Did I miss something?
I recently decided to start making food and beverages. I put up 2 improved hives, and had a dozen queen bees in a preservation box that I put in them. I received about 400 honey.
I decided to get more bees, so I went north to south, harvesting aloe plants.
I gathered almost 1500 aloe, using the Obsidian sickle but not ONE bee.
First off, why do the bees die after making honey? Is that really what should happen?
The beehives making honey whitout bees or they changed that ?
As a counter - I recently found (on singleplayer) that my hives seem to continue producing honey long after I stopped putting bees into them. I’m not sure if it’s a deliberate change to passive production or a weird bug…
Edit: Though I have also noticed getting fewer bees from aloe with a sickle - thinking about it that could also be a bug. (I still got quite a few from basic plant fibre bushes)
Unless it has changed, the beehives passively generate honey even with no bees in it.
Or rather, no queen and no workers. I think the general population are implied.
Putting the bees in uses them like a fuel to expedite the creation of honey for a brief period.
That matches with what I’ve been finding
yea thats my last stand on beehives and i dont found any patchnotes that saying it changed .
We’ll see, when I log back in there better be honey. When I checked the hives after the queens were gone, there was no honey in the production Que.
Also, if you have a Shaggai larva and 100 honey in a hive, it will grow into a drone.
Which buzzes…
Constantly.
Loudly.
Oh, and is very cute
I do not play Siptah
Emty your beehive and do some other things come back after 1 hour and dheck them
I’m pretty sure I didn’t see any continue in the production queue either - but I know I emptied the hive at least once since the last time I put bees in it, and honey keeps showing up slowly - hopefully it’s working the same way on officials. (And, if not, at least we’ve got a start on some data…)
I had to log off for the server restart, but I will check when I log in later. Hopefully you are correct. I know the hives have gone back and forth with the bee thing.
My hives are beeless, yet still producing that sweet golden nectar (and I don’t mean beer)
In fact I have yet to add any insects to them, though bear in mind I play on a PS potato, not one of those fancyschmancy PC vegetables.
Related note - in case you haven’t seen any mention of it - when you log back in, take a look at your fish traps as well - spoil timers on the fish should be much better 
That is good to know, but I have not used fishtraps in forever. In fact I deleted most of mine. On a side note, maybe it was the fishtraps I was thinking of that need bugs.
Le sigh
Just a thought, you could try picking up and re-placing the hives, that might trigger them to start producing honey again if they’ve stopped for some reason.
Yes, in a recentish update, the fish traps started requiring bugs. I think several other recipes were altered at that time as well.
My hive is producing honey with no bees in it. It takes awhile tho.
I hope your’s hasn’t gone on vacation.
That is good to know, I was in a panic after harvesting a gazillion other items to make food and drink and suddenly, no honey, lol.
Beehives have never needed bees. Bees weren’t even added to the game until long after the hives were in (which is probably why the recipe to craft them doesn’t require bees).
Passive honey generation doesn’t show in the queue.
No they haven’t. Fish traps have, but beehives have never needed bees.
Hives produce honey without bees, but it is sloooooooow. I think improved ones produce 2 instead of 1 at the time.
Logically bees shouldn’t die after making honey, but game mechanic-wise, most of the things work like this, they are just “ingredients”.
Would be better to have a mixed logic: bees should have an “expiration time” just like many other things, and should produce honey constantly while put in the beehive, just like animals produce dung in animal pens. Until it eventually dies.