Home▸Biology▸Beyond Honey: The Economics of Hive Products

🍯 Beyond Honey: The Economics of Hive Products

A 3D model of a beehive surrounded by its seven marketable products — honey, beeswax, propolis, royal jelly, bee venom, pollen and bee bread — with live revenue bars that respond to colony size, season and harvest specialisation.

Biology3DAdvanced60 FPS

A 3D beehive surrounded by seven glowing pedestals — one for each product a real colony can yield — with live bars showing each product's contribution to annual income as colony size, season and harvest strategy change.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Honey is high-volume but low-value-per-kilogram, while royal jelly, propolis and bee venom are the opposite: tiny yields at a very high price. Chasing the rare, high-value products means more disruptive hive manipulation, which trades off against honey and wax output.

🎮 How to Use

Set colony size and season to see baseline output shift, then drag "Rare-product focus" to see honey and wax fall as royal jelly, propolis and venom rise. Toggle between revenue and raw kilograms, and pick a focus product to zoom in on its pedestal.

💡 Did You Know?

Bee venom is harvested with a mild electric-shock plate at the hive entrance: bees sting a thin membrane without losing their stinger, and the dried venom is scraped off — a technique that yields only a few grams per hive per season.

⚙ Under the hood

beeshiveeconomicscolonyhoneyagricultureThree.js

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install