Beekeeping Guide: Beehives, Honey and Beeswax

Bees are the rare staff on the Inquisition Base who work without a collar, a flask of Reanimation Liquid or a pep talk. Their output has one catch: no trader in the game buys Honey or Beeswax. Beekeeping is therefore a processing job, and this page follows every jar and every lump to where it earns its keep: Yogurt and Mead, church candles, fertilizer and some surprisingly expensive alchemy. Insect Bait, which shares the search results but not the bees, is covered in the fishing guide. Figures are for patch 1.008.

Beekeeping at a glance

How to unlock and build a Beehive

The research path

Everything sits on the Farming tab and costs green points only.

From a fresh tree the hive costs 95 green points, 175 with Mead Making. You want Garden Improvement I for the garden anyway (the farming guide explains why), so the real price of the bees is the last 50. If green points run short, the science points guide lists the cheapest studies, and the tech priorities page shows where Beekeeping fits in a full research order.

Open the Vineyard

Beehives go up in the Vineyard, the work zone on the western edge of the base, next to the Vine Trellises. The way in is the Vineyard Bridge: repair it with a hammer for 4 Wooden Plank, 1 Polished Bronze and 4 Piece of stone at Building mastery 2. The repair needs no research, but crafting Polished Bronze needs Bronze Polishing (30 red), unless you buy it from the Smithy.

Build the hives

Each Beehive costs 2 Wooden Plank, 1 Bronze Detail and 6 Bronze Nails, cheap enough to build several the day you research it. How many hive spots the Vineyard offers is not confirmed, so fill whatever it gives you: Honey and Beeswax both stack to 30, and both have uses that eat them by the handful.

Harvesting: what a hive gives

• Yield: each time you empty a Beehive you get 3 to 6 Honey and 1 to 2 Beeswax. The wax comes on every harvest, unlike at the wild hives.
• Requirement: Farming mastery 3. Your tool belt counts: shovels and fishing rods both add Farming while they sit there.
• Cost: 1 energy and 0.1 Insanity per tick of work. The bees charge a small fee in sanity, and a single Mead refunds a hundred ticks of it.
• Refill: the hive fills back up over 8 steps of 1:00, so an emptied hive is ready again about 8 minutes later.

Plan with the middle of the range: about 4.5 Honey and 1.5 Beeswax per harvest. A batch of Mead (5 Honey) takes a little over one harvest, a Magnificent Candle (4 Beeswax) about three.

Wild hives

Four wild hives exist in the world. One stands south of Riverside, the river bank south-west of your yard where you dig Clay and Sand. A wild hive gives 1 to 2 Honey and only sometimes a Beeswax, reported at roughly one visit in four (sources disagree). That is a fine first taste before you research Beekeeping, but a built hive gives about three times the Honey and never skips the wax.

Can zombies keep bees?

Not the harvesting: no zombie post that empties hives is confirmed in 1.008, so the bees remain your personal responsibility. Zombies can do the carrying. Zombie Vineyard (150 green, 50 blue) unlocks a Vineyard Porter Station (2 Piece of stone, 4 Brick) whose zombie hauls Honey, Hops and Grapes from the Vineyard’s chests down to the Vineyard Basement, where the Brewing Stand is built. You still empty the hives yourself and drop the Honey in a Vineyard chest. Nothing is ticked in a porter’s window by default: tick Honey, or your porter will carry nothing, forever, with great dedication. Porters, belts and supplier zombies are covered in factory automation.

What to do with Honey

Honey has a base value of 8 bronze and no buyer, so it is worth exactly what you turn it into.

Yogurt: the energy play

Yogurt belongs to First snacks, so it is open the moment you repair the Kitchen Table. Six ticks at 2 energy cost 12 energy and return 90 (150 with the Cook perk), where the same Honey eaten raw gives 5. Milk is the bottleneck: Herm sells Jug of Milk from his third level and the Baker from his second, at a 13 bronze base. If you own the pre-order Sauna, Yogurt also gets its Steamed Up bonus. Nobody buys Yogurt: it is fuel for you, not for the market. The cooking guide has the full kitchen chain, and the energy and Insanity guide ranks Yogurt against every other dish.

