Honeycombs, Skeps and Hives

[Massa]

This is an set of ideas for Jorb to chew on, not a direct idea for expansion.

Apiary is currently boring. Mining is getting attention, cheese is nifty already, and silk has always been very hands-on. What hasn't, and what has room to be very interesting for all fields of Haven (food, curiosities, even crafting items) has been apiary, which is severely neglected.

I always thought how interesting honey could be, especially since barley and wheat behave differently FEP-wise, since irl it's widely regarded as a 'superfood' and everyone loves it, and the fact that, depending on where/how honey is made, it can be very diverse and interesting.

General
This all spawned from the idea that skeps were a bit silly. We could have skeps, and they'd do what they do now, only expanded upon. We could also have an upgraded version (hives) that behaves similar to a cheese rack. These upgraded versions would respond to others in the same area, and form a literal hive that expands area covered and act a singular entity depending on how many are in the same spot. 4 in the same spot means a very, very large area of coverage. One would be relatively small for specialized and localized production.

Hives
When I say that hives behave like cheese trays, I mean they would do exactly that. The hive would be built with a number of racks installed, each for the bees to actually, you know, make their combs and hive. The product of each hive is dependent upon location and the flora nearby. That means the FEP the honey contains, as well as something involving the combs themselves. Black honeys, very rich golden honeys, etc. could all be derived from this idea. They'd be very accessible and easily read, as opposed to skeps. Skeps would, by crop and area covered, yield less honey but more bees (bees coming later). They would not be clear-cut on their yields as the hive-racks would, but have a specific element of RNG. The difference between mining for gems and for ore, to make a comparison.

Honeycombs
My first next was that, instead of skeps (and hives) oozing honey and we smack it with a bucket, we'd get another option on the skep (or hive) after a few days to harvest honeycombs. This could require a unique outfit but really who gives a shit.
From there, the comb could be studied by quality (they could end up being a very beefy curiosity) after it has been harvested. Alternatively, numerous combs could be harvested at that time. They'd vary by size, especially when it comes to the Skep, and the hive/skep could yield either, in the case of a skep, numerous randomly sized honeycombs, or in the case of a hive, a smaller number of slightly larger honeycombs. Beyond that, it's an option between studying those combs or smashing them in a press to harvest honey (all honey-related recipes would probably have to have significantly reduced amounts of honey. As they are now, they're actually quite silly.) and putting that bitch into a small glass mason jar. Or something. A bucket. The mason jar idea is cute. Honeycomb quality would and should be derived as honey is currently.

Bees
When harvesting honeycombs from a skep or a hive, they will always behave rather similarly to anthills (without the aggression). This will come with curiousities and curiousities that can be crafted with them. The bees that come when harvesting the combs would just be the presumed random bees still stuck on them. This would yield bees of all kinds, from larvae to empresses. While those don't exist irl, Jorb is wise. Queen Bees, Empress Bees, bumbles, larvae, and beyond. All sorts of things you could find in beehives. These would be curiousities, and also edibles for the shittier ones. They could be used to craft a number curiousities, both bee related and ant-related. In the tab where fossil collections are, we could even make insect displays of one of each kind of ant and bee for a very, very powerful curiosity. Or, a silk cloth and maybe a gold nugget could be used to make a very small enthroned bee from bee royalty. Just fun ideas I hope Jorb will read. My final idea, as all of Jorb's things come with a macabre twist (Beautiful & Wild dreams, Dark hearts, bad things in general, blabla) when harvesting a skep, the player might find an intrepid wasp. This could come with a silly, hard-to-heal 1 hhp damage, or not.

