Who doesn't love bees? Most of you. OK, who doesn't love honey? Everyone loves honey! So do your settlers, they told me themselves!

Working Beehives is a settlement workshop mod containing both Langstroth and feral beehives you can make in your settlement. Hives have bee swarm FX and sounds during the day and produce a harvestable honey that can be eaten, sold, or used to brew mead. Settlement Menu Manager is required.

In the process of completely overdoing my latest mod, The Bleachers: A Diamond City Story (ADCS; see below), it slowly occurred to me I had several mods worth of content packaged into it. Honestly, compare to some of hot files recently, it occurred to me I technically had hundreds of mods packaged into it if I wanted to go the DP mining route (HD bees anyone?).

One of the features of ADCS is a new greenhouse and apiary (Beehives) that kind of got a little out of hand. In the process of making the apiary as realistic as possible, I added an actual bee swarm and bee soundFX to the hive with a script to control the swarm. But what is an apiary without Honey and Mead? And what is a beehive without a Queen? So I made those too. Two modding friends on Discord helped in the effort when they heard about it: Ethreon made the Langstroth Hive mesh singlehandedly (I didn't even need to ask), and FrogprincessQ4 turned the tree fungus meshes into feral beehives.

So now I had a fully functioning apiary with the meshes, scripts, and materials to support it. Perfect for a nice tidy little mod, right? Right.... But we can't have that. So into my bigger mod, ADCS, it went to collect dust while tour de force mods such as 4k bobby pins, Tits on a Poster, and Funbags4U CBBE preset came and went on hot files. Thuggysmurf, who has been of great assistance on ADCS says, "Munky, your mod is beautiful, it's got lush interiors with an insane amount of custom assets, a playerhome, a workshop component, multiple quests, new NPCs with almost 2000 lines of audio dialogue, and not a soul on this godforsaken hell we call Earth has heard about it! What's wrong with you?! You grow up eating welding flux? Are you missing a chromosome?!!"  - or something like that, I was crying at the time, he was yelling at me a lot at that point in our relationship.

Thus the idea of "Working Beehives" was born from a blatant, bald-faced attempt to drum up attention for my much larger mod, A Diamond City Story (No really, see below), in which the beehives are contained as well. So yes, I'm going to release these beehives twice eventually. Once now, and once more when ADCS is released in a month or two. Think of it like me releasing a bunch of small mods individually, such as HD 10mm casing normal map, better bootlaces for Roxy, 8K scrap steel component texture, nipples on the mannequins, a cubemap redirect for the combination wrench, and green handle vanilla screwdrivers to maximize DPs and then rolling them into an AIO for another round of shameless DP fishing - amirightguys? Except I'd like to think my smaller mods are nice sized in their own right.

So into the sea of guns, boobs, and one item retextures I release my beehive mod.

Look for more mod releases in the near term, including a new working Diner style tabletop jukebox constructable, FO76 style rotating Nuka Cola lamp and glowing Nuka Mix bottle lantern workshop mod, and maybe even an all new 4K T-60 paint job.

KottabosGames Review:







Use your favorite mod manager to install the mod and activate the plugin. Or if you're one of those sloppy manual installers who don't use protection, just dump the contents into your /data folder like a dirty sailor. You're going to need Settlement Menu Manager to access the hives. You will also need to procure a Queen bee from Maria Summerset in Vault 81, where the cryo-preserved stocks are... or you can be a rotten SOB and steal the single free one I left somewhere in Vault 81, you godless jack-booted reprobate. There are two other Queen bees in another location in The Commonwealth - where would other cryo preserved stocks be? Warning: Queen bees are VERY cute and VERY expensive! They will hypnotize you into putting them on your shelf just for the decoration!! Open the menu and scroll over to 'Working Beehives' in the workshop menu top level, construct your hive. Additional Queen bees will occur at a 5% frequency when you harvest honey from a Langstroth hive.
The Langstroth (wooden) hives require a settler assigned to them. They produce 2 food in the settlement rating system and can be harvested for honey.
The Feral hives do not require a settler, but they produce no food - only honey, and less often.

