Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Honey dressings for wounds

16 (24.6%)

Honey-preservation of foods

19 (29.2%)

Bee Anger (if stirred up, hives stay angry for a while; see post #162)

14 (21.5%)

Sting Effects (allergies/resistance; first post)

15 (23.1%)

Equine Enmity (hives attack nearby horses (unicorns maybe); see post #23)

1 (1.5%)

Addition of Stingless Bees (less risk/less honey; see posts #78-79)

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 34

Voting closed: June 18, 2011, 06:22:09 pm

[Uristocrat]

I read some stuff about honey and they talked about light, clear honey and dark honey and even something about how this relates to something called "foul brood" ... what's up with the different kinds of honey in a hive?

And there were other things, too, about nucs, queen cells (and when to destroy them), and even the trick of cutting one of a queen's wings off to keep the bees from swarming....

[NW_Kohaku]

I can answer the bit about queen cells...

Unlike creatures such as ants, where each ant is born a worker or soldier or breeder, the majority of bees are just a generic "female" bee when their egg is lain.  Each of these females can become a queen, if given a chance, but this requires going through the pupal and larval stages in special queen cells, which are large enough for the bee to grow to queen bee size, and are filled with royal jelly, a special hormone-laden nectar that serves as a trigger for activating the reproductive organs of the female bee. 

Barring this, placed in common, shorter cells with regular honey, females will only have enough food and space to develop into the more stunted worker bee form. 

Because queen cells are larger than normal cells, and cells are packed in so tightly, it takes a special, larger, piece of honeycomb to house the queen cells.

Queen cells are the only ones that contain royal jelly (except for what's being fed to the queen herself to keep her ovulating), so you have to break them open to get the royal jelly.  Royal jelly is very rare and tricky to collect, so it's also very expensive, and sold as a luxury product, and claimed to have properties that produce all sorts of beneficial effects in people who have a variety of diseases.

[Buzzing_Beard]

A nuc (pronounced "nuke") is a very small beehive (hundreds of bees, not thousands).

     Uristocrat: "...what's up with the different kinds of honey in a hive?"

Honey colour is determined by nectar source, which can change throughout the season.

     NW_Kohaku: "...royal jelly, a special hormone-laden nectar..."
     NW_Kohaku: "Queen cells are the only ones that contain royal jelly (except for what's being fed to the queen
     herself to keep her ovulating)..."

All baby-bees get fed royal jelly, but it's the queens that get submersed in it.
And technically, it's a head-secretion not a nectar.

     Uristocrat: "...cutting one of a queen's wings off to keep the bees from swarming"

When bees swarm, the old queen and most of the workers turn the hive over to a new baby queen.
If a queen can't fly away, she can't start a swarm, and a new baby queen can't take over.
However, the bees will still produce "supersedure" cells if their queen gets old or dies.

Foulbrood is bad news for baby bees. It darkens the brood comb, but not the honey.

[Michael]

Another note about bumblebees in DF -- I looked at the raws, and there are entries not only for "bumblebee honey" and mead, but also wax and royal jelly.

Now bumblebee honey and wax at least exist, although they are impractical to harvest.  But I think royal jelly is a honeybee thing only -- it is not mentioned at all on Wikipedia's bumblebee page.

(And I'd agree that even honeybee royal jelly probably doesn't belong in the game.)

If Toady wants to have more than one honey-producing insect, I'd recommend instead "stingless" bees, which were cultivated by the Mayans. (Before Columbus, there were no honeybees in the New World.)  They are far less productive than honeybees, but honey and wax harvest did occur historically (including the production of fermented-honey drinks).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingless_bee

[Buzzing_Beard]

     Michael: "...I'd recommend instead "stingless" bees, which were cultivated by the Mayans."

I'd forgotten about those guys! Lower risk for less reward. I like it!
Interestingly, nowadays there's also the very-dangerous but very-productive killer-bee *shudder*.
The poll only allows for five options. Anyone else for stingless bees (they could still bite wood-choppers)?

