The bees in Ark: Survival Ascended may be as big as medium-sized dogs, but these honey-makers manage to avoid much of The Island's chaos. They keep to their hives high up in the trees, but you may just want to seek out a Queen Bee and get a hive of your own.
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PostsTaming Giant Bees can be difficult, even with proper preparation, since you'll need to manage their hive and potential aggression, but it's well worth it. Giant Bee Honey is one of the most useful resources in the game, and having a Queen means a renewable source of it for crafting, attracting creatures, and as food.
Where To Find Giant Bees
The Beehives containing the Giant Bee Queen you're looking for are exclusively found within the Redwood Forest at the center of The Island.
You can find them attached to the sides of the giant redwood trees, generally up high on the upper middle part of the trunk, but they might spawn on the giant fallen trees, giving you easy access.
How To Prepare For Giant Bee Taming
Before you start looking for Giant Bees to tame, you'll need to get prepared thanks to their fairly unique mechanics, and the fact that only the Giant Queen Bee herself can be tamed. The other bee drones will serve as obstacles, and can't be tamed.
Giant Queen Bees are tamed passively like some of the other invertebrates such as Arthropluera and Araneo, and smaller creatures on The Island, but she accepts any type of meat, Simple Kibble, and Rare Flowers as food.
If you don't have access to Simple Kibble or Rare Flowers, the best taming foods to use are Raw Mutton, Cooked Lamb Chop, or Raw Prime Meat.
If you've already found a Hive, you'll need a pretty big list of things to try and ensure the tame goes as smoothlyas possible:
- At least two sets of Ghillie Armor, one primary set and one as a back-up in case you get attacked too much.
- A strong tame, preferably one capable of flight, since most hives are up high. Your best option is a Tapejara, but you can also use a Pteranodon.
- At least a stack or two of your chosen taming food.
- A Wooden Cage to contain the Queen and keep her from flying off or accidentally aggroing on you.
- Around fiveBug Repellant to help with keeping any of the bees from aggroing.
- A Crossbow and a Grappling Gook for reaching Hives high up in the trees.
- At least ten to 15Giant Bee Honey to attract the Queen with.
How To Locate A Hive
Most of the Hives you'll find are located high up in the giant Redwood Trees, and will be attached to the sides of their trunks.
You'll want to use a flyer such as a Pteranodon, Tapejara, Argentavis, Pelagornis, or Rhyniognatha to fly through and check all the trees.
Be careful when checking trees for Gives, since Thylacoleo also hide on the trunks of Redwood Trees, and they'll ambush you by leaping and stunning you off your tame.
You can't find the Queen in any hive though. Giant Queen Bees only inhabit specific hives, and you'll be able to tell the difference between a Queen-hive and a non-queen hive by listening to the noises they make.
Giant Queen Bees make a different noise in addition to the buzzing sound all hives produce, and it may take anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes to hear her call, depending on when she last made it.
Once you've found a hive with a Queen in it, it's time to prepare a set-up for taming her.
How To Prepare The Queen Bee's Trap
First, clear out any creatures near the Hive, especially any Dire Bears, as they'll be attracted to your bait, and can mess up your tame, kill you, or kill your tame, since your creatures need to be set to Passive.
If the Hive is on the ground, you can also use a Dire Bear as your tame of choice as they have protection from bees.
Next, set the Wooden Cage down as close to the Hive as possible, and make sure that the door is facing the Hive as well, so the Queen can path-find into it easily.
You'll need to place several Giant Bee Honey down somewhere inside the Wooden Cage, such as on the wall opposite the door, or in one of the corners opposite the door, so you've got room to open the door later without being too close to the Queen Bee.
You can also use Wooden Spikes to block off an area around the Hive to help prevent any newly spawned creatures from wandering too close, but leave yourself room to leave it.
How To Tame A Giant Queen Bee
With your taming area set up, and the right hive found, it's time to get the Queen Bee out and trap her in the Wooden Cage. Apply the Bug Repellant onto yourself, then move up and break the Hive from the side.
If your tame is strong enough, it's possible to destroy the Hive in one hit, but this requires quite a bit of Damage investment into them as the Hive has around 5,000 HP.
Drones will fly out, but you'll need to kill the drones and keep attacking until the hive's totally broken and the Queen Bee comes out. You may also need to apply more Giant Bee Honey if the drones eat it, or fly away to let the hive calm down during the hive-breaking.
Try to space out your attacks to give yourself a chance to see what spawns and avoid accidentally killing the Queen.
Once you see the Queen in the horde of bees, fly away from them, giving them enough space to lose aggro and go for the bait, but not far enough away that they escape after taking the bait.
Give them a moment, then land or dismount, and crouch-walk over to the cage. If the Queen is inside, quickly close the door behind her. If she isn't, you'll need to drop more Giant Bee Honey down until she gets inside.
If the Queen is successfully inside the cage, and isn't aggressive, you'll be able to crouch and move up to her enough to feed her the taming food like you would with other passive tames.
This can be done by opening the door quickly, feeding her, and closing it, or by feeding her through the cage wall if she's close enough to it.
When the tame succeeds, you'll need to do something interesting: interact with the tamed Queen Bee, and she'll turn into a Beehive that goes into your inventory.
How To Obtain Giant Bee Honey
Tamed Beehives can be placed anywhere, like a structure, and you'll need to do so if you want to get the honey from them.
Beehives run on Rare Flowers, which are obtained by harvesting certain bushes and shrubs in specific areas, inside Giant Beaver Dams, and they have a chance of showing up in Supply Drops level 20 and above.
- Rare Flowers can come from cattails and pitcher plants in the swamps, the red-flowered bushes usually found on the tops of mountains, and pale grayspiky shrubs in the snowy areas.
Make sure to put Bug Repellant onbefore you interact with your Beehives or else they'll sting you, and apply the highly damaging BEES! status effect on you. BEES! does ten percent of your max health, slows you down, and does additional damage over time.
Rare Flowers can be placed in your Beehive's inventory, and they'll need one every hour to maintain their health, but since they're capable of holding up to 45 stacks of them, you can load them up and not need to continuously check on them.
Beehives will produce one Giant Bee Honey every 45 minutes as long as they're feeding off the Rare Flowers, and continue to do so as long as they have their fuel.
You can also obtain Giant Bee Honey by harvesting it yourself from Bee Hives every 15 minutes, or using a Dire Bear to attack a ground-based hive.
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