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[necromancerbob]

Having delved into fortress mode for the first time the only thing I can't seem to find currently is where I build my own bee hives? It's not an option in the carpentry workshop or masonry ones?

[rawrcakes]

Craftdwarf workshop, out of stone, or a metalsmith's forge, out of metal. Probably pottery and glass as well, but I've never used those industries much. The craftdwarf's one is cheapest, obviously, and you might as well get to producing rock pots while you're at it - much better to use your excess wood for charcoal than barrels.

[Broseph Stalin]

^ this.

Beekeeping is really impossibly unprofitable though.

[xar23]

Unprofitable: yes.  But also pretty easy to manage.  You can't feed a fort on mead alone, since you get the honey in fairly tiny quantities from the bees relative to plant brewing.  However, when you have a few idlers just have them run the screw presses and you get some cooking and brewing stuff for it.  Not the most efficient thing, but it doesn't require a major supply chain to support either.

[Broseph Stalin]

Unprofitable: yes.  But also pretty easy to manage.  You can't feed a fort on mead alone, since you get the honey in fairly tiny quantities from the bees relative to plant brewing.  However, when you have a few idlers just have them run the screw presses and you get some cooking and brewing stuff for it.  Not the most efficient thing, but it doesn't require a major supply chain to support either.

That's logical but if you have bees you probably have plants to gather, I'm not even sure you could feed one dwarf with a single beehive.

[Sadrice]

It's easy to mod bees.  You can reduce the amount of time it takes to produce hive products, and also set the number of products it produces.  I have mine set to 5 honey 4 times per year.

[expwnent]

Yeah, I tried it once. It was not worthwhile. Plant gathering would be more effective to feed people.

[slink]

I set out to make a major honey industry.  I built a dozen hives and set them not to harvest, so I could split them and fill another dozen hives.  Unfortunately, there is a bug that causes the beekeeper to go stand where the last bee colony existed on the map, if he has a hive to fill and no bees available yet.  That sucks if the last bee colony was at the edge of the map and some invaders arrive.  Even if it was inside the fortress, as mine was, the beekeeper become uselessly frozen next to the last place which had bees to offer.  That means he does no honey harvesting or hive building or, presumably, eating or drinking although I did not leave him there to find out.  Cancelling the job does not last past his next look around for work: "Hey, I need more bee-e-e-e-e-e-s ... <rush to exact same spot><freeze>"

[LuckyLuigi]

I really tried to make beekeeping work but there were many problems with it, one of which gave insane message spam.
I don't get that it is so unprofitable either, I love honey !
This was a few version ago though.

[Sphalerite]

If you are going to do beekeeping, be sure to only have one dwarf with the beekeeping labor active, and build your beehives one at a time, not building a new one until the previous ones are all full.  The bug with a dwarf standing forever at the spot where a beehive once was tends to occur if you have multiple beekeepers and/or if multiple hives need to be filled at the same time.