Bee Island: Beginners’ Guide

Bee Island is a great take on tower defense and provides one of the best free-form placement of tiles for towers and production, it really givese you so much flexibility.

Note: Above pic is one of the islands in the game – inaccessible to the player, but I just love the skeleton sipping on a mai-tai in a cocunut shell. Bee Cool. Bee Victorious!

However, that flexibility comes at a cost of overwhelming you with choices and if you look at everything happening and the research tree and think you have to research & build everything, well you’re probably going to lose.

To understand why you’re going to lose the first time you play this, we need to step back and discuss the fundamental question:

How do you “win” Bee Island??

You start playing and you’re going along and the waves just keep coming and coming and coming and you’re wondering, “hey when do the waves stop??”

Well, they don’t stop until you satisfy the victory conditions.

“What are the victory conditions??”

Good question, because the game doesn’t lay that out and it’s not evident for a LONG time, perhaps anywhere between 2-3 hours you’ll finally get a clue as to how you win.

So I”m going to spoil how you win because without that knowledge, you’re just not going to win.

The way you win in Bee Island is to survive long enough to complete one of the 3 victory conditions:

Pick 1 of the following:

1. Research 20 military research areas
2. Research 12 of the research research areas (at the end, this is labeled “Peaceful ending”
3. Research 20 construction research areas

The research tree has 4 tabs. But when you first start, you only see the first tab and only the first few choices of research available on that tab.

As you complete research, more of the research tree is revealed until you get far enough to the right and a “New Era” button is revealed. Upon pressing that button, an additional tab will appear (#2, #3 and then “Choice” on the 3rd and final tab)

Once you get to the final 3rd tab and choice is revealed, when you press choice, you will have the option of choosing one of three winning conditions, provided you have met the number of criteria for that victory condition.

Don’t be fooled into thinking you can win the game by only doing one of these. What you need to do is choose carefully and do the ones that are necessary.

There are SIX problems with the research tree:

Problem 1: The research tree allows you to select something which you don’t have resources for and it will forever be on that research because it will never get the resources it needs and stall your game.

I’m colorblind and I found out the hard way.

When you go into the research tree, each item has a small number of colored circles below the research. These circles refer to resources that are needed and the game does not provide any event like a mouse-over event, for you to examine what these colors represent.

They are resources.

You start out with a small amount of honey (which can be completely consumed and put you in a fail state by the way), a small amount of wax (ditto), pollen and nectar.

Problem 2: It is vitally important that you research Honey first and immediately build a honey factory. Otherwise you will run out of honey and you will lose the game because you will stall.

Problem 3: When you accidentally pick something and notice that it’s been ages since you selected that research and it’s still not done (hence a failed state), it is not clear how to cancel that research.

You cancel research by re-clicking on that research.

An item that is being researched has a solid white line around it. An item that is not being researched has a dotted line around it. A completed item is colored in.

Problem 4: The research factory ALWAYS HAS THE HIGHEST PRIORITY. You can’t change the priority on the research tree and it consumes resources, starving your other factories.

Why aren’t you producing any eggs? Because that resource is being used by the research factory.

Problem 5: When the research factory is idle, it has these big BRIGHT exclamation marks telling you to do research!!!

Let it rest, particularly in the beginning until you get a foothold. Later on, once you’ve got hardened wax and ambrosia factories cranking, it’s harder to stall your production (and these aren’t until the 2nd tab of research, so remember to let the research factory idle once in a while).

Final 6th Problem: The research tree has a “fog of war” around it, only revealing subsequent research items after you’ve researched the one adjacent to it. This makes it very difficult to plan a path through the research tree and decide where to go next. And some very worthless research gates very powerful research (I’m looking at you small fountain and Palm trees which gate the Professor on the Construction research tree).

Note: I’ve unveiled the research tree at the end of this guide if you want to see how it looks when it’s completed.

You should be clicking on your queen constantly throughout the game.

How is your production going?

How many bees, soldiers and builders do you have?

These are all available by clicking on the queen and then selecting the tab which contains the pertinent information.

If you lose a factory, this is the place to easily see and then replace it.

Click it often

Because of the problems I’ve laid out in the research tree, I’m going to lay out the very super early build order, that if you follow this, will get you on solid footing and allow you to continue without any early failed states.

