Beekeeping

Bees provide important resources in Vintage story. Using simple methods, bees can be tended and their products harvested.

Finding Wild Bees

Finding wild bees can be difficult. Wild bees are a rare spawn in warm climates, but they don't spawn in climates that are too arid or too wet. The best way to find them is to turn your sound all the way up and wander around until you find soybeans. Soybeans grow in similar environments that bees spawn in. You'll often hear the bees before you see the bees. At that point keep checking the trees in the area, because the wild hive can be inside or suspended from a log. If you see mushrooms, then you are in a climate that is too damp for bees, so look elsewhere.

Capturing Wild Bees (Populating a skep)

Once you have found bees, you'll want to place an empty skep within seven blocks of the wild beehive. Also make sure there are five Flowers within seven blocks of the wild hive. (If there are no flowers near the wild hive, it's a good idea to bring some with you and plant them around the location where you place the empty skep) If you press B for block info, you will be able to see the size of the hive and number of flower in range, though it takes the bees some time to find the flowers. The hive must reach a large population before it will divide and populate the skep. This takes awhile, so it's best to go do other stuff while this is going on. Once populated, you can pick up the skep (right click) and carry it in an empty bag (portable container) slot, so make sure you have space available. When you pick the skep up it'll go into your empty bag slot and you can carry it back home. Don't break the skep (left click), as this will destroy the skep and you might be attacked by angry bees. When you return home, you can place the populated skep. To select it, hold Ctrl and scrolling with your mouse wheel until you have the skep selected. Once selected, right click on the block where you want to place the populated skep. At this point, you'll want make sure there are lots of flowers close by. Bees search a range of seven blocks and need [5+3 X [number of other skeps within range] flowers] to reach a large population. You will also want to place other empty skeps by the populated skep. As the population of the original skep grows, the bees will divide to populate a nearby empty skep.

optimized tileable skep & flower arrangement

Harvesting Skeps

As the population grows, the entrance of the skep will turn from a dull yellow to a bright yellow as it fills with honeycomb. If you examine the populated skep at that time you'll see the skep has become "harvestable". At this point, when you break the skep (left click) it will drop honeycomb and you will also recover some of the cattails you used to make the skep. There is also a chance that breaking the skep will spawn an angry bee swarm. One technique to avoid attacks from the angry swarm is to place straw dummies near the hives so the bees sting the decoys instead of you. Even if you have decoys in place, when you break a skep, pick up the items and run inside while you wait for the angry swarm to disperse/despawn. Be sure to close the door behind you! Make sure you do not keep the skeps near animals you don't want hurt or killed, as angry bees will attack any nearby living thing.

Honey & Wax

Once you have honeycomb, you can process it into honey and wax. First, place an empty fired bowl or bucket on the ground. Next, while holding the honeycomb, aim your cursor at the empty bowl or bucket and right click to "squeeze" the honey from the comb. This action will fill the bowl or bucket with honey and the remaining wax will appear in your inventory. Each honeycomb yields 0.25 liters of honey and one wax. A bowl holds honey from one honeycomb portion, while a bucket holds honey from 40 honeycombs.

The honey, when eaten, restores 0.5 health points, and can also be used to make jam, added to meals like porridge, or to craft healing poultices. The wax (stacks to 32) and can be used to seal food crocks for long term food preservation, and crafted into a candles by placing three wax in a column in the crafting grid. These candles can be placed on top of solid blocks and up to 9 candles can be placed on the same block. Each time you add a candle to the block, the light level increases. These candles never go out and look quite nice. Candles are also used to craft lanterns.

{{{title}}}