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Honey dressings for wounds

16 (24.6%)

Honey-preservation of foods

19 (29.2%)

Bee Anger (if stirred up, hives stay angry for a while; see post #162)

14 (21.5%)

Sting Effects (allergies/resistance; first post)

15 (23.1%)

Equine Enmity (hives attack nearby horses (unicorns maybe); see post #23)

1 (1.5%)

Addition of Stingless Bees (less risk/less honey; see posts #78-79)

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 34

Voting closed: June 18, 2011, 06:22:09 pm

[Buzzing_Beard]

EDIT: Bees are mentioned briefly in DF-Talk #12 at 50:57.

For people interested in adding vocalizations: Young hives can emit a quacking/tooting sound (besides buzzing).

For aspiring giant-bee riders: Botanical oils can sometimes mimic pheromones, and something similar might justify the ability to guide, steer, or otherwise control your six-legged steed (lemon grass mimics homing scent, banana mimics attack scent).

Lastly, now that dwarves can keep bees, it seems only natural that they would challenge each other to beard contests (like human beekeepers do).

[Buzzing_Beard]

Urist McWest-Reanimator
For the next time your favorite dwarf gets torn apart by some giant skeletal beast:

A beehive built on a tall enough spire could gather honey from the heavens. With enough of this honey, and enough of your fallen dwarf (the essentials), a special ritual may restore him to life.

Based on the story of Lemminkäinen (Norse mythology) whose body was cut to pieces, reassembled by his mother, and reanimated with heavenly honey.



Other cultures have similar myths and stories (Greek, Egyptian, American). Maybe dwarves need the heavenly honey to be brewed into mead first .

And maybe performing the ritual with the wrong honey or on rotten corpses could result in zombies...

[NW_Kohaku]

Yours are the bees that will pierce the heavens?

Anyway, magic honey in general seems like a fine idea... I just need to get around to that trait alchemy suggestion thread.

[Buzzing_Beard]

     Buzzing_Beard: "How do the dwarves harvest/destroy their hives anyway? A beehive is not a walnut. Sorry for
     being picky, the bees in DF are already outstanding for a video game."

     Uristocrat: "I think that the dwarves actually take all the honey, which might be a somewhat realistic way to off
     them, though the hive should probably at least survive until winter..."

Okay, except bees don't let you just reach in and start cutting out pieces of comb. Modern Langstroth hives have removable frames and a queen-excluder to separate the brood from the honey. This makes it easier to deprive your bees of their winter stores, but also eliminates the need to do so.

In a skep (the type of hive I think the dwarves are currently using), the honey and brood aren't well separated or easily removed. This makes it difficult to harvest the honey without ripping apart the hive (which the bees don't approve of). Skeps were usually poisoned with brimstone so that their contents could be safely removed.

My Recommendation: TOP-BAR HIVES (Dwarven Honey Cows)
+Simple construction (2000+ year old technology).
+Honey and brood can be kept separate (otherwise you're pressing combs that hold both honey and baby bee larva).
+Wouldn't force your dwarves to kill your bees every harvest (which besides being more humane, may simplify in-game hive management).
+Let you easily harvest honey and wax year after year, or continuously, which is why they are sometimes called honey cows (because you can "milk" them... like a cow... but with honey).
+Make it at least possible to harvest royal jelly (not possible with skeps).
+Can actually be split (unlike skeps).

[Buzzing_Beard]

From Tweaks for the beekeeping industry:

• Using the Q menu on a hive should tell you whether or not they currently have a colony in them. You can currently find out if a hive has honey through the View Items in Buildings menu, but it's not as convenient as also showing that status in the Q menu.
• Installing a colony in a different hive should be faster. Right now, a dabbling beekeeper is slow enough at it that they rarely succeed before they get too tired, hungry and thirsty to do it even once. It shouldn't take an in-game month to move a hive, even for a dabbling beekeeper.
• It seems that beekeepers will always wait to split a colony as long as you have colonies with living bee populations, whether or not those colonies are ready to be split. I think beekeepers should prefer to split from wild colonies so that you can press more of your own hives, instead of having to keep a lot of hives in reserve for splitting.
• Bees aren't stinging people correctly. They seem to occasionally sting anyone who walks past their hive, randomly. Normally, bees sting the hell out anyone who messes with their hive, and they mostly leave everyone else alone. Those dabbling beekeepers should be suffering one sting after another.
• Honey and mead should be more valuable. Right now, both of them are worth 1☼. Dwarven syrup, for comparison, is worth 20☼. Honey should be worth at least 10☼ and maybe as much as 40☼. Mead should be worth anywhere from 2☼ to 8☼, since you get a stack of 5 mead for each unit of honey.

