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[Cabbagetroll]

My dwarves are convinced, absolutely convinced that there is a wild hive on a particular tile. The original problem was this: The tile had nothing on it but red sand. No hive, at all. A dwarf would reach said tile, then stand there until he or she was almost starving and dehydrated before returning to the safety of the fort. This happened repeatedly. I tried building a wall on top of said tile to convince them that there was nothing underneath, but they didn't care. They would walk toward the spot, realize that there was a wall in the way, and walk back to the fort. Then I channeled it straight through, no more tile. Undeterred, my intrepid dorfs still believe that there is a hive on a tile that literally no longer exists. What madness is this? What shall I do?

[Vehudur]

Give your beekeeper a more useful profession

In all seriousness, I think walling it over is the best you're going to do.  At least your dwarves won't nearly die then.

[Cabbagetroll]

But they do. They walk right up to the wall before realizing that there's a wall there. This cycle repeats ad nauseum. I just know they are going to get ambushed and everyone is going to die.

[Irenices]

Wall off a couple tiles around it so they cant even get near it?  Perhaps they wont think about it anymore if they cant get within a few tiles of it.

[ASCIt]

nuke it from orbit, it's clearly an ethereal bee hive halfway in this dimension and half in the next.

[Cabbagetroll]

Wall off a couple tiles around it so they cant even get near it?  Perhaps they wont think about it anymore if they cant get within a few tiles of it.

Tried this too. They are relentless. Even when my front door bridge is closed, dorfs run smack into it trying to get to this imaginary hive.

[Magma Mater]

This happens to me, too. afaik beekeeping is currently non-functional because of this.

[wierd]

Give your beekeeper a more useful profession

In all seriousness, I think walling it over is the best you're going to do.  At least your dwarves won't nearly die then.

I am intimately familiar with this bug. (I'm the one who initially reported it on the bug tracker, and also suggested a fix.)

The problem is this:

When hives are constructed, they queue a wild hive, or a splittable hive as a source of bees. However, they do not lock that hive as "TSK". As such, if you pause and build several, the hives wil all assign THE SAME wild/splittable hive to the construction, because it hasn't been TSKed, and because it is the closest.  The first hive to be constructed will get the bees, and when it comes time to fill the others, the dwarf will stand around on "union break" waiting for the assigned wild hive to magically reappear. He will do this until he gets hungy or thirsty. He does not show as idling either.

Walling over the site of the wild hive will not work. Neither will putting a floor, or even channeling it out.

The only 2 solutions are as follows:

1) in the impacted hive's q menu options, tell it not to install a colony. This will clear the hive assignment for where to get the bees.  Unpause, and wait for it to calculate the change. Go back into the menu, and re-enable installation. The available hive sources will be re evaluated.

2)destroy, and rebuild the hive.

[Hotaru]

Well, on the other hand it seems like an excellent way to have a permanent lookout outside who won't be bothered by patrol duty. Or an easy way to auto-drop your beekeepers into magma. Or a very slow and semi-unreliable repeater. Like, construct a pressure plate there and have it drop the drawbridge to your fort.

What happens if you channel it out? Will the dwarf path into the empty space? Because then you could actually build a faster beekeeper repeater where he repeatedly slams into a pressure plate built under the imaginary beehive.

[wierd]

Walling it up, or channelling it out will result in endless job cancellation spam, as the union dwarf will complain bitterly about being unable to reach the destination.

You might be able to exploit this bug using a pressure plate though, since there is a slight delay before the attached mechanism will respond.

Build a hive where you will ultimately build a hatch, let it develop unti it reaches "splittable" size.

(Build/destroy other hives until you have exhausted wild sources)

Spam construction of at least 2 more hives, to trigger the bug. Let the dwarf collect the bees and build one of them. Destroy the source hive. This will ensure the second hive can never be populated unless "reset" as per above.

Around the "target" square, build a wall with 3 sides, 2 tiles wide. Channel out the square where the hive was previously located, and put a hatch over the hole. Build a pressure plate right next to it, so that that the pathing dwarf must stand on it to get to the target. Attach it to the hatch.

Dwarf will path to the target, step on the plate, reach the closed hatch, which then opens, and drops him below.  He paths back up, rinse, repeat.

[Hotaru]

Excellent thought, thanks.

Pump- and animal-based repeaters are a hassle, so I think I'll try a Beekeeper based repeater for next fort, next time I need one. It seems really minimalistic but reliable, especially if you give the guy his own housing and food and drink supply near where he thinks the hive is.

[Hotaru]

Thought about it some more, and, having created the beekeeper repeater the above-stated way

• You could put various pressure plates in the beekeeper's path back to the hatch, to create sequential commands
• You could alter the beekeeper's return route with levers and gates to create splits and catches
• You could easily turn it on or off with the above function

Basically, you could create a form of "beekeeper logic" which is basically based on while()-loops.

Like...
While water depth in memory cistern 1 <7
Path to beehive through command series 1
Increment water depth of memory cistern 1 by 1
While water depth in memory cistern 1 = 7
While water depth in memory cistern 2 < 7
Path to beehive through command series 2
Increment water depth of memory cistern 2 by 1

and so on.

Commands can branch, altering the beekeeper's path on the fly. Animal logic commands are usable, for example the animal logic AND, OR, NOT gates.

The beekeeper, his path and fluid cisterns creates a Turing machine? It seems like you could actually build an universal computer with this and not just simple commands.

I tried creating a proof of concept beekeeper logic thingie but DF simply won't run fast enough on this netbook I have with me now.

[Nyxalinth]

nuke it from orbit, it's clearly an ethereal bee hive halfway in this dimension and half in the next.

I think it's the Brigadoon of beehives.  They see it, but then it phases out of time again.

[MagmaMcFry]

The beekeeper, his path and fluid cisterns creates a Turing machine? It seems like you could actually build an universal computer with this and not just simple commands.

Actually, you can only build finite-state machines in DF2010 Fortress Mode.