BoxFort

all i'm saying is that poking a charging wolf gets about 2 hits in in the time it takes to fully charge a spear throw, so if you're already that close just poke them. the only issue is if the charge doesn't need to be a full charge for full damage.

perhaps the player should have to inspect the hive for mites/rot and replace comb frames over time (the rot could easily be as simple as making a frame cost 4 boards and a beeswax, and give 3-4 boards (weighted to like 80% for 4) back when extracting the honey), and also when mites do infect a frame have that ruin the frame's honey, and potentially spread if the player doesn't catch it quickly. that and as you mentioned, help the bees through winter, especially in colder climates (necessitating leaving the bees with more combs full of honey the colder the winter gets)

this could probably be solved with a bit of logic on the melting speed in the back end: just take time of year into account and massively increase melt speed in the summer.

Not to dogpile, but shotguns and snipers are notoriously difficult to balance because they're super overpowered in reality. shotguns for being just "point within a degree of the target at less than 50 meters", and snipers for being "you saw a single glint off a scope in a tower 300-800 meters away (if you got lucky), and now you're missing a lung". let go of your romanticised view of realism. while thinking about altering it to be more realistic is a good way to find inspiration, ask yourself "would this actually make the game more fun, or would this create a singular optimal way to play?" the thing is, if the opponent is already 2 yards away and you haven't started charging a throw, the throw will take far too long to charge (if a partial charge throw is not weaker than a full charge then i'd say that actually needs a balance change, maybe to like half charge reaching 85% of the damage), leaving you vulnerable to the opponent's attacks. meanwhile poking it would let you get in at least twice the number of pokes as repeated fully charged throws.