Do the bees polinate anything? Is there for example an advantage to place beehives in an orchard? Anyone know?
Can’t speak to Orchards, but I place Apiaries over my regular crop fields all the time, because I like the look of the bee swarms around the crops, but haven’t noticed any bonus or change in the fields’ output or fertility other than the aesthetic look of the bee swarms.
2 Likes
Bees get a honey/wax production bonus from farm crop overlap.
Hover the building over different areas and it will tell you the production bonus that location provides.
Given that farmers are responsible for harvesting and transporting honey and wax to storage, it makes more sense to place hives in farmed areas over others, so your farmers don’t have to race around hither and yon to accomplish their chores.
Telling your Trading Post workers to stock 500 Honey can remove some of that burden from your farmers.
Like Boris, I’ve seen no direct benefit to the crop, but by the time I’ve balanced the clay and maxed out fertility, it’s hard to tell which factors cause the over-production one regularly gets.
Would be nice to see the bees get angry at Raiders invading their space, the way wild hogs are doing now.
Last several times I’ve chased the few surviving Raiders, a wild hog has joined in the rout. 
1 Like
I did a test and there is a variable called ‘Bonus’ or something equivalent. I noticed that if I moved the hives a round a bit, the bonus changed. Initially I had 6-8% bonus. After the move I got 25% on average for most hives, some up to 60%. I have no idea what changed the bonus, and it seems like the bonus is changin over time as well.
1 Like
Hover a hive over a ripe crop in the field and watch the bonus jump up.
You can also get some bonus from the local, flowering plants.
1 Like
That ‘bonus’ appears to be directly related to the efficiency of the fields. As my fields get more fertile with continued composting, clovering and hoeing, while the Apiaries don’t add to the fields, the more crop I’m getting from the fields, the more output from the Apiaries in Honey and Wax. The bees may not be pollinating, but they appear to be doing some serious harvesting!
2 Likes
The bonus also appears to be related to teh distance away from the fields. I followed @Celebrindan excellent advice to hover with the hive and see what bonus would appear. A distance away from the fields I got between 40%-70%. I can see the challenge there to make the workers travel longer, but also not so logical to increase production in hives moving away from the bee food?
I have not really noticed any benefit from the Honey bonus, but I haven’t really looked into it beyond the farmers running the raw honey and wax after each crop harvest season.
Never seen them haul away goods during Summer growing season, or more than one unit of each per, just before Autumn sets.
But I have all my farms set to clover for the last crop, leaving farmers almost 5 months off at the end of the year, depending on how many Hives need to be serviced, how far the run to storage is, and if the TP is still gathering any part of 500 Honey.
By the time Winter hits, all farm & beekeeping chores are done, and I can release all my farmers to work labor, handing repairs, stocking build sites, chopping wood or mining stone.
New Year comes and they go back to tilling & planting again.