Mead: the sanity and cash play

Mead Making unlocks the Brewing Stand (12 Brick, 8 Iron Detail, 2 Advanced Detail) in the Vineyard Basement. A batch takes 5 Honey, 5 Water and 10 Fuel, six ticks at 2 energy, Farming 4, and yields 5 Mead, or 8 with the Brewer perk. Fuel comes from a Firewood shed built in the Vineyard Basement itself, because a shed only feeds the stations of its own area: 2 Firewood make 20 Fuel, enough for two batches.

Each Mead lowers Insanity by 10, and every point of Insanity is a point of maximum energy you do not have, so a bottle is often worth more in your pocket than on a shelf. The Brewery buys Mead from its first tier at about 22 bronze while its stock is normal. Do not feed Mead to the Distillation Cube: one Mead and 2 Clay Urns give a single Alcohol (2 with Cube distillations) for 20 Fuel, where any Wine gives 4. The full drinks chain is in Wine, Mead and Beer.

Alchemy: where Honey gets expensive

Honey carries 0 red, 2 green and 1 blue rune, which makes it the base of three useful formulas, listed in the table above: Spices (Laboratory I, raises a bronze dish or drink to silver), Alkali (Laboratory II, goes into the Master Sword) and Umami (Laboratory II, raises silver to gold). The rune sums and the Spices and Umami upgrades are explained in the alchemy guide.

The lab only accepts an ingredient you have studied once at the Study Table: Honey costs 3 Science and 5 Faith there and pays 20 green and 10 blue points. You do not need the technology that reveals a formula: the lab brews any exact rune match and teaches you the formula on the first brew. Laboratory II itself needs the Laboratory II technology (20 red, 40 green) and 2 Oiled Beam, 3 Iron Detail and 2 Lens. Every brew costs one flask and pays its own runes back as tech points, so an Umami is also 4 green and 4 blue in the bank.

What to do with Beeswax

Beeswax is a church supply first and an alchemy reagent second. Raw, it sells to nobody either.

Church candles

All three candles are made at the Formulation Bench (4 Wooden Plank, 4 Bronze Detail, 1 Polished Bronze), which comes with Church Lighting I.

The Alchemist perk gives an 80%, 60% or 40% chance of a bonus candle, which quietly trims the wax bill. Flax Thread comes from the Spinning Wheel (4 Flax make 4, 6 with Tailor; Flax Thread technology, 45 green), or from Herm at his third level and the Tailor from his second.

In the church, a candle is spent once, when you build the Candelabra, and never burns down or needs topping up. The Church has 4 Candelabra slots, 2 more after Improve the Church II and 2 more after Improve the Church III. Eight Candelabra III, the full set, take 24 Magnificent Candles: 96 Beeswax and 24 Flax Thread, or about 64 harvests at a mid-range yield. Each Candelabra III also needs 3 Advanced Detail and 1 Golden ingot. Plan the 24 candles in the crafting calculator, and see church, sermons and Faith for how candles rank against benches, shrines and incense.

At the shop, the Apothecary buys all three candles and also sells them: Simple Candles from tier I, Pretty from tier II, Magnificent at tier III. Per lump of wax the Magnificent Candle pays best, around 90 bronze against about 37 for a Simple Candle, and at tier III each one sold adds 4 Likes, up to 10 candles a week. Pretty Candles add 2 Likes each. Likes cap how many parishioners show up (attendance is the lower of your Likes and the church quality), which the Town Gratitude and Likes guide explains.

For a quest, Larry asks for one Simple Candle in Can’t See The Forest for the Iron, the side quest that opens the Old Mine. No Formulation Bench yet? The Apothecary sells Simple Candles from its first tier.

