Bees

Bees are a mundane bug found across Tirónar.

## Beekeeping

Within Duilintinn, beekeepers are a common sight because a) the climate in the kingdom is too cold during the winter for bees to survive on their own and b) there would a market for a cheaper sweetener because sugar is so costly.

Beekeepers aren’t really regulated to a specific house, but certain areas are just better for bees than others.

You’ll find a LOT of beekeeping operations in House Brody and House Marvin because there are so many plants in those areas for the bees to pollinate. They are slightly less common closer to the mountains/trees in these regions though; apparently bees prefer low-altitude areas with less shade, and there's some risk to beekeeping near the Western Forest (see Magic Honey below).

You’ll also find beekeepers in the valleys of House Jameson and scattered intermittently across House Schneeplestein.

House Jackie has regulations in place for beekeepers and where they can keep their hives due to the large amount of wild and domesticated horses that roam/are ridden through the plains at top speeds. No one wants their hive to be trampled or their horse to be spooked because they ran into a random beehive! Usually, beekeepers in House Jackie are found near the streams and rivers that flow through the region.

## Honey

Honey would be used as a food/drink sweetener and for medicinal purposes (poultices, dressing wounds, even alchemy).

Due to the scattered but widespread nature of beekeeping in the kingdom, prices of honey are entirely dependent on regional factors. Honey in your town could run you pennies while, at the same time, the next town over has to pay an arm and a leg for a similar product. Kinda like gas prices, I guess?

Still, it’ll still be cheaper than sugar unless something REALLY catastrophic happens to the bees… save the bees kiddos.

### Magic Honey

Honey made by bees pollinating magical plantlife can be used as an incredibly low-tech alternative to some potions and poultices made from the same ingredients. While this is a far less efficient alternative to making potions/poultices, it requires none of the alchemical skills, only a hive near a large source of a specific magical plant.

However, unless the bees only pollinate the same type of magical plant, the effect will be negligible. Even then, unless the plant usually induces strong magical effects in small doses, the honey will only contain a diluted form of the plant’s magic, with relatively minor effects.

Thankfully, this means that honey can be produced safely in most areas of Duilintinn without containing the bees in a controlled patch of flora. Despite the amount of magic in Duilintinn’s ecology, most of it is too subtle to affect the final product and its consumers.

However, most people don’t produce/purchase honey made near the Western Forest; there are simply too many unknown magical plants in there. Of course, if you want to experiment with magical plants that are too deep in the forest to collect safely, you could always just have some bees and see what weird honey they bring you... granted you'd have no idea what plant they used or what they honey would do until someone consumed it... so probably best to not do that. But there will probably be people who do it anyway. :P