The bee swarm and SFX is tied to a light-weight time of day script so the hive is only active during the day (6a-7p), because -everyone- knows bees are diurnal even if they don't know what "diurnal" means. To keep it light-weight the script only performs these checks when the hive is loaded into the cell, first placed in workshop mode, moved in workshop mode, when you close the workshop menu, or when the you come out of wait/sleep. Yes, that means you could be building on your settlement all night and walk up to an active hive because you started during the day, or you can sit there like a loser and stare at an active hive all night if you started your anti-social vigil during the day and vice versa.
What do you mean by working beehives?: They're workshop objects that produce honey and a bump in food rating when tended by a settler. You can sell this honey, use it to brew mead at a cooking station, or have your PC eat it. The bee swarm around the hive and SFX are an added touch.

Can I use these in my mod?: Yeah, probably, just ask. Testers and contributors, as always, have open perms. You'll need Ethreon's and FrogprincessQ4's perms for the Langstroth and Feral hives as well, respectively.

You said they were diurnal, so why can I see the bees at night?: See the last paragraph of the usage section.

These queens are expensive, and the merchants only have a limited supply, where do I get more?: When you harvest honey from a Langstroth hive, there is a 5% chance you will also harvest a Queen bee that can be used to make additional hives. You can't get Queens from a feral hive.

Can I do freaky weeb crap with these bees?: No. Get professional help and an electron micrograph of a real bee to shatter your reality. And a date. And then more help.

Why does the honey bottle appear empty when viewed in my inventory?: That goes beyond my limited BSShaderFX knowledge. I have 2 models where it did show, but then the honey in the game would glow in the dark and be nearly transparent during the day. I opted for the better looking in-game model versus the better looking inventory model. If you have any suggestion where I could have the best of both worlds, feel free to drop them in the comments section.

Why did you just recycle some vanilla animations for the settlers tending the beehive?: Have you ever tried to make new animations for this game? No, really, have you? Because I'm looking for some. Drop me a line. :)

Why are the Queen bee's wings pink?: Because you don't have Nuka World running. I used the wings from the ant swarm but removed the hard requirement from the plugin so as many people as possible could enjoy the mod.

Why are you releasing this mod as a discrete unit when you're just going to include it in your "A Diamond City Story" mod?: So now you've heard of ADCS? That's why.

What's with the themed section headers in all your mod page descriptions?: Going the extra step. Endorse the mod, please. :)

Can you....?/Why is this not working?: Not if this mod works as intended out of the gate, although play testing was limited due to an amazing lack of volunteers, so keep your fingers crossed. It should be good to go with no planned updates unless they break functionality. I might make small changes going into the larger mod, ADCS. Feel free to offer suggestions.


Ethreon - Langstroth hives
FrogprincessQ4 - Feral beehives
Vgregorius - Queen Bee mesh
JennCave - SeanBlack - For play testing when no-one else would.
KingGath - Help with the Queen bee harvest script.
Me - the rest


"The Bleachers - A Diamond City Story" is an upcoming playerhome, workshop mod, and quest mod with new voiced NPCs forming an active community in the space under the left and center field bleacher seats in Diamond City known as "The Bleachers District". I took the unused back door to my earlier mod "The Left Field Diner", and let my imagination add to it. 2000 new audio lines and 9 missions, some quite unconventional, spread across 5 quests add several hours of new game play unless you're the fast travel type. New major spaces include a beautiful 2 story bioluminescent greenhouse and botany lab tended by Dr. Barbara McClintock, a renovated Left Field Diner run by Mr. Dr. Pepper, 4 richly decorated bedrooms, and a store room revealing where all that nice stuff comes from. Meet one of the Atom Cats founding members and very first fixer, Lily, and help her get (spoiler) and then (spoiler), gain their trust and the other residents of The Bleachers might just have some jobs for you. Join the everyday citizens of Diamond City and gain some insight into their daily lives of Institute fueled paranoia, survival, friendship, and their efforts to build something better in The Bleachers.




New workshop items include these Beehives, animated bioluminescent flowers and vines, a cotton floral, glowing Nuka Mix bottle lanterns, a new jukebox, a few stained glass lamps, 4 new flags, dining furniture where occupants eat the diner's signature dish instead of steak, looksmenu mirror that illuminates the player's face, Nuka Cola souvenir lamps, Nuka Cola bottle candles, Chianti bottle candles, an animated Bio workbench (chem bench) and miscellaneous cool and clutter items you see in the mod. Non-workshop items include a new T-60 paint job, bread, spaghetti, new flags, new posters, official Vault-Tec deodorant, shit tickets, two new flavors of Nuka Cola (Nuka-Heat and Nuka-Clear Winter), and a junk -> component grinder.. probably other stuff I can't think of off the top of my head.