     Norseman: "Normally, bees sting the hell out anyone who messes with their hive, and they mostly leave everyone
     else alone."

Unfortunately, angry bees can't be depended on to attack only those who "mess with their hives". I do agree that bee aggression tends to bee more "binary" however (each sting triggers more stings).

On average, I'd say that if someone angers a hive (and there are several ways to do this), its bees will sting anyone within about 40 feet and give chase to sting-victims for at least 100 feet. Someone running with an "attached" attack-cloud (bees are difficult to outrun), can have bees split off and sting others nearby (within about 15 feet).

[Jeoshua]

Something I noticed about honey is that, in the raws, mead requires "unrotten" honey.  Why is this? I don't think honey CAN rot!

[NW_Kohaku]

It's probably something that is copy-pasted for all foods.  Most food-related actions require unrotten foods before they can be performed, and if honey never rots, it just means it's a pointless bit of redundancy.

[Buzzing_Beard]

Hive Entrances and Facing: Most hives have an entrance on one side where the guards are posted. Near a hive, you are less likely to be stung around the sides and back. I'd estimate that compared to the chance of being stung near the front, the sides would be 40% of that, and the back would be 5% of the front. Remeber that guards go inside when it's cold, making all these chances go to zero. These values are for non-angry hives.

It's important that the space around the entrance of a foraging hive be open. A hive blocked off by other hives, built facing a wall, or with plants growing right in front of it will have its flyway obstructed and become unproductive.

I think these effects, and letting players control hive facing (N-S-E-W), would make apiary design more interesting and realistic (IRL, some beekeepers use outward facing semi-circle configurations).

[Sutremaine]

I think associating the hive's productivity with the number of floor, dirt, or grass tiles around it would be enough. Archery targets are currently the only things that have directionality but no direction (ie. a physical in-game orientation), and they're somewhat annoying because of it.

[Buzzing_Beard]

From the honeybee raws:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[CASTE:DRONE]
 [MALE]
 [CASTE_NAME:honey bee drone:honey bee drones:honey bee drone]
 [POP_RATIO:5]
[CASTE:QUEEN]
 [FEMALE]
 [CASTE_NAME:honey bee queen:honey bee queens:honey bee queen]
 [POP_RATIO:1]
[SELECT_CASTE:ALL]
 [BODY:INSECT:2EYES:HEART:GUTS:BRAIN:MOUTH:2WINGS]

I think [BODY:INSECT:5EYES:HEART:GUTS:BRAIN:MOUTH:4WINGS] would be more realistic. BTW, the compound eyes of a drone are huge compared to those of a female bee.

The Other Royal: People in the 1400's knew about queen bees, but everyone (even Leonardo da Vinci) thought they were males. Assuming 1400's era thaught/knowledge*, dwarves probably wouldn't have called them queens.

The drones however actually are male, so when um... if they... their... they don't have venom. Drones don't sting. If one liked you too much he might pop on you, but that's more affection than aggression. It's only the females that are venomous .

EDIT: *but I realize we're not

[Neonivek]

Assuming 1400's era thinking, dwarves probably wouldn't have called them queens

Yes but calling them queens at least in my mind is a justified anarchism.

In a similar vien as not killing women in medieval games just because they voiced a strong oppinion.

[Sutremaine]

Plus there are all the modern metal and stone names.

[Neonivek]

Plus there are all the modern metal and stone names.

Don't forget about the weapons. Some are oddly modern incarnations of medieval weapons.

[NW_Kohaku]

In a similar vien as not killing women in medieval games just because they voiced a strong oppinion.

Awwwww, but being the subject of racism or sexism in an RPG makes the game so much more fun when the "inferior being" goes on a one-woman-army killing spree.  (Stick it to The Man!)

[Buzzing_Beard]

A hive will usually produce drones in Spring/Summer and be drone-free in the Winter. Drones eat honey, hang out with other drones, and chase down and mate with young queens (once).

If a beehive is isolated, its post-swarm virgin-queen may not be able to find any drones to mate with; resulting in the loss of the hive. Such a queen would still lay eggs, but these would all develop into drones* and fly off. There wouldn't be any new workers being born, and after a while, the queen's initial workers and attendants would die, leaving her to starve. Outside of pests and disease, this is the main way beekeepers lose their hives (and why I suggested to "bring two" )

Because aggression is hereditary, the presence of killer bees in the area can also affect your hives. If a virgin queen mates with the local killer-drones, a formerly "gentle" hive can turn into an aggressive "killer" hive.

*Who don't collect nectar ... or mate with their mothers.