Beehaven

Beehaven is a honeybee colony simulation. You look after a hive of bees through a whole year, and every bee in it is living her own life.

Tap any bee to see who she is and what she's doing. She might be a young nurse feeding larvae, a guard checking everyone who comes in, or a forager heading back to a patch of clover she found yesterday. Follow her out of the hive and across the meadow, or ride along with her in bee's-eye view.

Nobody runs the colony, not even the queen. She just lays eggs. The work gets done because each bee notices what needs doing and pitches in. When a forager finds good flowers, she comes home and dances to show her sisters where they are, and you can learn to read those dances yourself.

YOU'RE THE BEEKEEPER
You can't tell the bees what to do, but you can help them:
• Give them more room before the hive gets crowded
• Feed them, shade them in a heat wave, and wrap the hive for winter
• Plant flowers to fill gaps in the year, and put out water when it's dry
• Harvest honey, wax and pollen, and sell it to buy equipment and seed
• Raise new queens, catch swarms, and keep up to five hives

LOOK INSIDE THE HIVE
Open the hive and watch the comb up close: eggs hatching, larvae being fed, nectar turning into honey. Special views show you the temperature, the brood, the food stores and the colony's health, so you can spot trouble early.

A FULL YEAR IN THE MEADOW
Thirteen kinds of flowers bloom one after another, from early spring to late fall. Rain keeps the bees at home, dry spells cut off the nectar, and winter is the real test: the colony has to store enough honey to make it to spring.

THINGS CAN GO WRONG
Wasps, hornets and robber bees attack the hive. Varroa mites and disease spread quietly. The game won't tell you what's wrong, so you'll need to look closely and work it out, just like a real beekeeper.

LEARN AS YOU PLAY
Each new thing you notice goes into your journal, along with the real science behind it. There are 86 entries to discover.

PLAY YOUR WAY
• Three levels, from everything explained to expert
• Your hive waits for you while you're away
• Larger text, high contrast, reduced motion and captions
• Photo mode for pictures of your bees

Beehaven is free to play. An occasional full-screen ad appears only at natural breaks, never in the middle of the action. The game itself doesn't collect any personal information.