process can begin again. Bees will still have a chance to swarm and attack, as normal. 

Smoker - High tech beekeeping tool. Crafted from metal plates and a bellows (I believe bellows are already planned for a future update to the forge). Must be fueled with dry grass and ignited. Once ignited, it will begin releasing a thin trail of smoke particles from the spout. When held and used, it will emit puffs of large smoke particles. Upon touching a skep or bee box, the smoke will guarantee(?) that the bees will not swarm if you harvest from that block within a short period of time. 

Also worth saying, there could be a special set of late game beekeeping clothing/armor, which would make the player immune to bee swarm damage while worn. I've seen the Nadiyan beekeeper set in the handbook, but I have no idea if it is actually attainable or functional. 

[Topminator]

yeah, a wooden beehive that drops itself locked behind a steel saw maybe, make it unmovable though so you need the reed one to bring back home the bees.

and then quadruple the cost for the reed one.

[ArgentLuna]

They could well do that. In the meantime From Golden Combs is a great mod if you want better beehives

[Bennett Harnisch]

8 hours ago, Topminator said:

a wooden beehive that drops itself locked behind a steel saw maybe,

Probably makes sense to put it behind a certain tier of nails, like iron nails, if they don't want people to be able to craft them in the copper or bronze ages. 

[Thorfinn]

Having way more hours into the game than I care to admit, and extensive use of From Golden Combs, the game loses a lot with reusable honey production equipment, notwithstanding durability on the frames in FGC.

Granted, vanilla is not really all that intensive in preserving gameplay loops. A single stack of clay is good for 32 skeps, which is enough for 32 lanterns or 96 sealed crocks. That's hardly an inconvenience. Reeds, well, you lose about half, so the player has a reason to bother with scythes, which, otherwise, have about as much utility in that part of the game as a steel hoe. You have already fired all the pottery you need, and you probably have the better part of a crate of hay bales put aside.

Weapons and tools and armor and clothes all have durability to give you reasons to leave your homestead. If they were permanent, there would be no point in ever going out to find more metal. And that's what permanent beehives would do, even if you gate them behind progression. The fact one would even think of gating them means you acknowledge that it would not be desirable in terms of gameplay, at least early on.

Don't take my word for it, though. Try From Golden Combs and see if you don't get the feeling you are missing out.

Edited January 31 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

And that's what permanent beehives would do, even if you gate them behind progression. The fact one would even think of gating them means you acknowledge that it would not be desirable in terms of gameplay, at least early on.

Given that the player can easily transplant cattails/papyrus to the safety of their homestead, I'm not sure this is the best counterargument to use here.

I do like Golden Combs, but it does feel just a tad overpowered in some ways. While I would like to see a more expensive but more permanent beehive as a later game investment option, I'd also be okay with being able to use straw or some other crop byproduct to craft things like skeps and rope instead. Still the same concept as cattails regarding the latter, but doesn't give the player as much incentive to go strip the countryside barren.

[Thorfinn]

47 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Given that the player can easily transplant cattails/papyrus to the safety of their homestead, I'm not sure this is the best counterargument to use here.

I just felt something was off about using FGC. Whether the ceramic hives that you can use forever, or the Langstroths that need repair. It just seemed way too, I don't know, easy? Like there was nothing at all involved in beekeeping? Maybe it was too scalable? Too easy to end up with a hundred hives? Even gardening takes more effort, and that's not very much.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Thorfinn said:

I just felt something was off about using FGC. Whether the ceramic hives that you can use forever, or the Langstroths that need repair. It just seemed way too, I don't know, easy? Like there was nothing at all involved in beekeeping? Maybe it was too scalable? Too easy to end up with a hundred hives? Even gardening takes more effort, and that's not very much.

Oh yeah, I don't disagree that it's a bit too easy compared to vanilla, but it is pretty nice to have one expensive hive like the Langstroth rather than a field of skeps(though ironically, you still need a small field of skeps initially in order to breed enough bees to fill FGC hives). The controls are a bit clunky though, and the honey production seems a bit faster than it is in vanilla, though I could be mistaken. I do like that the Langstroth frames have durability and require linen, as that gives more use to linen outside of building a windmill. The ability to stores multiple frames of honey is also nice, as then the hive is still working even if I forget to check it every now and then.

I think another reason FGC ends up feeling fairly easy, is that bees contained in FGC hives don't produce angry bees. It'd be one thing if the player needed to smoke the hive before harvesting, but no risk whatsoever for the harvest? Come to think of it, that could be a way to make beekeeping just a bit more involved than it is--allow players to smoke the bees before harvesting for less chance of angry bees. Likewise, perhaps the player needs to be careful about when they harvest honey/how much they harvest; if the bees have no food for the winter then the hive population could decline or even be wiped out entirely. The concept could probably be taken a step further simply by slowing down how fast a swarm of bees grows, and how efficiently the bees produce honey depending on swarm size(if this isn't already accounted for). Then bees take some actual investment that's still relatively easy to manage, instead of being the current "whack a few skeps down and surround with tons of flowers".

[Bennett Harnisch]

On 1/31/2026 at 1:59 PM, Thorfinn said:

Weapons and tools and armor and clothes all have durability to give you reasons to leave your homestead. If they were permanent, there would be no point in ever going out to find more metal. And that's what permanent beehives would do, even if you gate them behind progression. The fact one would even think of gating them means you acknowledge that it would not be desirable in terms of gameplay, at least early on.

Don't take my word for it, though. Try From Golden Combs and see if you don't get the feeling you are missing out.

Actually, the reason I would think to gate them is to preserve a niche for the skeps, so that players will progress from skeps to bee boxes rather than "skipping" skeps. Other than the small amount of clay, skeps are practically infinite already. The point of bee boxes is just to give the player more progression to pursue, and the increased quality of life of not having to trim a forest of reeds each time you harvest your hives provides the motivation to pursue that progression. 

I'm quite enjoying vanilla still, haven't done any modded playthroughs, but from other games I too have seen mods undermine games by introducing too much quality of life or power creeping the player too far. In any case, if the bee boxes as proposed are too easy, you could introduce any number of mechanics to beekeeping to force the player to think more about their apiary or force them to work a little harder. I think bee boxes are a logical extension that the vanilla game will probably introduce at some point, so it's good to think about and talk about what that should look like

[RogueVali]

Personally I just got apiaries mod.. Bees biting is a pain, but figured fair trade off for actual renewable honey. That and recipes are fun and reasonable.

Edited Tuesday at 06:19 AM by RogueVali