Blocks & Decoration Beehive Crafting Station

How is it?

  • It's the bee's knees!

    Votes: 17 94.4%
  • I don't like it. Sure, bee in my bonnet.

    Votes: 1 5.6%

  • Total voters
    18

Baconfry

Terrarian
So I recently (well, not really, not anymore, haha) delivered a passionate lecture on the reproduction of bees. This was on Wall of Steel's thread, which I admittedly made a sticky mess out of. Sorry. But it did give me some inspiration.

Bees are eusocial insects. The only reproductive female in the colony is the queen. A hive functions as a reproductive unit by producing more queens, which establish new hives.

Therefore, you cannot reproduce bees by catching workers. You either have to capture a queen, or obtain a bee larva and feed it protein-rich royal jelly, causing it to develop into a queen. Queens need male drones in order to produce worker bees. Thankfully, their unfertilized eggs already develop into drones by parthenogenesis, and a single queen can produce a working colony from there.

So how might this huge amount of scientific knowledge be incorporated into Terraria?

Larva
15% bait power
Dropped from naturally-generated hive blocks, captured with bug net.

This will be a new passive NPC, behaving much like a worm. (Maybe add a few lines of code that prevent bees from killing them, because that would be stupid.)

Queen Larva
30% bait power
Crafted by hand with Larva and either...
1. Slime Crown. Going this way makes it viable for the Queen Larva to become a replacement for the Abeemination as a boss-summoning item. Although it casually references real-life royal jelly, it's not as obvious as in #3.
2. Gold/Platinum Crown. This is a slightly cheaper and faster way to craft the item than #1, because it requires neither gel nor a Demon Altar, and can also be viably used to replace the Abeemination. However, it misses the important reference to Royal Jelly, and is scientifically inaccurate.
3. Royal Jelly (Dropped by King Slime). Going this way makes it viable for the Queen Larva to become a high-quality bait item, as long as a good quantity of Royal Jelly is dropped. It also makes the reference to actual bee reproduction more apparent. However, it is the most labor-intensive method, requiring an actual boss kill. It also makes it less likely to replace the Abeemination, and gives Queen Bee-exclusive content to King Slime's drop table.
Alternative to being dropped by King Slime:
Crafted with Bee Wax and Gel. This makes Queen Larva even more viable as bait, because you'll get at least 16 from a Queen Bee kill. However, it misses the reference to King Slime, who is literally "Royal Jelly".
Best of both worlds: Royal Jelly can both be dropped by King Slime and crafted with Gel and Bee Wax. This is probably my favorite option, because either way you have to kill a boss in order to obtain the Queen Larva, but you still need to kill Queen Bee to craft the Beehive, which basically makes it so you never have to visit the Hive biome again.

Beehive
Crafting station
Ingredients:
30 Hive Blocks
10 Bee Wax (the new QB drop)
20 Wood
Queen Larva
Crafted at Sawmill

Now, what does it do?

First, it satisfies the requirement for crafting Bottled Honey with Bottles.

Second, you can right-click it and it will release a Larva for you to catch (1 minute cooldown). And you can use it as bait. Not as good as Fireflies or Worms, but better than Snails, and farmable.

Third, it creates an area around it where herbs have a small chance to bloom even when conditions aren't met. Because pollination.

Finally, you can left-click it while holding an Empty Bucket to fill it with honey. A lot less messy than other infinite generators.

While I'm at it, I'll also suggest that the Merchant should sell Bottles for like 20 copper, because why not.

There we go. Just another of my brainwaves. What do you think?
 
Larva.png
Larva sprite, coming with more, sry its bad :(
 
No, it's alright as an item sprite. I'd have it a bit more towards the white color, but that's just me.

Anyways, don't forget that I can sprite simple little things now, so I'd like to give this a shot myself!
thx! if you need a spriting tool, i can send you one through dropbox :)
 
As a beekeeper, i have a few suggestions. On your bee reproduction speech, there is a flaw, worker bees can produce offspring, they are just drones. On the items dropped by beehive it can drop Propolis which beekeepers call wonder glue
It Glues
It is helping scientist learn how to fight cancer
It can act as a bandage
 
As a beekeeper, i have a few suggestions. On your bee reproduction speech, there is a flaw, worker bees can produce offspring, they are just drones. On the items dropped by beehive it can drop Propolis which beekeepers call wonder glue
It Glues
It is helping scientist learn how to fight cancer
It can act as a bandage
I'm sure I read somewhere that female worker bees are kept sterile by a special substance released by the queen, and that drones are the males.

Propolis is an interesting idea, but I need to think of what to use it for... since, thankfully, there's no cancer in Terraria (except the Crimson, which can hardly be cured by propolis).
 
I'm sure I read somewhere that female worker bees are kept sterile by a special substance released by the queen, and that drones are the males.

Propolis is an interesting idea, but I need to think of what to use it for... since, thankfully, there's no cancer in Terraria (except the Crimson, which can hardly be cured by propolis).
It could be consumed to stop the bleeding debuff and can be used as an alternate recipe for sticky bombs. Trust me on the female reproduction, i have been to many classes. Sadly, my bees died from small hive beetles and wax moths.;(
 
Alright. Here we go.

First, it was Glacial Ice. Then, Corn Syrup. Next, it was Chromatic Armor (plz port that thread ;(). Finally, it was your alt Tiki Armor acquisition (which I still love). And now, this is probably my favorite suggestion of yours. It's just epic.
 
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