Bee Box

"They shall labor so that I can steal."

- Wendy Bee Box is used to breed Bees and accumulate Honey that can be harvested. Bee Boxes require a Science Machine to prototype and a Honeycomb, 4 Bees and 2 Boards to build. When destroyed by a Hammer, it will return one Honeycomb and one set of Boards.

Spawning Mechanics
A Bee Box will (re)spawn a new Bee every 4 game hours (2 minutes) up to the maximum population of 4 per Box. All Bees will return to their Box at dusk, but they will leave it during daytime one at a time every 37.5 seconds. During Winter, they will not leave the Box.

Technically bees don't have a fixed role. Instead the same specimen can act as a worker or a fighter depending on what the current situation calls for. Everytime a bee leaves the hive the game assigns it a role and every time it returns that role gets erased. So the same specimen can fight off a threat as a Killer Bee, enter the hive and re-emerge as a worker to gather pollen. Thus Killer Bees don't slow honey production by competing with workers for living space as they are essentially the same thing.

If a Bee is attacked all members of the hive still inside the Box will emerge immediately as Killer Bees and engage. Additionally all surrounding bees less than about a screen away - killer or otherwise - belonging to the same hive and any hiveless bees will also join the fight. The combined number of attackers coming to help can not exceed 10 unless the player attacks another bee.

After harvesting their Honey, all remaining Bees in the Bee Box will emerge as workers and attack while those that were already outside will ignore the threat unless the player fights back.

Honey Production
The speed at which Bees gather honey is affected by the quantity and proximity to Flowers near a Bee Box. Every time a Bee successfully pollinates 6 flowers it will return home and increase the honey contained within by 1. The same flower can not be pollinated twice by the same Bee within one trip, or by two Bees at the same time. If a Bee doesn't manage to collect enough flowers before dusk, it will have to start all over the following morning. For these reasons having too few flowers around a Bee Box can potentially halt collection entirely.

Even though Caves have their own day and night cycle and it is permanent summer there, if a bee box is built underground, the bees will not go out to collect pollen and will not produce honey. This is true even if the box is built in a place where natural light can be found in the cave. In the Ruins, because it is considered permanent night, the same applies as well. However, if the boxes are far enough away from the player, the simplified model of honey production will take over and honey will be produced at a rate of 1 per day, in both Caves and Ruins.

Bee Boxes can contain anywhere between 0 and 6 Honey. Visually they progress through 4 different stages to indicate Honey saturation at 0, 1-2, 3-5 and 6 units respectively. For example a bee box at stage 3 (almost full) may contain between 3 to 5 pieces of honey.



Typical harvesting is a well protected, slow process with low-risk and easy repeatability. The Beekeeper Hat is a specialty item designed to reduce damage from bees. Ideally Honey should be collected when all bees are working outside, in this case they will ignore the player entirely. The time this is most likely to occur is right before dusk and about 4 game hours into the day. It is also safe to harvest any time during Winter. Mainly you are going to want to keep around 6 flowers on your first bee box.

Tips



 * A good way to get honey faster is to capture some Butterflies and plant them as flowers near the box, increasing efficiency of bees for collecting honey.


 * If bees that engage the player are far enough away, they will give up their attack before they are even in range. If not, all the player must do is run to lose the bees before they attack. This task should be easy as bees are a lot slower than the player; their attacks will often miss even if they catch up. When bees have given up their attack, workers will continue collecting pollen while fighters will return to the hive.
 * Keep boxes close to the base. If the player gets too far away the game hibernates all bees and switches to a simplified model instead to simulate honey production. In this scenario one unit is produced every day which is considerably slower than what bees can gather in the same amount of time. This is less effective during Spring in the Reign of Giants DLC, as all Bees become Killer Bees for the entirety of the season.


 * A good way to collect honey is to wait just before dusk and harvest. The bees will return to the box when dusk comes, even if aggravated.
 * Have a Walking Cane equipped while collecting honey; that way if timed correctly you can escape before taking any damage from the bees.



Apiary (Bee Farm)
A good way to produce honey on a large scale is to build a bee farm.

Capture Butterflies and plant them together for the flowers, then build a few bee boxes nearby. When planting the flowers, care should be taken to not plant them too tightly together, as this actually prevents the bees from reaching some of the flowers. Leave at least one single flower's length on all sides around each flower. (The current example picture is not the ideal flower spacing.)

This setup will yield a great amount of Honey per day, thanks to high flower density and their proximity. The bees can also be captured for Bee Mines and other uses. Additionally, the farm can be protected with some walls and a lightning rod.

Trivia

 * In the old science system, it used to cost 100 Research Points to craft.
 * The honeycomb slot on the top of Bee Boxes will fill with honey as more honey is stored within.



Bugs

 * Occasionally at dusk, bees will get stuck next to their box. New bees do not spawn when there are stuck bees. They will stay this way indefinitely until caught or attacked. Reloading the game will work too.
 * Sometimes, bees from the Bee Box will waste time by spinning constantly over flowers until dusk. This can be fixed by picking the flowers that are causing the problem or reloading the game.
 * In the winter, Bee Boxes will still produce honey if the player is very far away from them, because it will default to the 'one honey per day' production.