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[Areyar]

I'd love to see more use out of those 'anthills'.

A beekeeper dwarf collecting honey/nectar/goo from beehives/bloodbughollows/sugarspiders etc for the various biomes.

the 'goo' can be eaten raw, used in cooking and brewed into mead, bloodwine etc.

more complexity: have him collect the hives instead and build them boxes to farm them. Hives spawn 'bee' vermin, which can sting. Hives or boxes periodia=cally generate a 'goo' unit, wich can be taken.
even more complexity: require flowering plants (or other source of sustenance, like living creatures) near hive to generate honey goo.

---
note: As some of you may know, brewing mead has not anything near the same brevity as brewing beer or ale. Mead requires extremely long fermentation times, filtration steps and adding of fresh honey. The bee antibiotic enzymes that protect honey from rotting also retard fermentation, logical as fermentation depends on microorganisms like yeast. This has not prevented programmers from coding mead as a sweet alternative to beer. (note the settlers games)
Mead is just a very romantisized product...the nectar of the Gods...too flavourfull to disregard if doing anything scandinavianish.

[Dasleah]

I agree, but only on the condition that I can tame said Bees and flood a chamber full of Goblins with them.

[Areyar]

Why tame them? wild bees are much fiercer!
(and they manace with citin stingers!)

[Greymane]

Bee hives and collecting honey (goo) is an awesome idea.

This could probably be a good job for someone with the Animal Caretaker skill, since they generally don't have a lot to do otherwise.

Gotta agree with Dasleah though that you should be able to capture and 'domesticate' them like other vermin. Or maybe just 'transplant' the entire colony whole after your carpenter constructs a frame/wooden hive to keep them in. That way, they'd never be TRULY tame and still annoy or even endanger your untrained dwarves, but give you the benefit of multiple centrally located colonies to harvest.

[Lyrax]

This would actually be really, really awesome.

Although I imagine bees to be a 'swarm' variety of vermin, like flies or pixies.

[Duke 2.0]

Urist McHauler cancels Being Item To Stockpile: Interrupted by bees

Another way to loose and doom a fortress. Although I like the idea of using swarms of bees for defense.

Gobbo McSpearmaster: Augh! They are bees! And are on fire! They breathe fire! What unholy god would have them breathe fire!?

Armok: Man, I never stop amazing myself with my ideas.

[GRead]

I like the idea, though until brewing is a more complex task as a whole I don't think there should be an appreciable difference in the making of mead vs. any other alcohol.

After all, it takes much more than a day for beer to ferment, but my legendary brewer seems to be able to take five barrels from a mass of wheat to masterful beer a day. I rather like the idea of a single brewer tending multiple stills that take much longer to make booze, but that is for another time.

Anyway, to summarize
Bees: yes
Honey: yes
Mead: yes, but just like any other brew
The ability to africanize our honey bees and unleash them on obnoxious nobles and goblin invaders: Hells yeah.

We are bees. We hate you.

[Neonivek]

This idea will probably be added while others such as milkable cows.

I agree with Bees... but it should be expanded into other insects as well... Such as Spiders (it is done in real life), Silkworms (other then those Maggots), and Faeries (for pixie dust)

[Solara]

I like the idea, but I'd rather leave bees for the elves and humans and have a more dwarfy made-up variety of vermin. (and no, 'cave bees' don't count, be more original   :p )

edit: dwarven honey is extracted from giant sugar ants. I am a genius. Now how do I mod this in?

[ May 16, 2008: Message edited by: Solara ]

[Areyar]

I'd say various creatures in various different biomes can be collected by a keeper dwarf and 'built' in a animaltrap-kinda-thing (or hivebox).

Dwarves only naturally live in mountains, so anything living outside that biome can be human/elf oriented.

How about rock hornets?
They eat vermin....and meat.

Any ideas for the purple biomes?
just killer bees are too real life, i feel.

edit: about the mead brewing: yeah, I know it would take just a day to brew and be like any other brew in DF. I wasn't arguing for a realistic brewing process, just providing the RL background to be ahead of people saying "but... mead brewing takes years!" yes, and masterfull wine takes decades to ripen to that level too.

hmm... ripening beverages...good decay...beverages left for a long time in the stockpile CAN improve in quality...chances of improving would vary by brewtype. ie most beers don't really age well, so would have more chance of going foul.

while we're on rotting:
How about rotting to go faster in evil biomes and slower in good ones?

[ May 16, 2008: Message edited by: Areyar ]

[ May 16, 2008: Message edited by: Areyar ]

[MaxVance]

Beehives as structures that can be linked to pressure plates would be awesome. Even better, war dogs could be trained to keep bees in their mouths and shoot bees at invaders by barking.

[Captain Failmore]

This has been suggested before, and we all agreed that bees are awesome and should be encouraged in everything everywhere.

[Sevrun]

This is why I like reading the Forums, every once in a while someone comes up with a sick, twisted means of defence and annoyance of our enemies that I likely wouldn't have considered...  Thank you  

Love the idea, btw, cause let's face it, what is the only REAL difference between dwaves and Vikings other than height?  Vikings love their ships, dwarves love their rock...  Both love mead  

[Bien]

This thread is EPIC win, flooding a chamber full of goblins with bees reminds me of the "Fucking Bees!" technique in BSF, where the 'bees' are demeter drones, and you make a drone carrier with lots of demeter launcher. I vote for this to be implimented.

[ May 17, 2008: Message edited by: Bien ]

[Areyar]

I love bees.

Like to stand below a Wisteria and listen to them humm....bzzzz....smells nice too.  

Areyar has enjoyed being outside lately. Areyar has enjoyed listening to bees recently and the smell of wisteria blossom.