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[Bihlbo]

Since bees can fly, fortifications aren't needed to allow them to leave the beepen. They can also exit through the ceiling or floor. I tend to build towers on the surface of my forts, for various reasons. Usually one level or more off the ground I'll connect the stairway with a room that has at least one floor grate (this is the bees' exit to the outside, and cannot be destroyed by any attacker), solid walls, and a solid floored ceiling. The room only needs to hold about 25 hives, since production gets hit when you get many more than that. Make sure the room has a doorway (I sometimes make it 2 doors with a 2 tile-long hall between, just for extra protection) so only the beekeeper gets stung.

Example: (W = wall, B = beehive, G = grate, D = door, X = up/down stairs)

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WWWWWWW
WBBBBBW
WBBBBBW
WBBGBBW
WBBBBBW
WBBBBBW
WWWDWWW
..W_W..
..W_W..
.WWDWW.
.WXXXW.
.WXXXW.
.WXXXW.
.WWWWW.


[Garath]

I put my beehives underground with a floor grate above them. Does that count?

Building destroyers can take out the grates

but do they jump down z-levels now? unless they fly, that is

[orius]

I already see the military applications.

And so we see the natural order of progression in DF: weaponization.   

[Foxbyte]

How often do bees sting? If you built a pit full of beehives and tossed hostiles in, would they get stung enough to actually hurt them?

[KodKod]

Bee stings only cause pain and swelling.

In theory it might be possible to get someone to pass out from the pain and then become susceptible to traps or damage face smashing, but bees are never going to kill anything on their own.

[vicwarrior]

I done this and it works whitout fortifications and being completly sealed from the outside... Maybe because of the caverns? Or they just dont care as long as they have a litle grass patch?

[Loud Whispers]

Supposedly bees only need to be next to an above ground tile to be bees.

[vicwarrior]

Yeah you only need an enclosed above ground area to make secure beekeeping no need to make fortifications or soething dwarvenly complex or dangerous.

[slink]

Yeah you only need an enclosed above ground area to make secure beekeeping no need to make fortifications or soething dwarvenly complex or dangerous.

Agreed.  I went to the bother of making an indoor bee area with a protected ventilation pipe to the outdoors, and the bees had no outdoor access.  Then I knocked out one wall adjacent to the outdoors and they still had no outdoor access.  I moved the hives outdoors and then completely enclosed them with wall and a ceiling, and they now had outdoor access.

[Friendstrange]

Ive been looking for a more viable industry to feed my dwarves as I keep hearing horror stories of FPS death from dead animals and been experiencing quite a few. The dogsplosions just keep happening. Beekeeping seems to hold the answer.

What I gather from this thread is:
1. Bees need only to be next to an above-ground tile to make millions of honey. So a setup like above-crop farming underground can be made. Of course one would need to keep the bees well away from the civilians because unhappy thoughts from getting stung.
2. 40 beehives is the optimal number.
3. Each Beehive contains 15000 bees.
Thats 600000 bees in a single tower.

You could force invaders to pass through a corridor filled with the buggers and by the time they get to the rest of your traps they would be such a swollen mess they would probably pop in a burst of gore from a single menacing spike (Hell, does swelling currently do anything to make a body more explosive-prone?).

Perhaps bees can serve as a better, eternal early warning system against ambushers and such. Just build a series of towers in the wilderness that in total have 40 hives and have an underground air-lockable access to them all for your beekeeper via bridges or a legendary door.
Or you could have them on the edges of your main wall with marksdwarves on the top, though they will get stinged.

Though some questions arise:
Can a bee sting a sneaking unit and if so does the unit become revealed?
Does a bee count as a member of your civilization and can it report/spot a sneaking unit?
If so, can it also become a witness to vampire feedings or crimes? Bee Cops or Beeg Brother?
More importantly, can vermin become undead? Undead bees, dear god. I think thats a movie.

[Quatch]

I plan my forts with some degree of paranoia.  It's kept me somewhat safe.

Nice work. Sigged.

[dizzyelk]

Yeah you only need an enclosed above ground area to make secure beekeeping no need to make fortifications or soething dwarvenly complex or dangerous.

The biggest problem with that, is that you're not making anything dwarvenly complex or dangerous. Isn't that the whole point of the game? If something can be done 2 different ways, one easy to set up, the other requiring miles of walls, magma, several levers, with the potential to kill the whole fortress and demanding the deaths of no less than 5 dwarves, well, we have to go with the second plan, right? I mean, are we dwarves, or are we elves?

[Mechanist]

i usually make this:

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z1 (outside)
. . . . . . . . ->
. F . . F . . F ->
. . . . . . . . ->.=natural floor
F=channel with a floor (usually made from green glass so the bees have some light)

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z-1
B B B B B B B B ->
B B B B B B B B ->
B B B B B B B B ->B=hive

repeat at will to any direction and (optionally) try hexagonal patterns or respect the natural shape of the place

1 hole floored, gives you 9 tiles for hives below (if not more)

[Callista]

You could conceivably farm bees in hell.

I seriously hope someone tries this.

...dangit. I shouldn't have abandoned the fort that got boring after I beat the first wave of hell. Now I have a goal for next time.

Also, I will farm strawberries down there. Why? Because, strawberries in hell. Seriously, how cool is that?

[Morpha]

I already see the military applications.

And so we see the natural order of progression in DF: weaponization.   

From what I've seen it generally goes:

Cool idea X> improvements on X> weaponization of X poorly implemented with disastrous results > forum laughs at misfortune then proceeds to refine X as a weapon > (optional) Someone mods the clowns/harmless creature to breath swarms of X > X now becomes a standard in every fort from now on.