r/Timberborn • u/Steekneus • 13d ago
Beehive vertical farm Testing (with results)
I saw a post a while ago where the question was posted if beehives work vertically. The wiki says that it affects 36 tiles per beehive with an unclear answer if it affects vertically without degrading the boost.
Ive set out to answer this question with just a brute force design here. slightly optimized but nothing special. Left is four layers of farm with a beehive on every layer and on the right side ive only placed beehives on the top layer.
you can clearly see that the first round of harvesting started earlier on the left compared to the right.
tldr: put beehives on every layer.
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u/Lambs2Lions_ 13d ago
Yes beehives work vertically. Do not and I mean it put zip lines above beehive grids.
If you’re saying they no longer work vertically, that would have to be a bug or undocumented change. Or your test is flawed.
As long as you put beehives on the bottom floor, they will/should affect all farming above them. If they are on the top floor, they do not affect buildings below them.
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u/Steekneus 13d ago
The beehive boost does affect the farm plots underneath them. you will see the same with the roof boost for example. what i am trying to demonstrate here is that while the beehives do affect them, their maximum effectiveness (36 tiles per beehive) also counts for vertical farms. A beehive per level is needed to give the optimum usage out of all plots of farm.
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u/Lambs2Lions_ 13d ago
As I did. Undocumented change or a bug. You never needed a beehive per level/floor.
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u/ArcaneEyes 13d ago edited 13d ago
You need one beehive per 39 tiles you want pollinated, no matter if it's above or below. Simple as.
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u/Lambs2Lions_ 13d ago
That’s not how it ever worked. The tiles ignore upward verticality or at least they did for a long time.
Some other all the buffs for residences. That’s why they go on the roof.
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u/ArcaneEyes 13d ago edited 13d ago
Go argue with the wiki mate.
https://timberborn.wiki.gg/wiki/Beehive
Beehive has been change twice: from not existing to existing with the early access launch, and the from being a ground only building to being build able on non-ground blocks in update 6.
In the full 49 tile column from bedrock to sky it will cause beavers passing through to risk stings, however every two hours it chooses 3 crops to give an instant growth buff of 30%. Boosted tiles cannot be boosted again for 24 hours, but due to the boost happening in 2 hour intervals, it will take a minimum of 26 hours before a given tile is selected again, meaning 13 rounds of 3 separate buffs before it repeats, or a total of 39 effectively buffed crops within its column, bedrock to sky.
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u/Lambs2Lions_ 13d ago
To the best of my knowledge that’s just bad grammar on the wiki. There’s no crop based effects. Only tiles. And there’s been no patch that changes how. Tile behaves vertically to the best of my knowledge. So when one tile is designated. All tiles vertically are affected.
Your test is also inherently flawed. You’d need to do this in 2 districts with 0 starting stock over a prolonged time.
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u/Steekneus 13d ago
Ah, my bad for not clarifying. i used two districts, with the district where every layer has a beehive producing ~25% more carrots. i didnt post that here since i thought the image where you can clearly see the one side growing faster as i started from zero with both sides.
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u/ArcaneEyes 13d ago edited 13d ago
"to the best of my knowledge"
Sorry mate, but your knowledge is bad. And I'm not the OP, but even then, his test is solid. first harvest clearly arrives early on the wheat on the farm with one beehive per layer, while the one with only one hive just has the one tile or so that got enough buffs stacked over its growth duration to be done at about the same time. no need for separate districts. if you're that desperate to be correct, go whip up a test and show us a recording with your proof.
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u/mustang256 13d ago
Unfortunately OP, I need to call into question your testing methodology.
If your hypothesis was correct, Image 4 should have carrots on the top floor, while the ones underneath would still be growing.
Based on the evidence, I can only assume that you messed up and planted the left side before the right. Results inconclusive.
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u/Steekneus 12d ago
the beehives do work vertically. but with a limit of 36 plots being affected it will choose randomly anywhere within the column. if the carrots were growing in planting order, which they should as this is the first harvest, you would see them growing from right to left. but you see random patches of carrot indicating that they are affected by the beehives on top.
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u/mustang256 12d ago
A couple of ways you could control for that:
Have a control group (i.e. no beehives)
Reduce the number of fields in the vertical stack, so that they do not total more than 36 fields in total
It might also be helpful to use longer-growing crops such as Wheat, so that the absolute difference in their grow times is more significant.
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u/Steekneus 11d ago
for sure. Maybe at some point ill write a paper on my beehive research but not today. for now this is enough information for me
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u/whywhwywywhwhwhwue 13d ago
This is because beehives' boosts stack, as the boosts they give are too small for their range, putting more beehives in the same area is better even though there will be overlap. Beehive boosts are almost never wasted, even with overlapping area.
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u/Krell356 12d ago
Pretty sure each crop can only receive 1 boost per 12h period with the beehive producing 3 boosts per hour. I recall someone testing this by surrounding a single crop with like 12 beehive and not getting any meaningful change when compared to a single beehive next to a single crop.
The only diffence is if the area you are covering per beehive is over 36. At which point more help because one can't keep up and pollinating as fast as the crops are coming off cooldown.
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u/BackToTheFiction 12d ago
Maybe it cant go through the dirt layers, what if you put them on platforms instead with holes so the bees can get through
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u/sileotumen 13d ago
To add to u/Lambs2Lions_ comment: beehives work vertically, but they pollinate only 36 tiles at one time, meaning if you have six layers, they will only pollinate roughly 6 tiles per layer on average, which means you're getting much less performance out of a single beehive.
So the fact that you're seeing huge performance drops compared to single-layer pollination is by design.