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[Quarque]

I really, really want to have a reason to do some beekeeping. It looks stylish and fun. The problem is that as far as I can see, the costs and benefits seem extremely bad.. am I overlooking something?

First note that it is essentially a different "farming": you invest materials and dwarf labors in return for food and booze.

Costs:
- is an outdoors activity, so requires to deal with cave adaptation (like outdoor farming); building a roofed-over light inside area is an optional workaround for both
- requires several special items to work (hive, press and jugs), where a farm just needs a plot. Is more work to set up.
- Once set up, the amount of dwarf labor to keep it going seems about the same. Farming needs sowing and harvesting, beekeeping needs splitting and harvesting colonies.
- there is a (soft and hard) limit to production, unlike farms. For practical purposes, the soft limit of 40 hives IS the hard limit, because hives above 40 yield very little increase in output. At the limit, you are producing about 12 Royal Jelly, 12 Honey and 12 wax each season.
- requires more space than farming: 40 tiles for the hives, but you also need some space in between for walking, for an output of 12 cooking ingredients and 5*12=60 booze. A farm can produce that much with about 2 tiles.

Benefits:
- Wax is garbage with low value, that can be used for nothing but crafts. Less useful than bones.
- Royal Gelee, according to what I read on the wiki: can be stored in finished good stockpiles, making it harder to access and keep track of. It is also a liquid, and dwarves will prefer to cook solid ingredients instead. If you do manage to get your dwarves to cook it, it is still one of the worst possible ingredients, because it has the lowest value and stack size.
- Honey can also be stored in finished good stockpiles, making it harder to access. It can be used for cooking but is another terrible ingredient for that purpose, for the same reasons. Turning it into 5 mead looks better, but mead has a terribly low value too.

tldr:
- harder than farming,
- yields inferior products
- hard cap on production that equals the output of two farming tiles

yikes Do the gods hate bees?

[PatrikLundell]

Well, if dorfs have a preference for mead or honey (and it isn't for the non existent bumblebee versions), that's the only thing that will do. By the way, you can't booze cook mead...

[Bauta]

At first i read "barkeeping" and i was really weirded out 

I have beekeepers mostly for lore reasons, dwarfs love honey and mead afterall, that said its not the kind of industry that makes sense, although having a beeinfested canyon as your only way into your fort sounds really fun

[Stench Guzman]

Beekeeping is mostly a vanity project without much practical use.

There is one interesting use for wax working though.  Some dwarves get upset after a while if they don't do any practical craft work.  You can assign all of them wax working and then queue up a wax craft job when they start getting restless.  This way you won't use up more useful supplies like your stone or metal or cloth.

[Loud Whispers]

Yeah I only do beekeeping for roleplay purposes. It is really not worth it, especially when your beekeeper decides they really want to harvest a wild hive outside a safe zone, but who doesn't want bees?

[Orkel]

Beekeeping is just a fun side project. DF has a lot of these.

[Sanctume]

(outside) [Fortification] (indoor beehive) works, as well as roofed outdoor beehives. 

I think there is still a bug where you will only require 1 beekeeper labor.  That bug was supposed the other beekeeper ends up waiting for a while, until a beekeeper labor is finished by the first. 

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, more or less.

You can manage more than 12, i.e.

From an initial state of 40 colonies:
Split-ready: 40
Harvest-ready: 40

Spring: Harvest 20 colonies, split 20.
Split-ready: 0
Harvest-ready: 20
Summer: Split 20 spring colonies, then harvest 20
Split-ready: 0
Harvest-ready: 0 (Spring split halfway done)
Autumn: Harvest 20 Spring colonies, then split 20 summer
Split-ready: 0
Harvest-ready: 0 (Summer halfway done)
Winter: Harvest 20 summer colonies, then split 20 autumn.
Split-ready: 0
Harvest-ready: 0 (Autumn halfway done)

And so on.

You might be able to manage more if you  split a colony twice before harvesting, instead of once as described above.

However, already requires bit of micro: - if Beekeeper takes too long to start harvesting and splitting colonies in spring, the new colonies won't be ready for splitting when winter ones are harvested in the coming summer, resulting in empty hives. If the delay is 3 months, they might harvest all colonies at the same time, even.

On the wax & royal jelly note, cooking also fulfils the crafting needs, so it's bit of an use should you want to do something with it.

OTOH, beekeeping is somewhat easily moddable - though players generally nerf farming instead, albeit not to the point where plump helmet takes over 4 years to grow. (Plant gathering would outcompete it in that case in size taken and in not being vulnerable to tantrums.)

[Stormfeather]

I don't have much to add to the above (I also like beekeeping but just because I myself like animals and the idea of keeping bees, so I have my dwarfs do it). I will say though that IIRC (I've take a bit of a break and am just coming back), you can get around the annoyance of honey/royal jelly being stored in the finished goods stockpiles by having your finished good stockpile nearest your screw press feeding into one or more of your food stockpiles that you take cooking ingredients from.

[delphonso]

Something to note, while wax crafts are worth less value, they are basically generated ex nihilo. As Stench Guzman mentioned, it doesn't use stone, which means no extra digging or anything. It's a pretty easy resource to automate for unlimited crafts.

[Bumber]

Something to note, while wax crafts are worth less value, they are basically generated ex nihilo. As Stench Guzman mentioned, it doesn't use stone, which means no extra digging or anything. It's a pretty easy resource to automate for unlimited crafts.

Glass and earthenware are easier if you have access, though.

[Timeless Bob]

bees will function as guards for kobolds or other invaders.  Stick a beehive out in front of your entrance and never split it: unsleeping gaurdian FTW. Better than a Support with a cage full of cats on top (Although the resulting catsplosion bomb is pretty hilarious)

[Pasakoye]

I think bees use to be worth 1 each and were a big boost to architecture value, but now they seem to be worth 1/1000.

The only thing holding back wax, is that it can't be dyed first before crafting.
Something like wax seals on letters.

[âbirtobul]

Wait do bees sting? Guard bees? I'd love a bees defense tunnel. If not I need to mod it

[FantasticDorf]

You can probably summon a swarm of bees now using the interaction with [CREATURE:BUMBLEBEE:ALL]