Queenright: A Beekeeping Simulator

Learn beekeeping by keeping bees
Queenright is a beekeeping simulator built on how honey bee colonies really live. Every hive is a living colony that runs on real bee biology, day by day, and every number it leans on has been checked against extension references and standard beekeeping texts. It's simplified where it has to be, but never wrong, so what you learn here holds up when you open a real hive.
Nothing is scripted to teach you a lesson. A worker takes 21 days from egg to adult, a queen 16 and a drone 24. Varroa mites breed under the cappings, so a colony's mite load climbs just as its bees decline in late summer. Treat by late August and the colony raises healthy winter bees. Wait, and it heads into the cold with bees the mites have already damaged. That isn't a rule the game tells you. It's how the numbers play out, as they do in a real hive.
Open the hive

Light the smoker and puff the entrance, pry up the inner cover with your hive tool and lift a frame into the light. Thousands of bees are at work on it: nurses climbing head first into cells to feed the larvae, foragers storing nectar, new bees chewing their way out. Read the comb cell by cell: eggs, larvae, capped brood, pollen and honey.
Then find the queen. Catch her in a queen clip, mark her with a dot of this year's color, and record what you saw on your inspection sheet: frames of bees, brood and honey, eggs seen, and queenright or not. "Queenright" is the beekeeper's word for a colony with a healthy, laying queen. It's the question every inspection is really asking.
Keep your colonies healthy
Count mites with a sugar roll, which the bees survive, and chart the count through the year.

Choose a treatment from five, each modeled on a real one with its own temperature range and its own reach into the brood, and check the seven-day forecast before you start.

Watch for deformed wings, the sign of the virus mites spread.

Test for hygienic bees with the odor test real breeders use, and breed from the queens whose workers clean out mite-infested brood.

Feed in a dearth, heft the back of a box to feel its stores, and see your colonies through the winter.

Swarms, splits and queens

In spring, a crowded colony starts building queen cells and gets ready to swarm. Spot the signs, and split it before it goes, or catch the swarm when it hangs in the apple tree. Raise your own queens by grafting young larvae, keep spares in a queen bank, add drone frames to improve your matings, and introduce a new queen in her cage. Start colonies from splits, nucs, packages and caught swarms, and grow from two hives to a dozen, with a second yard in an orchard.
Read a hive from outside

A dozen hives should never feel like a dozen chores. Every colony shows you how it's doing before you lift the lid: foragers coming home with pollen, fanners at the entrance on a hot day, young bees hovering on orientation flights, a beard hanging off the front on a summer evening. Listen to the hum: a calm colony hums low and steady, an upset one rises in pitch, and a queenless one roars. Heft the back, check the hive scale's daily weight curve, and save the full inspection for when something calls for it.
Honey, wax and hive products

Pull a super when its frames are capped. Uncap them with a needle roller, a scratcher or a knife, spin them in a hand-crank extractor, check the moisture with a refractometer and fill jars through the honey gate. Each honey takes its color from what your bees foraged, from pale clover to dark buckwheat. Cream your own honey, press heather comb that won't spin, cut comb honey, and render the cappings into wax. Collect pollen with a pollen trap and propolis with a propolis screen. Sow phacelia, borage and clover in raised beds and watch the pollen come home in their colors.
Four seasons, and no clock to beat
Spring brings the build-up and the swarm season. Summer brings the flow and the long hot evenings. Fall is goldenrod and getting ready for winter. In winter the colony clusters, and on a mild afternoon a few bees come out on cleansing flights. The weather matters all year: rain keeps the foragers home and cold keeps them clustered. Nothing is timed. Time moves when you do something and when you sleep, never while you stand and watch.
Cozy by default, as real as you want
Start a new game as Cozy, Middle or Realism, then set each part on its own, any time:
Colony loss: a struggling colony that isn't helped in time can die, and its post-mortem shows you why.

Alcohol wash: the standard real-world mite count, a little truer than the sugar roll. It kills the bees in the sample.

Stings: a lodged sting costs the bee her life, and its alarm scent riles the bees around it.

Treatment labels: each treatment keeps to its label, as real ones must, and honey from unsafe-treated supers can't be sold.

Reading eggs: eggs are as hard to see as they really are, without a bright day, a headlamp or a magnifying visor.

Mite immigration: in late summer, robbers bring mites home from weak and wild colonies.

Diseases and pests: European foulbrood, Nosema and wax moth, each with its signs and its care.

Estimate it yourself: judge the frames of bees, brood and honey by eye before the sheet shows the true count.

Cozy keeps every bee safe from your hands and every colony able to recover. The Science setting (Plain, Curious or Beekeeper) sets how deep the explanations go.
Taught one thing at a time
There's no tutorial up front. Each part of beekeeping is explained the first time it matters in your own apiary, in a line or two. The Almanac keeps the why behind every step, and close-up moments the first time they happen in your hives: a waggle dance pointing to the flowers, nurses feeding the queen royal jelly, a forager packing pollen, a swarm pouring out of the hive.
Features
A colony simulation built on real bee biology and checked against extension references.

Lift, turn and read real frames of comb with thousands of living bees on them, then find and mark your queen.

Count mites with a sugar roll, choose from five treatments modeled on real ones, and test for hygienic bees.

Spot swarm signs, make splits, catch swarms, graft and raise your own queens.

Read every hive from outside: its entrance, its hum and its weight.

Extract, jar and cream your honey, press heather comb, render wax, and collect pollen and propolis.

Four seasons with real weather, bloom and brood cycles.

Cozy by default, with eight realism switches and three levels of science.

Three save slots, gamepad support, and keys you can remap.