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Honey: what am I missing?


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Hi there!

 

Ok, I've never really gotten into creating bee boxes and farming honey. I've played many many hours, unlocked all the characters, and survived for very long periods of time, all without honey. I tried it a few times just for kicks, but I always felt like the recipes that use honey were not as good as my standbys of meatballs for hunger and fishsticks for health--or dragonpie if I could make it. Taffy was great when sanity was a problem, but spoilage was an issue.

 

But when I poke around the forums, it seems like y'all are very pro-bee boxes and honey. I have a feeling I'm missing something important! Maybe it's just my play style? (I'm very conflict-avoidant.)

 

What am I missing? 

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said the one with wygfrid in profile...

in fact, bee boxes are really usefull but only after the first winter cause the time to gather all the stuff to build beeboxes, winter is already here. So people do not build them at the start...

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So it sounds like it's my conflict avoidance getting to me... I don't usually have a lot of paper to spare because I'm scared of tentacles, and I don't like to catch bees because I'm afraid of them... basically I'm a wuss.

 

But I've gotten more combative recently (playing Wigfrid will do that to the most timid player, I think!), so maybe I'll give it another go! (But... but... I'm playing Maxwell with a meat effigy and his health is so low... see? I'm a wuss...)

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Tentacles aren't THAT scary, are they? I mean, I've been taken down by them more than once, but if you've got a meat effigy and supplies to build another in an emergency (I keep one built and one ready to build in my inventory if I can) and if you wear a football helmet you should be perfectly fine to harvest from the marshes once in a while. Also, if you've got the walking cane bees aren't really all that fast, you can just run away after you catch one and go back later to catch more.

All that being said- I have no need for honey playing Maxwell. He doesn't need the sanity boost from taffy, and I kill so many spiders trying to get monster meat that I have tons of glands to heal myself with. When I was playing with Woodie I used honey like crazy though, so it all has to do with your personal style and what you prefer.

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But when I poke around the forums, it seems like y'all are very pro-bee boxes and honey. I have a feeling I'm missing something important! Maybe it's just my play style? (I'm very conflict-avoidant.)

 

What am I missing? 

 

Honey is the best long term food in the game! It may be difficult to build enough bee boxes but once you have them they provide you with an unlimited supply of food for basically no effort.

 

Honey spoils extremely slow.

Honey restores a good amount of hunger.

Honey restores a little bit of health.

Honey doesn't need to be cooked.

Honey doesn't need to be dried or prepared in some other way.

Honey stacks up to 40.

Honey has a fast eating animation.

Honey doesn't attract bunnymen.

Honey can be used for supreme crock pot recipes (honey ham, taffy)

Honey can be used to craft the most powerful non-spoiling healing item: honey poultice

 

The downsides with honey is the harvesting. If you are fast enough and get a beekeepers hat it is not a big problem at all.

The other downside is the slow regeneration of the honey. You can compensate this with a big amount of bee boxes.

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Bees aren't a good "snip-now I'll survive" thing, similiar to farms. But I think they're even better than farms once you don't have to worry about starvation all the time.

 

About food... I consider honey ham improved meat balls. Taffy is kinda nice, but I recommend raw honey. Personally, the best thing about raw honey must be, that it stays fresh so long. That is especially good to Wickerbottom, who is very picky.

 

Other than food, honey bandages are fantastic for healing mid-combat. Also you can catch bees from your bee boxes unlimitedly, which allows for bee mines á masses!

 

EDIT: Just for clarification: Honey takes a while to make, but doesn't require your attention. It is very useful in several ways, and the bees themselves are too.

 

I forgot to mention, you should urgently get a walking cane to make harvesting easier. I never even get stung once with a cane.

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Beeboxes are usefull after the first winter. Build it during spring near your summer camp and you're good. Thanks to honey, you will be able to make good food for summer: ice creams. It's not really usefull during another period if you already have food sources.

Anyway, if you want to live with honey, you can make good stuff with this. Tbh, almost everything you need.
Honey nuggets are excellent for health (+20 health) and easy to make. 3 honeys, 1 monster meat, huzzah.
Honey ham is a better meatball (+75 hunger and +30 health, what else?).
Ice cream is an excellent way to restore sanity (+50 sanity, yeay) and keeps you fresh during summer.
Pumpkin cookie is another good way to restore hunger and sanity (+37.5 hunger, +15 sanity).
Aaaand taffy, that's a lower version of the pumpkin cookie, because it drains some health.

The only missing food is a food that will increase your body temperature for winter.

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Honey is the best long term food in the game! It may be difficult to build enough bee boxes but once you have them they provide you with an unlimited supply of food for basically no effort.

 

Honey spoils extremely slow.

Honey restores a good amount of hunger.

Honey restores a little bit of health.

Honey doesn't need to be cooked.

Honey doesn't need to be dried or prepared in some other way.

Honey stacks up to 40.

Honey has a fast eating animation.

Honey doesn't attract bunnymen.

