Beehives are the primary source of Honeycomb, a crucial ingredient for making Honey and high-quality healing salves.
Besides natural beehives that spawn on islands, you can make your own beehives and place them on your raft to harvest their product.
Recommended Read: How to Catch Bees in Raft
However, upon placing them, nothing happens. The in-game description of beehives is vague, so many players don’t know how they work.
Beehives in Raft can only produce Honeycombs if there are at least 3 flowers planted and watered in a radius of one foundation from it. The more flowers there are near the Beehive, the more Honeycombs it will produce, capping out at 3 Honeycombs for 12 or more flowers.
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How to Use Beehives in Raft
You can craft and place your first Beehive on your raft after visiting Balboa Island and catching some Bees.
Each Beehive costs 20 Planks, 8 Plastics, 4 Clays, 2 Hinges, and 15 Bee Jars.
The recipe can be found in the Other tab, indicated by an opened chest icon. If you don’t see the recipe, make sure to research the ingredients (many players forget about the Bee Jar) in the Research Table first.
Next, find an empty space (at least 2×2) and put a Beehive on your raft.
Each Beehive requires at least 3 planted flowers in a radius of one foundation around it to be able to produce Honeycombs.
The more flowers there are in the radius around the Beehive, the more Honeycombs it can produce. A single Beehive can produce up to 3 Honeycombs per harvest when there are 12 or more planted flowers in its radius.
In other words, you need to craft some Crop Plots, place them near the Beehive, and plant Flower Seeds in them.
It’s advisable to use Small Crop Plots rather than the medium version since each Small Crop Plot can hold up to 3 flowers, while the medium version can only hold 2.
Moreover, Small Crop Plots take up less space on your raft, which is crucial to obtaining the maximum number of Honeycombs from Beehives.
A Beehive will produce Honeycombs as long as the flowers are nearby and watered, regardless of their color or growth stages. So, you can plant any flower among the five available.
Once the flowers have been planted and watered, you’ll see bees buzzing around the Beehive, creating Honeycombs over time.
It takes around 8 minutes from the bees start buzzing to the Beehive is ready for harvest.
That’s almost half a day in Raft, so make sure to check it frequently to collect Honeycombs straightaway.
There are multiple layouts when it comes to the optimal placement of Beehives and Crop Plots.
You need to plant 12 flowers on the center foundation and surround them with as many Beehives as possible.
You should know that you can hang Small Crop Plots on walls and ceilings. This is extremely convenient and saves you a lot of space to farm Honeycombs.
For example, you can build half a wall, hang 3 Small Crop Plots on it, and plant 12 flowers on them. Then, surround the Crop Plots with Beehives like in the image above.
Setting up a Beehive farm can be quite exhausting at first, but when you have completed the layout and watered the flowers, things become easier, as you then only need to harvest the Beehives every 8 minutes.
Finally, remember to build a Scarecrow to chase away the Seagulls, as they can eat your flowers. Or better, build a Beehive farm in a closed room so no Seagull can enter.
That’s how to use beehives in Raft.
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