What's the point of the apiary?

[Suxar]

You can also get beeswax also in lootbags from rancher zombies (desert). In my current playthrough, I have an apirary already crafted by Day 14, default settings except for storms (200%).

Yes, I missed that. But the bag is quite rare. I also saw wax for sale at a merchant in the wasteland, though I don't know if he got it when he updated his inventory or if another player sold it to him (I play on a dedicated server).

But during the 12 days I spent celebrating the holidays and playing, one thing surprised me. In the winter biome, stumps contain much more wax and honey than in the forest. In the middle of five stumps, two had honey and one had wax. In real life, the last place I'd look for bees is in the snow, but in the game, things are different.

 

[AMG5TAG]

I'm all for more workstations and more variety.

 

[Suxar]

Personally, I don't mind it. It takes practically no time to harvest and plant crops since I don't make a 100 plot farm like some people. Mine is usually 10 or less and works fine for two people.

In reality, a large farm doesn't require much more time overall. I have a plot of 140 tiles. After I accumulate 3 cups of potatoes and corn, as well as 2 cups of yuca and blueberries, I stop tending the garden until the ingredients are gone.

For food, I usually made smoothies and rotten meat stew. Now I'll probably start making sham with honey; it cooks relatively quickly.

 

[kevikev]

As long as you have 6 blocks of clearance above the apiary, can you place the apiary indoors or underground?

 

[Blue Name]

I mean, getting honey without having to chop stumps is nice and all, but stumps are everywhere and the apiary is so slow to produce. Furthermore, the apiary is unlocked so late and accesories even later. In my current game, I had plenty of honey and antibiotics by the time I could construct the apiary. I still put one up but I have little incentive to pay attention to it.

If the apiary, with accesories, came earlier in the game, and honey was harder to get from stumps, it would make more sense.

I totally get your point — looting honey from stumps is easy, the apiary unlocks late, produces slowly, and by the time you can build it you already have plenty of honey and antibiotics, so it feels unnecessary to invest in.

But the apiary isn’t really meant to be just an easier way to farm honey resources. Its bigger purpose is adding extra gameplay options and late-game content variety. It gives players another base-building and passive production choice, a full small progression system with accessories to upgrade production speed, yield, and avoid bee swarms. It also opens up new crafting recipes centered around honey, letting you build a self-sustaining late-game farm playstyle instead of only looting stumps forever.

It’s less about being a mandatory resource source, and more about giving players alternative playstyles, base customization, and extra endgame things to work on — even if you don’t strictly need its resources to survive.

 

[Riamus]

As long as you have 6 blocks of clearance above the apiary, can you place the apiary indoors or underground?

I haven't tested it, but I am almost positive that it requires the same sky "visibility" as a solar panel or farm plot.

 

[Uncle Al]

Better food should give advantages over stuff like a raw egg or shamwich. When I say better I don’t mean make them more filling. We should get an energy rush, or maybe temporarily jump higher or run faster. Similar to what mega crush does but make it unique for each high quality food type.

I totally agree that it would be nice if high end foods did something meaningful. Even stamina bonuses seem pointless because a) As far as I can tell they don't affect stamina regen, which is what actually matters b) By the time you get high end foods you've almost always got a 'refill stamina on kill' book or skill.

Even having the top 5 foods add 1 to each attribute for a decent time, and allowing attributes to go above 10 by buffing would make high end cooking pretty good, but there are loads of buffs that would be meaningful: speed, stamina regen, damage, damage resistance, crit resistance etc.

 

[Paiper Zombee]

As long as you have 6 blocks of clearance above the apiary, can you place the apiary indoors or underground?

Correct. I currently have 4 in my underground base, and they don't need to have any visibility to the sky like solar panels/dew collectors/farm plots do.

 

[vylmen]

Only after you find the book for that.


Yes, but those are kind of pointless to make. Why spend honey to make food or drink? You either carry around an extra stack of food or drink without honey to eat when you're not infected or you eat and drink the honey food/drink when not infected, which is a waste of honey.

I don't think of the Honey Brisket as a cure with food bonus, but as top-tier food that triggers infection immunity from the Fortitude line, pretty much all the time with iron gut 3. So I don't carry "cureless food". Just honey brisket and Yucca Smoothie. The only time I'm not eating soon enough is when I get bruned and have to drink extra, so the food component of the smoothie delays me needing to eat and then there's an infection immunity gap.

Anyway, even if you don't have the infection immunity, just think of it as food with side effects, not a cure with food effect. Keep some antibiotics at base for those rare times you get swamped with 3+ ranchers in that tiny window where you can get infected. No need for anything else.

 

[Riamus]

I don't think of the Honey Brisket as a cure with food bonus, but as top-tier food that triggers infection immunity from the Fortitude line, pretty much all the time with iron gut 3. So I don't carry "cureless food". Just honey brisket and Yucca Smoothie. The only time I'm not eating soon enough is when I get bruned and have to drink extra, so the food component of the smoothie delays me needing to eat and then there's an infection immunity gap.

