This chapter is really an excuse to talk about bees. There, I've admitted it. I love bees and I would kind of like to keep bees even though I also don't have the money or the space or the courage (I have never been stung by a bee so all I have to go on are the beekeepers on Youtube saying that it doesn't hurt all that bad... and that doesn't really help). I have watched a lot of beekeeper videos on Youtube. I'm so glad Stardew Valley has bees. A farm fantasy isn't complete without them, in my opinion.

Also, while I understand it might not be the easiest thing to implement this in the game, I've always found it a little odd that Demetrius comes over wanting to set up mushroom boxes or whatever he does in the fruit bat cave option, with the intention to study whatever happens, and then you never see him come over to the farm. I feel like there should be maybe a day out of every month where he walks over to the farm and stands in the cave for an hour or so and if you talk to him he'll have like a loop comment that's always the same about how something about the development of the population is interesting or something. So here's Demetrius, actually checking on his mushroom boxes.

17 Spring, Year 3

Mushroom Check

Two days after visiting Robin, Demetrius walks onto the farm while I'm carrying milk to the shed to process.

"Hey there," he shouts, coming over.

"Hi. Look out, poop."

Demetrius looks down and changes course right in time.

"Thanks for that. Need a hand?"

"I don't think that's a good idea unless you've brought some sturdy boots. Why don't you go have a look at the mushrooms, I'll be right there."

Demetrius disappears into the cave. I bring the other milk jug over to the shed as well and then go see what's up.

"Looks like these could use some new wood chips," the scientist comments when I come in.

"Anything interesting going on?"

"Do you happen to know what this is?" He indicates a pale white mushroom with a clearly recognizable ring around its stem.

"Looks like an amanita. Death cap, maybe?"

"Very good. First time I'm spotting one of these in here."

"I've had fly agaric before. Looks like the family is well represented."

"They tend to associate with oak trees, there's a good few of those in the forest. There doesn't seem to be anything else new in here, at least visually. Looks like it's true that they don't really feel the seasons in here, agarics normally only grow in late summer and fall. I'm going to take a sample out of each box and then turn them out and replace the wood chips, okay?"

"Sure."

"Do you have a compost heap?"

"Yeah, it's right here in the corner behind the cave, you can toss this stuff right on there."

"I'm going to need to get some things from home first, for the samples."

"Okay. I'll probably still be with the bees when you come back, but just yell."

"You have bees?"

"Yeah, didn't I tell you that? I got them last fall. Started with one colony to get the hang of it, now last week I got two more queens."

"Would you mind letting me look at them?"

"Sure. Come along. Mind your step. And you might want to tuck your t-shirt in your pants."

The hives are sitting all the way against the fence toward the forest; this is where I sowed all the wildflowers to attract butterflies and such so they can feed on those, and also the flowers of the berry bushes in the forest.

I open up one of the hives to let Demetrius look inside.

"This is the first one, from last fall. I gave the other queens each a frame of brood from this hive to get them started. Here, let me see if I can locate the queen..." I cut the first frame loose from the rest with my hive tool, carefully grip the outer edges and slowly lift it out. "The spring flow is really getting on the way, I put these three last ones in three days ago and this one's completely full of honey." I move on to the next one. It's full of pollen and nectar, not yet turned into honey. The next frame over is covered in bees and full of freshly laid eggs. And on the other side...

"Uh-oh. Looks like the ladies are about to make a run for it."

"Enlighten me?"

I lean one corner of the frame on top of the other ones that are still inside the box and point at a bowl-shaped cell that's stuck to the wooden bottom edge of the frame.

"That right there is a swarm cell. They start making those when they're preparing to swarm, they'll raise a few larvae to queens in these things and when they emerge, half the hive leaves for greener pastures. Unless you catch them, that is."

"And it's not possible that something happened to the queen – that she might be dead?"

"In general, emergency cells get stuck to the regular cells." I gesture vaguely at the center of the frame. "Swarm cells will be put on the edge, out of the way of their production, but when they stick one in the middle that means there's a problem. Generally. Those are called supersedure cells. Well, let's find her, then."

She turns out to be on the last frame, where a bunch of worker cells have recently hatched – last time I checked those were still occupied – and there's something else, as well.

"Yeah, they're definitely going to swarm." I indicate a group of maybe a hundred cells that are capped with round caps instead of flat ones. "These are drone cells. Worker cells are flat, like these, but when they have that round top, they're drones. Good thing I caught that. But yeah, there she is."

"I notice you're not wearing any protection nor using smoke."

"I used that in the beginning, but I was checking every day back then... Wanted to be sure they were alright, make sure I caught it early if they got sick or something. But putting on the monkey suit was just a big nuisance while I was really only taking a peek inside to check, so one day I didn't put on the gloves just to see if I'd get stung and I didn't. I've basically been ditching the rest of the suit piece by piece. I'll put it on when I'm going to harvest the honey, but it's early for that. Mind you, I normally always have my pants tucked in my boots, and I'll stuff my shirt in my pants when I come over. They can wander inside your clothes and then get stuck and panic. But I only visit about once a week now, anyway, and I've found out the stings really aren't that bad. I don't know, maybe I just got lucky with really docile bees, but I normally only get stung if I accidentally grab one."

I'm not going to mention that my very first bees seem to have been literally born from magic. The other queens have come from the other beekeepers my parents helped me contact, though... so maybe it really is just the way bees are.

"Okay. That's very interesting. I'd like to stay up to date, if you don't mind."

"Of course. I normally check on them on Wednesdays. It just kinda happened that way. So if you have time on a Wednesday, just pop in."

"That's great. Well, I'm going to get my things."