Adventurer's Weekly #9: Beekeeping,Yowyn Correspondent Celia,10,1

<i>Welcome to Adventurer's Weekly, where we cover topics near and dear to your brave hearts.</i>


This week, I'm joining the beekeeping fad that's been sweeping Yowyn!

With people across North Tyris becoming more health-conscious, people want some natural sweetness in their lives, and what better source than your very own bees?
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The taste! The smell! Whether it's sugar or honey, it's more nutritious and much higher quality when it comes from your bees, rather than buying it at the store! That's all the convincing I needed to try beekeeping!

Interested? Read on!


<b>Getting Started</b>

Well, first thing I needed to make my own hives were queen bees; you can get those from bee swarms, although they're kind of rare. Chasing wild bees can get you stung pretty badly, so what I did was hang around my neighbor's hives and mess with the swarms until I got a few queens.

I'm sure she won't mind, hehe.
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After that, you need to get a few nails and bricks, then put together the hives at a workbench. I asked my boyfriend to do that for me, he's pretty good with his hands~♡

Me? I was planting flowers. A single beehive can work without any, but if you want more hives you've got to plant flowers. Any flower will do, but I prefer cotton because it yields fabric, too. It doesn't matter where you plant the flowers — they don't have to be next to the hives, and still count even if they're freshly sprouted. The more hives you have, the more flowers each additional hive needs for honey production, so don't overdo it!
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<b>Making Honey</b>

Once everything's set, place down the hives and wait! The bees will work rain or shine; if everything's ok, you'll get one honeycomb per hive in the morning. You can help them by not overtaxing the land: if fertility falls below 30, honey production will suffer, so pull those weeds!

The quality of honeycomb you get is the average of that of all your flowers — high quality flowers means high quality honey! It's satisfying to see everyone work hard for you, isn't it?
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<b>Processing</b>

You can eat honeycomb as-is, but that's kind of a waste. It's better to mill it into honey, or toast it in a kiln to get sugar! High quality seasonings add lots of flavor to dishes, especially those you don't cook often! Sugar? Make cake dough! Honey? Put it into coffee! It's so much healthier for you!

Sweet and fragrant — you can't buy this anywhere! Hehe, I just can't help myself~♡

Have more than you can eat? You can turn it into wine, I guess. But it's not a problem I have!

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<i>- In next week's issue, Grandma Shu returns to give advice on investing!</i>