1. Build a wax factory
2. Build an elementary school and queue up 6 regular bees
3. Fast forward for 60 seconds to allow the first 2 of these bees to be produced

(Wait until these next two bees are produced before continuing)

4. Build another wax factory
5. Build another elementary school and queue up 2 soldiers then 2 builders, then 6 regular bees
6. Fast forward for 60 seconds to allow bees to be produced

(Wait until these next two bees are produced before continuing)

7. Build your research building
8. Research Honey
9. Build a Honey factory
10. Research Save yourself
11. Research Aluminum Bucket
12. Build another Honey factory
13. Research Aluminum Bucket
14. Research Improved Hinge (it requires Honey, so if you try to do this too early, you can easily stall bee production from your elementary schools).
15. Research small fountain & Palm and finally Professor
16. Research Spear
17. Research Kvhacha
Build 2 Kvhcacha’s

Ok you are set.

Regular bees are the single most important thing in the game. They are the ones that are getting resources from the adjacent islands and they move resources around on your island.

You should be thinking of a 3-1 ratio of regular bees to the other types of bees.

In the beginning that means 9 regular bees to 3 soldiers and 3 workers.

Just keep that ratio throughout the game, and you can safely stop when you get to 80-90 regular bees (25 or so soldier and 25 or so builder bees to go along with it).

This will help you a tremendous amount if you keep this ratio.

Use the Queen Info panel to check on this & it’s a good idea to have 3 elementary schools, each one dedicated to production of a single type so you can quickly catch up if you run into a shortfall.

Oh, you can absolutely win with only a few towers and lots of soldiers, but this is the beginner guide and if you’re reading this guide, soldiers are not really for you right now. Save it for after you’ve won at least 1-2 times then try a soldier heavy solution.

Because soldiers suck, you can safely ignore all the research and buildings associated with soldiers. Just don’t build them until you are way more comfortable with the game. You should never have more than 25 soldiers, ever.

Towers rock. And the Khvacha is absolutely a super cheap and effective tower that should be continued to be built as you are building out your structure. If you don’t have at least 30 Khvacha’s by the time you win, you’re really making it hard on yourself.

For all the other towers, except the final Stinger S1, always build 4-5 of them.

When you build any other tower, add two Khvacha’s to either side of it.

The best thing about Bee Island is that it allows for some crazy and funky setups. Really, it’s a so much fun to experiment with structures and shapes.

But for your first foray, may I humbly suggest the snowflake of death.

Take the center island, where your queen is at and roughly divide this into 5 sections and extend five arms out from the center. As you get new towers unlocked (Ballista, Anti-Air, Howitzer, Mini-Gun), always be expanding outwards on these 5 arms. By the end of the game, you want to be a considerable distance from the queen.

This arrangement allows you to engage the enemies further out and whittle them down before they get to the queen and by doing so, you minimize the number of passes they can do over your base.

Here it is forming in the early stages – just added ballistas and notice how the Khvacha’s are being used on either side of them.

Yup, it’s a basic limitation, most likely done for performance, and you’re going to be really pissed at the end of the game when you find you can’t place anymore blocks.

And of course, the game forces you to build next to them, so if you’re trying to extend outwards, you need to connect blocks.

But, guess what!

Drumroll (tap, tap, tap)

Once built, they don’t need to be connected.

So just remove the blocks once you’ve build outwards. Just be aware that if that tower gets destroyed, you’ll need to rebuild the chain of blocks to get back out there.

Agitation is a research item on the 2nd tab behind medical center. While you can safely ignore medical center (you’re not relying on soldiers so don’t build one), Agitation and it’s follow-on Let’s Live in Peace, allow for you to gain 5 (or 10 for Let’s Live in Peace) hornets every 10 minutes!!

This is fabulous because hornets are very powerful.

To get the best out of this research perk, you need to hit the ^ arrow at the bottom and when you do, a very small icon will appear in the upper left corner. Wait until the wave is nearly done before pressing it, otherwise they may die an early death if you press it in the early parts of the wave.

You can look at the queen any time and see the number of “Allies” you have converted to your side.

This is really your army – instead of using your soldiers, by using Agitation (and Let’s Live in Peace), you can continue to grow this part of your army to a significant size of 30-50 by game’s end.

Really, there is no point to storage because you get a default number of storage for each factory and you can get more than enough storage by building 3-4 of each type of factory.