Anyway, even if you don't have the infection immunity, just think of it as food with side effects, not a cure with food effect. Keep some antibiotics at base for those rare times you get swamped with 3+ ranchers in that tiny window where you can get infected. No need for anything else.

If you like it, there's nothing wrong with using it. I have no need for it. The infection doesn't even matter unless you allow it to reach 100%. It's just as easy to cure yourself when you get back to your base if you don't have or find anything to cure yourself before then. But by the time I can make that food, I'm rarely getting infected anyhow because I have high quality armor that reduces the chances of being debuffed. Either way, just because I see no need for it or value in it, there's no reason others can't like it.

 

[Kalen]

If you like it, there's nothing wrong with using it. I have no need for it. The infection doesn't even matter unless you allow it to reach 100%. It's just as easy to cure yourself when you get back to your base if you don't have or find anything to cure yourself before then. But by the time I can make that food, I'm rarely getting infected anyhow because I have high quality armor that reduces the chances of being debuffed. Either way, just because I see no need for it or value in it, there's no reason others can't like it.

Honestly, for the me, what makes it so great is that I can make high end food without using water. That way I can save all my water for glue. That alone makes the apiary worth it.... I make as many as I have the resources for. The fact that I'm essentially immune to infection from that point on is just a bonus.

 

[Vaeliorin]

Honestly, for the me, what makes it so great is that I can make high end food without using water. That way I can save all my water for glue. That alone makes the apiary worth it.... I make as many as I have the resources for. The fact that I'm essentially immune to infection from that point on is just a bonus.

Unless you're farming ranchers, I can't imagine ever having enough for more than 2-3 apiaries, which in my experience doesn't produce anywhere near the amount of honey I'd need to only eat honey food.

 

[Kalen]

Unless you're farming ranchers, I can't imagine ever having enough for more than 2-3 apiaries, which in my experience doesn't produce anywhere near the amount of honey I'd need to only eat honey food.

If you break enough stumps, you'll have plenty.... in my current game, I have 7 on day 35. I've had as many as 10 in other games.

 

[Vaeliorin]

If you break enough stumps, you'll have plenty.... in my current game, I have 7 on day 35. I've had as many as 10 in other games.

You've gotten really lucky, or broken an absurd number of stumps. I currently have 40 honey (and I've used a decent amount), and I've got 13 beeswax. On Day...30 or so on 2 hour days with horde night turned off because I just wasn't in the mood.

Granted, I seem to go through a lot of food (mostly from mining and the fact that I'm always running, probably.) 4+ chili dogs in a day (just happens to be the current food I'm using, since I had a bunch of looted cornbread.)

 

[Kalen]

You've gotten really lucky, or broken an absurd number of stumps. I currently have 40 honey (and I've used a decent amount), and I've got 13 beeswax. On Day...30 or so on 2 hour days with horde night turned off because I just wasn't in the mood.

Granted, I seem to go through a lot of food (mostly from mining and the fact that I'm always running, probably.) 4+ chili dogs in a day (just happens to be the current food I'm using, since I had a bunch of looted cornbread.)

Definitely not luck, since I do this every game. I do break pretty much every stump I see. Its a 20% chance for a stump to have honey, and a 50% chance for a stump with honey to have bees. So, you have a 10% chance per stump to get beeswax. On average, 50 stumps should get you an apiary.

 

[Vaeliorin]

Yeah, that's theoretically ~350 stumps. That's a lot to find, imo. I break every stump I find too (mostly) but I often have a hard time seeing them through the grass in the forest, and I don't spend much time in the snow.

 

[Riamus]

Yeah, I'm not going to spend all that time to make a bunch of apiaries just to have high end food that can cure me. There are decent foods that don't require water, and that's usually what I end up cooking. Sure, maybe I need to eat more often, but that isn't exactly a problem. I'm never going to be short on food, and it stacks to 10, so I don't use any more space to carry enough to last me until I'm back at my base if I carry a full stack of mid level food versus a smaller number (or a full stack) of high end food that provides the same amount of sustenance. The high end food just doesn't offer anything that is really any better than mid level food beyond a very minor convenience of not clicking on food to eat quite as often, which is hardly an inconvenience.

But that's entirely up to the player. Some people like it. Nothing wrong with that. But ever since it was first mentioned, I've been of the opinion that it wasn't worth it. At least for me. And nothing has changed my opinion on that.

 

[Kalen]

Yeah, don't know what to tell you.... I dont really see it as that much effort, maybe I just have a knack for finding stumps. Each to his own.

 

[bdubyah]

In the winter biome, stumps contain much more wax and honey than in the forest. In the middle of five stumps, two had honey and one had wax. In real life, the last place I'd look for bees is in the snow, but in the game, things are different.

That isn't true. All stumps, both biome and POI versions, use the same game event to roll the chances of honey/bees. There is nothing related to biomes when it comes to those chances. What you saw is simply RNG at work.