Bee Hive

A honey-making structure

The Bee Hive, a structure in ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended, produces Giant Bee Honey. The in-game text: "Bee hives house a queen bee and produces honey." In the Primitive Plus DLC it also yields Beeswax, the ARK Wiki adds, although there a placed hive has been inaccessible since at least 2019. Our records list the hive on The Island, Scorched Earth and The Center.

From tamed queen to hive

The wiki describes the hive as the result of a tame. Once a Giant Queen Bee is tamed, interacting with her picks her up, and she becomes a Bee Hive in your inventory that can then be placed. Demolishing a placed hive turns it back into the queen. Besides the ground, it can go on Platform Saddles, Platforms and Rafts. The item weighs 4 and has a stack size of 1.

Production and upkeep

• Output: the wiki gives a rate of 1 Giant Bee Honey and 1 Beeswax per 45 minutes.
• Upkeep: 1 Rare Flower per hour keeps the hive healthy.
• Honey: you cannot put honey into the hive, but the honey it makes has its spoil time raised 1000 times.

The BEES! effect

Opening a hive with no gear on brings on the BEES! effect for 10 seconds: an initial hit of 10% of Health, then 15 damage every 2 seconds, with movement speed reduced by 1/3. Full sets of Ghillie Armor or Tek Armor limit it to the initial damage, while a full Hazard Suit Armor set is damaged instead. A dive into deep water washes the effect off. With tribe hives, neither a Tek Sleeping Pod nor Wyvern Milk, Lesser Antidote or the Dire Bear's Bee Protection will stop or clear it.

Destroying a wild hive

Taming a Giant Queen Bee starts with destroying her wild hive. It has 5,000 Health and releases drones when attacked; the wiki warns those drones can be lethal even against full armor, though they seem not to hit prone players. Its suggestions include sending a Dimorphodon to attack, a ranged weapon such as the Crossbow, a tamed Arthropluera's spit from long range, or a Pteranodon's spin attack, and a Spyglass shows the hive's Health to confirm hits. Leaving render distance lets the hive regenerate, and all progress is lost.

Moving it between maps

Hives normally cannot use CrossARK Transfers. The wiki's route is to demolish the hive and put the resulting Giant Queen Bee in a Cryopod; a queen stored in a hive keeps all of the original tame's information. On Aberration queens cannot be taken out of a cryopod, so a queen has to be tamed on that map.