Bee hives and wax

[Grable]

As I heard Bee Hives only produce wax when plants are growing. What if I cover the same area with two bee hives? Does the production time on wax for both beehive get 2x longer?
How does one make an effecient wax farm, without ofc seeding the whole area crazy?

[TeckXKnight]

Carrots. Lots of carrots growing. How bees wax and hives work is honestly beyond me. Hopefully someone can help you or you can deduce something on your own.

[cobaltjones]

No one knows how exactly they work or anywhere near the quality formulas for them, but the general consensus if that if you want more wax then plant more crops, and since carrots are the fastest growing crop (and thus able to be replanted/repolenated quicker), then those would work best if you're actively looking to pump out wax.

I don't really overthink the issue. I've got my crop fields all laid out and organized, with enough hives to effectively cover every single crop tile. Obviously some hives are overlapping others, but it's also not like I've got hives right next to eachother. 8 hives for ~1200 tiles of crops. The key is to keep up with your replanting. The more you replant, the more honey/wax you'll get. Every hive pumps out a steady stream of wax, with those having more crop tile coverage producing slightly more.

[cloakblade]

I've heard that the more different crops that are under one beehive increases quality and quantity. Just something I've heard.

[Sevenless]

Carrots. Lots of carrots growing. How bees wax and hives work is honestly beyond me. Hopefully someone can help you or you can deduce something on your own.

*tsks* You should read some of the hive posts where I've posted after you, I've explained it pretty thoroughly a couple times.

Wax and honey are produced by the same method, but wax is half as common as honey.

When a crop grows in a hive's radius, the hive has a chance to produce wax/honey. Faster growing crops (carrots = perfect) will make more honey/wax as long as you harvest them frequently. Hives cannot share food, so the crop growth is given randomly to one hive or the other, there is no benefit to overlapping in that sense. The "more crops = better" is most likely a myth. I say this because Q would rise as it produces more (and presumably the farmer would be adding crops at the same time) and as the fields expand near the hive you'd have more growth and therefore more honey/wax production.

Quality starts at a base level (I seem to think it's based somewhat on the hive Q, not sure) and slowly increases as more honey/wax is produced. I seem to think that it's hardcapped by the hive quality, and soft capped by the crop quality. My hives are producing Q12 products (which sounds about right since I probably used Q5-10 straw and Q20+ ish boards for them back then) and my average crop quality is well over the 20+ range by now.

Bee hives store 1.0L of honey, and 5 wax. Only reason to overlap would be if you thought you might cap out on hive storage before you'd be back to clean them out again.

Best estimate of hive quality formula = (2*StrawQ + Block Q + Board Q) / 4

Edit: Other than my formula guess the wiki contains all of this information, I think I was editing it a while back.

http://ringofbrodgar.com/wiki/Bee_Hive

[MagicManICT]

When I started playing in w3, it was generally thought that areas not covered by crops would actually act as the bees feeding on base quality crops, just like livestock feeding off the grass. The effect was to lower the quality of honey and wax produced.

[Sevenless]

When I started playing in w3, it was generally thought that areas not covered by crops would actually act as the bees feeding on base quality crops, just like livestock feeding off the grass. The effect was to lower the quality of honey and wax produced.

Mmm, interesting thought. I haven't observed it though. My hives always seem to cap based on hive Q and nothing else (since crop Q is always higher)

[MagicManICT]

When I started playing in w3, it was generally thought that areas not covered by crops would actually act as the bees feeding on base quality crops, just like livestock feeding off the grass. The effect was to lower the quality of honey and wax produced.

Mmm, interesting thought. I haven't observed it though. My hives always seem to cap based on hive Q and nothing else (since crop Q is always higher)

I was hermiting w4. I had noticed it then. My crops were all q30+ before I started getting anything more than q10 wax or honey with only about 1/3rd of the hive's area covered.

[TeckXKnight]

Oh? Is that how they work. Awesome.
I apologize Sevenless, they have been speculated on for so long and so often that I do not know what to trust and what to discount anymore.