[Uristocrat]

     Michael: "...I'd recommend instead "stingless" bees, which were cultivated by the Mayans."

I'd forgotten about those guys! Lower risk for less reward. I like it!
Interestingly, nowadays there's also the very-dangerous but very-productive killer-bee *shudder*.
The poll only allows for five options. Anyone else for stingless bees (they could still bite wood-choppers)?

Do they even bite very hard?  Their mouths probably aren't very big, so it doesn't seem like something you'd really even notice without venom.  Then again, they can at least bite more than once.

[Buzzing_Beard]

A hive of honeybees can make more than one bottle in a year (100's of pounds per year per hive).
Any comments or criticism for my suggestion to be able to store up honey as a "liquid"?

+You could pour tons of it into a river as a divine offering (a la Ramses III).
+You could vanquish your foes in a wave of sweet gooey overkill.
+I love the thought of having sticky dwarves and weapons acting as suspended flow-markers.
+Things submerged in honey are preserved and, after a hundred or so years, mummify.
     +A funeral-ritual for your heroes? A troll-trophy for the great hall?

DF Honey/Water Mixing Idea: Honey is heavier and thicker than water so maybe have it ignore water when it's
     iterated. The water could then treat the honey as solid land (for volume preservation).
     Honey cells surrounded by enough water, or less running-water, could become water themselves.
     EDIT: Honey and magma are both viscous fluids (and could use the same dynamics code). If honey meets magma, magma wins.
     If enough honey dissolves in standing water, the water becomes hydromel which eventually becomes mead.

[Buzzing_Beard]

     Uristocrat: "...it doesn't seem like something you'd really even notice without venom."

It could be unpleasant.

     Wikipedia: "Although they are stingless, the bees do bite and can leave welts similar to a mosquito bite."

Just because you're smaller and stingless doesn't mean you can't put up a fight.
Remember, there could be 40,000 of them biting on you. Plus, unlike venom, you can't really develop a resistance to being chewed on.

[Neonivek]

you can't really develop a resistance to being chewed on

That is known as being thick skinned.

[Buzzing_Beard]

I don't know, bugs can have pretty strong mandibles. I had an experience with a ladybug who was angry at my finger.

[Neonivek]

I don't know, bugs can have pretty strong mandibles. I had an experience with a ladybug who was angry at my finger.

The Ladybugs in Toronto wouldn't bite until a stupid experiement had them breed with an Asian variety. Now their red color is deluted and they bite.

[Buzzing_Beard]

     Neonivek: "The Ladybugs in Toronto wouldn't bite until a stupid experiement had them breed with an Asian variety.
     Now their red color is deluted and they bite."

That's like what happened with killer bees too.

[Flaede]

I don't know, bugs can have pretty strong mandibles. I had an experience with a ladybug who was angry at my finger.

The Ladybugs in Toronto wouldn't bite until a stupid experiement had them breed with an Asian variety. Now their red color is deluted and they bite.

Is that the orangey yellow bastards? Yeah! Horrible. They make it to my city by fall, but I don't think they can hack the winter here.

[Neonivek]

Yep the Orangey Yellow bastards...

When you grow up picking up ladybugs... seeing that the current variety will bite you because of someone else's stupidity just pisses you off.

Unfortunately I don't think it is cold enough in Toronto to get rid of them... Only gets to -30c here.

Which is a protection for Honeybees in that the bees that don't give honey cannot handle the colder site of temperate environments.

Any comments or criticism for my suggestion to be able to store up honey as a "liquid"?

Currently it wouldn't matter as only water is a true liquid so to speak.

[Buzzing_Beard]

That one asian-ladybug, with its relatively small jaws, could bite into the "thick" skin on my fingertip.
So I think the larger mandibles of thousands of stingless bees would be of concern to anyone knocking over a hive.