Guide to Beekeeping
So you've been working in Hydroponics for a while now, and are growing bored of interacting with nothing but plants and plant-people. And more importantly, you are growing tired of the station's woeful underpopulation of bees. Thankfully, this guide is here to help you remedy to that issue.
How do I bring bees to my garden
For starters, you're going to need an apiary. Those can be built from wood harvested from tower caps logs. There's one inside Beekeeping crates as well.
Next, place the apiary on a tray or some soil. Your apiary is now ready to receive its first bees.
To actually add bees, you're going to need a queen bee packet. Those are found exclusively in beekeeping crates, which are ordered from cargo. Each crate contains 3 of those. Deconstructing an apiary full of honey will also yield one.
Just like plants need nutrients, apiaries need Beez-Eez to kickstart their growth. A single bottle should suffice. After a moment you'll start seeing honey drip from the apiary, and bees come out of it. As long as you can see honey on the apiary, that means it is in good health.
Ok, now my garden is full of bees, I'm getting a bit worried
Do not worry! As long as you don't harm or annoy the bees they shouldn't have any interest in ruining your day.
Furthermore, bees idling above your plants will slow down their spread of weeds, pests, and contribute to removing their toxins. So the more bees in your garden the better! On top of that apiaries passively provide nutrients to nearby plant trays! Just make sure you don't let them slip outside hydroponics.
I let bees slip outside hydroponics and the clown punched them. They look angry now, what do I do?
Assuming you've still got your beekeeping crate lying around, you'll find inside everything you need to deal with feral bees. For starters put on the beekeeping suit and hood, it will protect you from stings. Alternatively any bio suit will do the trick.
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Now, to actually capture those bees. First you need to calm them. For that, just spray them with water. Chemical sprays, Fire Extinguishers, Smoke grenades, anything works as long as it has water in it. You'll find a mini extinguisher in beekeeping crates.
Once they've calmed just swing your net over them to pick them all up. If it doesn't work just spray them some more. Once you've captured all the bees, just use the net on an apiary to place all the bees inside. Remember that the more bees are in an apiary, the more nutrients it'll need to survive. Whatever you do, don't empty your net outside, or the bees will immediately start attacking you again.
Anything else that I shouldn't do?
Don't attack the apiary. If you do every single bee that originates from it on top of every single bees "inside" it will come rushing to kill you.
I like feral bees, I want to make them even more dangerous
Seriously? well then you can mutate the apiary by using a floral somatoray to increase their brute damage, or have the bees idle above plants that you've injected with a ton of toxins. They'll harvest the toxin inside the apiary, and any bee that comes out of it will deal additional toxin damage. A properly mutated bee swarm can send a player to crit or outright kill him in a single sting! If there's some toxins in your apiary, it'll also find its way inside the honeycombs. Which brings us to the next part...
I see that my apiaries are full of honey, how do I collect it?
Honey is stored inside honeycombs. To collect those, you'll have to deconstruct the apiary. An apiary full of honey can yield up to 6 honeycombs. However, deconstructing an apiary means that all its bees will come rushing at your, so make sure to dress properly first!
To begin the process, just use a hatchet on the apiary. The bees will start attacking you as soon as you begin, so once the process is over you'll want to calm them and capture them as described earlier, then place them in another apiary, or place them back into their apiary after you rebuild it.
Once you've dealt with the feral bees, just pick up the honey combs. They can be eaten raw, or put in a grinder to isolate their honey, which you can then store into pots at Condimasters.
Honey is a very nutritive food, with various healing properties as well! Medbay's Chemists might be interested in it to improve the potency of their cryo mixes.