Fertilizer: wax for the garden

Each elixir is one flask at Laboratory I. The classic alternative to Beeswax is Coal, which comes only from the Zombie Miner, so for most of the game the hive is your fertilizer factory. Fragrance is distilled from Rhododendron (2 Rhododendron + 2 Clay Urn + 20 Fuel make 3 at the Distillation Cube, after Church Smells I), so an Orchard with Berry and Rhododendron bushes, plus your hives, covers every growth elixir. The Apothecary also sells Fragrance from its first tier.

Shopping list for both big upgrades: 15 Beeswax (9 with Berries for Garden Upgrade II, 6 with Fragrance for the Vineyard Upgrade) and 84 Peat (36 plus 48). Start banking wax early; the bees will not hurry for you.

Potions and late alchemy

Beeswax (1 / 2 / 0) also completes several potions:

• Damage Potion II: Beeswax + Clay (2 / 2 / 0), Laboratory I.
• Damage Potion III: Beeswax + Copper Nugget (3 / 3 / 0), Laboratory I. No technology reveals this one; brewing the mix discovers it.
• Tannin Liquid: Beeswax + Tin + Clay (4 / 2 / 1), Laboratory II, about 14 to 15 silver at the Alchemist III.
• Philosopher Stone: Beeswax + gold Brain + Copper Nugget (3 / 3 / 3), Laboratory II. With an Iron Ingot at the Formulation Bench it becomes a Golden ingot, as the gold guide explains.

Study Beeswax before any of this: 3 Science and 5 Faith at the Study Table, which pays 30 red, 40 green and 10 blue points, a good return for one lump. Every formula and rune value is in the alchemy guide.

Insect Bait: Fireflies, not bees

Insect Bait keeps getting filed next to beehives, yet it has nothing to do with bees. It is 4 Fireflies made into 4 baits at the Kitchen Table (Farming 4), once you have researched Fishing III (120 green). Gunter sells the Fireflies at 10 bronze. The recipe, the bite tables, the prices and the three baits compared are all in the fishing guide, which owns that topic.

Inspirations and achievements for beekeepers

Several inspirations count what your bees and baits produce. Claiming a level costs Faith (level I is free) and fills the matching talent bar; the talents and inspirations guide explains the system.

Eat your first 5 Honey for Sweet Tooth’s free level, then cook the rest. Two achievements touch this page too: Alcohol Baron wants 100 bottles brewed, but Mead seems to count only 1 per batch, so brew Soldier’s ale or Wine for it; Fish Magnet wants 50 fish: the bait-free Roach at the home spot is the cheap route, Insect Bait the profitable one if you built the Fish Stand.

Common mistakes

1. Hauling Honey and Beeswax to market. No trader buys either. Cook, brew or craft them first.
2. Eating Honey raw. 5 energy per Honey, against 90 when the same Honey goes into Yogurt. Eat only the 5 that Sweet Tooth’s first level wants.
3. Distilling Mead. One Mead makes one Alcohol for 20 Fuel and 2 Clay Urns. Distil Wine (4 Alcohol per bottle) and drink or sell the Mead.
4. Looking for Insect Bait at the hive. It is 4 Fireflies at the Kitchen Table, after Fishing III: see the fishing guide.
5. Skipping the Study Table. The laboratory refuses Honey and Beeswax until each has been studied once, for 3 Science and 5 Faith apiece.
6. Leaving the Vineyard porter idle. Nothing is ticked by default: tick Honey in its window.
7. Selling every Magnificent Candle. Each Candelabra III eats 3 of them: keep enough for your candelabra slots (8 once Improve the Church II and III are built), then sell the surplus for coins and Likes.

Where to go next

• Crops, Peat and garden upgrades: farming.
• Mead next to Wine and Beer: Wine, Mead and Beer.
• Candles in the church budget: church, sermons and Faith.
• Every rune and formula: alchemy guide.
• Turning all of it into coins: money-making.
• Insect Bait, Fireflies and what bites: fishing.
• Honey and Beeswax in the kitchen: cooking guide.