Flora
This was a big part of the idea that I've saved for last. Location affects cheese development. Local flora could numerically affect honey. Rather than changing the kind of honey, it could change the qualities and quantities of the honey. Before I go further, biome could affect this differently as well, especially if there are tree farms or something nearby. Honeys in real life manifest differently with different flora. Darker honeys carry with them more nutrients and stronger flavors, amber and whiter/lighter honeys often aren't the same case (though that's not always the case). Darkness could be on a percentage, or it could simply come from biome. Foresty biomes produce darker honeys, flowery, meadowy biomes produce lighter honeys with very minor FEP effects. Or honey could all just be honey. A few things would affect FEP from honeys:

-Quality of crop.
-Quality of skep.
-Local flora.

The general idea behind this is that crops deliver unto the honey they are associated with FEP-wise. Onions:psyche, beetroot:charisma, flax:dexterity (randomly chosen). Where I think this idea gets interesting is that garden potted plants can be used to severely bolster FEP from honeys without a radical quality drop. Garden pots would give very big FEP boons, but on a tile-to-tile basis, are outweighed by the local crops. They would not stack. A flax tile with a garden pot would just take the flax. A skep or hive surrounded purely by garden pots would yield very little honey very slowly (honey quantity could be seen when peeping into the hives) but yield very potent honey. The opposite would be said for a hive surrounded by, say, Flax, which is the fastest growing, most intensely flowering plant we have. For garden pots, blueberries:intelligence, cavebulbs:N/A, strawberries:agility (I forget their actual FEP), etc. all the way to bluebells and bloodsterns giving potent psyche and will FEP specifically. This would make a specific credo less ass and hideously annoying as well as more engaging, useful and desirable.

Fin
To conclude, these are all just a big ass spouting of random ideas related to apiary that I think Jorb would like very much, considering how creative he can get. I'm no expect, but it seems like this can be used to rehash a LOT of existing code, to lighten the load on loftar's gentle shoulders. Anyone reading this far is welcome to add, subtract and change from my ideas. Sorry if it's longwinded.

Edited add: I would also like to see Skep's current behavior unchanged. Specifically so that nothing spent time written about is subtractive, but purely additive. This entire list of ideas is meant to be additive to diversify curiosities being used and make certain, lacking or very old (beehives are fucking old) features get a healthy scoop of golden love. Also if anyone would like pictures drawn to make this less of a fuckhuge word wall please tell me and I will enhance the post with art.

[Vigilance]

but will your bee skeps have variable wood colors??

[Massa]

but will your bee skeps have variable wood colors??

as soon as palisades get them

[SacreDoom]

I would personally love to see honey reworked in a style similar to this, but I also think it should be introduced with a rework of the procurement of bees; Jorb has, IIRC, several times mentioned that he would like to see apiarism expanded to initially account for collecting wild bees from wild hives and then domesticating them.

[Thedrah]

these are bee skeps. afaik they were destroyed to retrieve the honey

but +1 to more honey stuff. maybe destroy hives and the quality be based on lifespan of the hive

[shubla]

I agree that devs should focus more on adding some depth to already existing industries. Bees are definitely one of them.

[dageir]

To harvest from skeps they usually killed off the bees by using sulphuric smoke or the transfered the bees from the old skep to the new empty one by "coaxing" them by hitting the old skep. Not sure how effective that would be.
Also bees are very agressive if you try to take their honey/wax. Swarms are peaceful and easy to handle.

[Massa]

To harvest from skeps they usually killed off the bees by using sulphuric smoke or the transfered the bees from the old skep to the new empty one by "coaxing" them by hitting the old skep. Not sure how effective that would be.
Also bees are very agressive if you try to take their honey/wax. Swarms are peaceful and easy to handle.

To answer this and sacredoom: I wanted my ideas to be additive. Nothing more, nothing less.

Yes there could be neat little gimmicks involving transplanting bees to start new hives. Yes, we could use smoke and have to kill off our hive and wear special outfits.

Or we could purely build off of the current system. Without needing to force new gimmicks or ideas and letting skeps do the same thing they do already, and only let them do more without a nuisance or added hassle.

It's a video game. Let it be fun.

[jorb]

Could definitely expand on beekeeping by a lot. Will consider!