Editing v0.34:Beekeeping industry

{{quality|Masterwork|18:20, 8 July 2013 (UTC)}}{{av}}

The '''beekeeping industry''' is an agricultural process that allows a fortress to produce auxiliary food ([[honey]], [[royal jelly]]), drink ([[mead]]), and craftable materials ([[wax]]) by farming [[honey bee]]s.

Before you can have a beekeeping industry you must logically have bees. There are two types of bees in the game: [[honey bee]]s, which (true to their name) can be used for beekeeping, and [[bumblebee]]s, which cannot currently be so applied (this may or [http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4003#c15306 may not] change in the future). Honey bee colonies appear in any [[Freezing#Climate|non-freezing]] [[biome]] in some number, but are not necessarily guaranteed to appear in your fortress [[surroundings]] if you [[embark]] on such a biome, especially if a large part of your embark site is incompatible.

If you do not have any honey bee colonies on your screen, then you obviously cannot have a beekeeping industry, at least not until a honey bee colony spawns. Honey bee colonies are one of a number of "colony" type tile features, and it is possible that all of your "slots" are occupied by other colonies. If no honey bee colony is able to spawn due to this issue, you can build [[farm plot]]s over existing colonies to "free up" space for honey bee ones, or [[dirt road]]s in the case of colonies on the edge of the map. <s>Whether or not this is worth the effort is a different story.</s> It is very much worth the effort for the glorious mead.

Once you are sure you have a colony of bees, the next step is to create an artificial [[hive]], either from [[stone]] or [[wood]] at a [[craftsdwarf's workshop]], from [[ceramic]]s at a [[kiln]], from [[glass]] at a [[glass furnace]], or from [[metal]] at a [[metalsmith's forge]]. Hives are [[tool]]s stored in the [[finished goods]] [[stockpile]], and can be {{k|b}}uilt by a [[beekeeper]] using the {{k|Alt}}+{{k|h}} [[hotkeys|hotkey]]. In order to be productive, a hive must be constructed on or adjacent to a [[tile]] that is [[Tile attributes|above ground]]. Dwarves will install colonies in hives installed underground, and such colonies will grow and allow splitting off new colonies, but they will not produce honey.

Once a hive is installed, it is automatically toggled to "install colony when ready", which will generate an "Install Colony in Hive" job onto the [[manager|job list]], unless the player specifies otherwise (with {{K|q}}-{{K|c}}). Hives can have colonies installed into them from preexisting wild colonies or from hives that are ready to split (more on that later); the beekeeper will walk to the location of the colony, pick it up and bring it to the built hive. Again, if there are no wild honey bee colonies on your map, no colony can be installed until there is one. It may be more sensible to build a single hive and then see if a beekeeper can find a colony to fill it with rather than go searching for one beforehand if it is uncertain whether or not there are any honey bees on the map. It will take a while until it is certain that the beekeeper does not have a colony available to collect and isn't just doing other stuff; if there is no available colony, the "install colony in hive" job will not cancel but rather stay "inactive" indefinitely.

Once there is a colony (of 10 000 to 20 000 bees) in your hive, you have two options:

* You may toggle the hive (using {{K|q}}-{{K|g}}) so that the product is not automatically gathered. This will prevent your dwarves from collecting the products but at the same time preserves the colony, which will keep growing, so that new colonies can be split off it regularly and placed in additional hives. Assuming you have spare hives built and available, this is the option you set your hives to in order to grow them.

* Or you can choose to have the hive harvested, causing a beekeeper to approach the hive about nine months later to transfer the [[royal jelly]] into an empty [[jug]] and to make the [[honeycomb]] available, so that it can be moved to storage. This is the production option; the hives will produce things for you at a steady rate, but the harvesting destroys the colony in the hive; it can then be repopulated by a colony ready for splitting.  

Note: The colony in a hive set to "collect products" will still grow, but splitting off a new colony only becomes possible shortly before the hive is ripe for harvesting, and harvesting will always destroy the entire colony, whether it is ready to split or not. Consequently, dwarves will sometimes replenish hives from colonies set to "collect", but not reliably. To sustain a beekeeping industry without tedious micro-management, a healthy number of "breeding" hives are needed which are not allowed for collection.

Beekeeping as an industry is currently extremely buggy, involves a lot of micromanagement on the supply side, and doesn't produce as many products as it really should to be worthwhile. Most annoyingly, there is a bug where multiple empty hives will generate conflicting jobs targeting the same colony which reliably get beekeepers stuck {{bug|3981}}. Consequently, a beekeeping industry must be grown quite slowly and measures must be taken to reduce the number of hives which are empty at the same time, like limiting the number of dwarves who may perform the beekeeping labour. Additionally, there is no way to tell beekeepers to prioritize fortress hives over wild ones for colony installation (except perhaps by using a [[burrow]]) - they will often wander far out into the map without even the [[ambusher]]'s [[crossbow]]s for self-protection. For these reasons the industry is typically seen as a novelty, at least until the kinks are ironed out.

===Examining hives===

===Artificial hive limits===

If your fortress has more than 40 inhabited artificial hives, but less than 60, then interacting with a hive ({{K|q}}) will show:

Having more than 40 or more than 60 inhabited artificial hives does not appear to prevent new wild hives from appearing, and these can still be transferred to empty artificial hives.

Presumably this means that existing artificial hives no longer grow, or that grown hives can't be split.

 

 

[[Honey]] can be cooked into a meal or brought to a [[still]] and processed with a [[barrel]] or [[large pot]] into mead, the only non plant-based alcoholic drink in the game. [[Wax]], meanwhile, can be processed into various wax [[craft]]s by a [[wax worker]] at a [[craftsdwarf's workshop]]. Wax crafts are not particularly valuable - they have a [[material value]] of one, the same as [[wood]] and non-[[flux]] [[stone]] - but they're something.

* Dwarves have a hard time splitting hives. They also have a hard time keeping track of wild colonies of bees that die out.{{bug|3981}}<br/>Having the beekeeping labor enabled on only one dwarf at a time may alleviate these problems. The problem is caused by multiple empty hives targeting the same colony for installing. The most effective troubleshooting method is to look up the job of a 'stuck' beekeeper in the job list, then zooming to the building - the hive which issued the job. Toggling the 'c' option (install colony) off, letting the game run for a few seconds and then switching the option back on will usually clear the faulty job and issue a new 'install colony in hive' job with a legal target colony. Removing and rebuilding empty hives usually fixes beekeepers stuck trying to install colonies, but is much more time-consuming than simply toggling the install option.

* Filled [[Jug]]s may be stored in [[bin]]s as [[finished goods]], preventing the use of their contents in the food industry.{{bug|4229}}

* Stacks of [[honey bee]]s in their hives can be [[wear|mangled]] by [[fire|forest fires]], but will still live, resulting in some odd descriptions.{{bug|4101}}

* [[Screw press]]es built in [[burrow]]s may not allow the "press [[honeycomb]]" job to be added directly; adding the job via the [[manager]] interface will get the work started. This seems to be related to their distance from applicable materials.{{bug|434}}