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[PermanentInk]

I haven't gotten a chance to try out the new version yet, but I'm excited to try out the bee stuff.  One thing did occur to me in reading about it, though, which is the realism of the beekeeping technology involved.  I happen to have learned recently that, until fairly modern times, the process of extracting honey from a hive was completely destructive; beekeepers would let the hive form in a domed structure called a "skep," and to extract the honey (or check for disease) it was necessary to completely destroy the hive and kill all the bees.  There seem to be some variants on this (thanks, Wikipedia!), but it seems at least like 14th century technology would not have allowed for non-destructive harvesting.

Of course, maybe I'm making the wrong assumption here; can someone who's played the new version tell me whether harvesting honey destroys the hive or not?

[Kazindir]

It does.

[PermanentInk]

Oh, fantastic.  I should've had more faith in the Toady One.

[UristMcDwarf]

Oh, fantastic.  I should've had more faith in the Toady One.

Yes, you should have.

SHAMEFUL.

[Girlinhat]

When you get a hive built, there's two options.  The first is to harvest it when ready, which destroys the hive but produces honey.  The other is to preserve the hive for splitting, which takes half the hive and puts it in an empty hive.  So you can very realistically catch one wild hive, then build it into a splitting hive, and beside it make a harvesting hive, so that every time the harvest hive is destroyed there's a backup ready to split from the other.

There was rumor of non-destroyed hives though, with certain material types you could build a permanent hive that wasn't destroyed by harvesting, probably by invoking gas.  This feature is yet-unimplimented.