Add Bee Animation Flying from Bee House to Flowers

[mukhlis]

Hi ConcernedApe and fellow farmers!
I have a small visual suggestion that could add a lot of life and charm to the farm, especially for those of us who love placing bee houses and planting flowers.


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The Idea: Bee Flight Animation

When a Bee House is placed near flowers, it would be wonderful to see a simple bee animation:

Small bees (or even just little pixel dots) fly from the bee house to nearby flowers, and back.

This would only happen if valid flowers are nearby (within the required radius for honey production).

If there are no flowers, the bees can be seen flying away from the farm (off-screen), as if searching for flowers elsewhere.


This would be a cute, immersive way to:

Show that the bees are “working”

Give players visual feedback that the bee house is actively producing flavored honey

Add a bit of life and magic to the farm’s daily routine



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Why It Matters:

Adds charm and realism to the farming experience

Gives players a better visual understanding of flower placement

Even minimal animation (tiny dots or pixel trails) would be enough to give the effect

Optional to toggle in settings for performance reasons



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Thank you for creating such a beautiful and relaxing game!
I hope this tiny visual touch can find its way into a future update

 

[1Stardewaddict]

That is such an incredible idea!

 

[WHYllama]

i love that idea!

 

[FilthyGorilla]

I think it'd look cute, my only fear would be about performance, especially if you do large scale beehive setups like myself with 100s or even 1000+ beehives all on a single map

 

[nicodeux]

I love the idea, but I agree with @FilthyGorilla : the paths calculation could quickly become a CPU/memory sink.

Another approach would be to have a seemingly random flying bees animation around the bee houses when they are processing. This does not need extra calculation and takes no resources when not displayed on screen.

I've continuously suggested this since update 1.3 -> 1.4 but with no success so far.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

I love the idea, but I agree with @FilthyGorilla : the paths calculation could quickly become a CPU/memory sink.

Another approach would be to have a seemingly random flying bees animation around the bee houses when they are processing. This does not need extra calculation and takes no resources when not displayed on screen.

I've continuously suggested this since update 1.3 -> 1.4 but with no success so far.

Ohh that’s smart, just integrate it into the beehive itself

Still a bit of a computing cost I think (I’ve had lots of machines in places and just the bobbing animation of the item inside of them can cause lag en masse) but it’s far less than dedicated bees having their own pathfinding

 

[stardew_luv]

This would be adorbs! . And would finally give that constant buzzing sound in summer a reason o exist besides driving us all crazy lol!

 

[RoseNoire]

Or you could have the Butterfly Hutch approach : having bees and buzzing sounds here and there on the map because there is at least one beehive present. That way, we get the lovely ambiance without the performance issues.

 

[nicodeux]

Or you could have the Butterfly Hutch approach : having bees and buzzing sounds here and there on the map because there is at least one beehive present. That way, we get the lovely ambiance without the performance issues.

That is indeed another interesting approach. My suggestion to link the animation to the bee house was to show that it is processing honey... so no bees animation in winter.

 

[Freizeitfarmer]

I would love to have some bee(dot)s flying around.

There is a similar suggestion here: https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/bees.11356/
So there are some more fans already for bees!