Honey can be used for supreme crock pot recipes (honey ham, taffy)

Honey can be used to craft the most powerful non-spoiling healing item: honey poultice

 

The downsides with honey is the harvesting. If you are fast enough and get a beekeepers hat it is not a big problem at all.

The other downside is the slow regeneration of the honey. You can compensate this with a big amount of bee boxes.

*if u put 2 stucks of honey in coolbox,u can have fresh honey an entire year without spoil   :)

 

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Another good thing with having bees in general is how they are able to replicate flowers. You won't have to go around collecting butterflies often. After you either place a beebox near a load of flowers, or you go out of your way to collect the butterflies, but after that you will be fine. Every few days, I check in on my bees on my main world and see that I get a load of honey, which I can either use a food for the winter, or for healing if needed.

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Another good thing with having bees in general is how they are able to replicate flowers. You won't have to go around collecting butterflies often. After you either place a beebox near a load of flowers, or you go out of your way to collect the butterflies, but after that you will be fine. Every few days, I check in on my bees on my main world and see that I get a load of honey, which I can either use a food for the winter, or for healing if needed.

What? They don't replicate flowers...

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Seems I'm mistaken about them doing so when they live in a bee box, but if they do not have a nest, they will after pollinating 6 flowers.

 butterflies creates flowers but bees don't, if you're are in spring they spawn out of nowhere but that's all...

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butterflies creates flowers but bees don't, if you're are in spring they spawn out of nowhere but that's all...

Butterflies only create flowers when you plant them in the ground; there's nothing in their behavior that creates flowers. Bees can create flowers by landing on the ground after they have visited enough flowers, as Luigi3214 said. That usually doesn't happen unless the bee is homeless, otherwise it will just return to the hive.

I remember people talking about using this to create farms of evil flowers...

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Butterflies only create flowers when you plant them in the ground; there's nothing in their behavior that creates flowers. Bees can create flowers by landing on the ground after they have visited enough flowers, as Luigi3214 said. That usually doesn't happen unless the bee is homeless, otherwise it will just return to the hive.

I remember people talking about using this to create farms of evil flowers...

 

Butterfly coding has a component called "pollinator", it appears to allow spreading flowers naturally.

Bees have the same component and no further changes to it, suggesting that butterflies can in fact spread flowers themselves.

There may be a practical issue preventing that though. Maybe because they don't have enough time? That would explain why one would want to use homeless bees. (butterflies only require flowers to despawn, bees need a hive)

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Somewhere in the wiki they talk about homeless bees spawning flowers after pollinating six other flowers, but I never got it to work. It was recommended as a way to get flowers going in the mines for sanity purposes.

 

How do you guys get the honeycomb to start with for bee boxes? The times I tried making bee boxes were when I used bee hives as decoys for the hounds and they destroyed the hives, but I usually use beefalo for that now, or just fight them myself. Do you capture all the bees from a hive and then knock it down? 

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hi everyone,

 

yeah, that's exactly how i do it, i take all the bees (at least 4) from an hive, kill all the "killer bees" (cant remember the name).

if you cant kill the killers bees, just attack the hive once, run away from it, dodge the bees then rush the hive and destroy it, you can come back later to kill the killer bees.

 

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Oh hey I meant to say thanks so much to everyone for your honey insight! I'm continually amazed at how rich this game is. I seem to have a very different play style than a lot of other folks, but it works great for me, and that's pretty cool! But now I'm having fun stretching out of my comfort zone and trying new things, so I appreciate your input.

 

(Some other things I've never done: I've never crafted and used sleeping objects like the tent or the siesta lean-to and yet I've survived summer without it! I've never used gunpowder! I've never created a pen for animals! So much to try...)

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I get a beekeepers hat and try to grab a few Bees from one hive. Once I get enough, I attack the hive then kill any killer Bees that come out. After that, I'll finish knocking down the hive. The beekeepers hat will reduce damage down to 1 or 2 hr per hit so, very manageable.

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Somewhere in the wiki they talk about homeless bees spawning flowers after pollinating six other flowers, but I never got it to work. It was recommended as a way to get flowers going in the mines for sanity purposes.

 

How do you guys get the honeycomb to start with for bee boxes? The times I tried making bee boxes were when I used bee hives as decoys for the hounds and they destroyed the hives, but I usually use beefalo for that now, or just fight them myself. Do you capture all the bees from a hive and then knock it down? 

 

You have to catch the yellow bees with a Bug Net, then release them near some flowers. Capturing them makes them homeless (but be careful, any nearby bees will get angry with you, and nearby hives will spawn killer bees to come after you). To begin the process, I usually catch 1 bee per 6 flowers I already have available. After that bee produces more a few more flowers, then I'll catch-and-release extras. I don't like to flood my flower area with bees to start with, as those that aren't working just sit on the ground doing nothing. It's inefficient and slow that way =)

 

To get honeycomb, generally I'll employ your method of using mobs against the hives. Sometimes it's best to be prudent, and let the environment do the work for you. However, assuming I have the supplies, I may also don a Beekeeper Hat and a Log Suit, and just go wail on the nest myself. The protection of both of those makes health damage negligible. I never bother to catch all the bees first though.

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