If you’re hitting a storage limit on a resource, you are not building enough. Period.

So ignore all the storage buildings and ignore any research that gives you additional storage.

Instead, build 3-4 of each type of production building.

There’s two reasons:

it’s much easier to monitor the number of buildings on the Queen info panel

When you lose a production building, it’s not the end of the world because you’ll have a few spares.

I hope this helps you a little bit in figuring out Bee Island.

I can’t wait to see where the developers take this game. It is such a wonderful TD game and I think this layout / progression really has a lot of promise.

Have a great game and Bee Victorious!

.
.
.

(spoilers on the research section follow)

Read at your own risk. Here is the research tree:

Military 
Spear – Increase soldier damage by 15%
Khvacha – New short range weapon – one hex
-> Improved Preparation – Speed of soldier bees increased by 25%
Haystack – Soldier Health increased by 20%
Fresh Milk – Soldier Bee production increased by 50%
MRE – Soldier Bee production costs decreased by 25%
-> Telescope – Increases range of Khvacha by 10%
Ballista – New weapon – single large bolt, 7 hex
Composite Bowstring – Ballista Reload speed increased by 30%

Bee Research
Save yourself – Rally all bees to protect the queen
Aluminum Bucket – Increases normal bee speed by 20%
Double Bottom – Bucket capacity increased by 25%
Thor’s hammer – Construction bee speed increased by 20%

Construction Research
Honey Factory – new factory for producing Honey – 4 hex
Improved Hinge – Wax production speed increased by 25%
-> Mead – Honey production speed increased by 25%
Wax Storage – New single hex for storing Wax
Filter – Honey production costs decreased by 50%
-> Small Fountain – Decorative single hex
Palm Tree – Decorative single hex
Professor – Decreases research costs by 25%
Honey Storage – New single hex for storing Honey

Military
Military Reform – New Building for creating better soldiers
Anti-Aircraft gun – New 7 hex weapon
-> Rocket Launcher – single hex weapon against clusters or groups of enemies
Fortified Pillbox – Durability of weapons increased by 50%
Binoculars – Range of weapons increased by 10%
Military Benefits – Production Costs of Military Bees reduced by 25%

-> Peaky Blinders – Damage by soldier bees increased by 25%
Howitzer – New 7 hex weapon good against large enemies
New Commander – Soldier readiness decreased by 30%

Research
Medical Center – New large building to train medical bees
Agitation – Once every 10 minutes, be able to convince 5 enemy bees to switch sides
Royal Food – Queen Bee health increased by 50%
Population Growth – eggs spawn 50% faster

Construction
Hardened Wax Factory – new 7 hex production building
Ambrosia Factory – new 4 hex production building
-> Storage of Hardened Wax – new single hex for storing hardened Wax
Big Storage – ability to set storage to 2 levels opens

-> School – New building to train level 2 construction builders
Wax Alloy – Buildings are 50% more durable
Park – Decorative building
Foreman – Level 2 builder bees are 25% faster

Military
Elite Regiment – New building for elite soldiers
MiniGun – New 7 hex weapon
-> Anti-Aircraft S1 – New 7 hex weapon, good against large enemies
Bulletproof vest – Soldier bee health increased by 20%
Legendary Commander – Defensive Bee damage increased by 100%
Titanium plates – Soldier bee health increased by 30%

-> Radar – New huge 15 hex building increases range of all weapons by 15% (and it stacks)
Sting1 – New huge 15 hex weapon effective against groups of enemies or large enemies
SuperSonic Projectiles – Increase range of weapons by 15%

Research
Improved Medicines – Nurses Heal 50% faster
Let’s Live in Peace – now 10 hornets switch sides when you press agitation button
Royal Medicine – Queen health increased by 50%
Field Talks – Now 50% of the enemies will leave the battlefield (similar to agitation, 10 min cycle time)

Construction
Academia – Research time decreased by 25%
Increased Stove Temperature – Fortified wax production speed increased by 25%
-> Fierce Kneading – Ambrosia production increased by 25%
Population Growth – Eggs spawn 50% faster
5 Year Plan – all factories produce 25% faster

-> Carbon Bucket – speed of gathering increased 30%
Big Fountain – Decorative large structure
Synthetic Materials – Production costs reduced by 50%
To the Stars – Speed of construction bees increased by 50%