Queen bee
a queen bee 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 12 |
| Attacks | |
| Base level | 9 |
| Base experience | 225 |
| Speed | 24 |
| Base AC | -4 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 0 (Not randomly generated) |
| Genocidable | Yes |
| Weight | 1 |
| Nutritional value | 5 |
| Size | Tiny |
| Resistances | Poison resistance |
| Resistances conveyed | Poison resistance (60%) |
|
A queen bee: | |
| Reference | NetHack 5.0.0 - include/monsters.h, line 126 |
A queen bee, a, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The queen bee is an insect that is a stronger form of killer bee, and is an overlord to her kind.
A queen bee has a sting attack that can inflict strength-draining poison, and possesses poison resistance.
A queen bee corpse is poisonous to eat, and eating a queen bee corpse or tin has a 3⁄5 chance of granting poison resistance.
Chatting to a queen bee causes it to buzz angrily if it is hostile, and otherwise it will "drone".[1]
Contents
Generation
Queen bees are not randomly generated, and normally-created ones are always hostile.
Each beehive contains a single queen bee, including the guaranteed one within the Wizard's Tower.[2]
Queen bees can hatch from eggs, including ones laid by a hero polymorphed into a queen bee, but only 1⁄77 of eggs laid by queen bees will be queen bee eggs, and the rest will be killer bee eggs. Applying a non-cursed lump of royal jelly to a killer bee egg will transform it into a queen bee egg (and revive the egg if it was stale), and using blessed royal jelly will also guarantee that it hatches tame.[3]
A killer bee can eat a lump of royal jelly to grow up into a queen bee (which includes a hero polymorphed into a killer bee[4]), and cannot grow up into queen bees by standard means:[5] killer bees will only eat royal jelly to grow up if there are no queen bees on the current dungeon level[6][7]—pet killer bees will seek out lumps of royal jelly for this purpose.[8][9] If queen bees are genocided, killer bees that eat royal jelly will die instead.
Strategy
Queen bees have an exceedingly high 24 speed, and are tied with unicorns, warhorses and the mail daemon for the third-highest speed among monsters. Their sting is also more than twice the strength of normal killer bees—unfortunate heroes that find an early beehive before they have obtained poison resistance would do well to steer clear. Queen bees are also eligible forms for polymorph traps and for shapeshifters such as the animal-favoring chameleon, which can be a nasty surprise for a similarly hapless character.
For a hero without poison resistance, an extrinsic source such as an alchemy smock or amulet versus poison, will prevent the worst of the damage from the stings, and high magic cancellation from armor can offer some protection as a last resort. Successful prayer and potions of restore ability can counteract attribute damage from the queen bee's stings, and a ring of sustain ability can prevent attribute damage (but not the HP damage) inflicted from any particularly toxic stings.
The queen bee is quite vicious on her own, but has 0 MR score and remains as vulnerable to wands and spells as normal killer bees, though she also possesses a solid base AC of 4. More often than not a queen is accompanied by her hive, and improperly handling a swarm can result in damage piling up quickly—even with poison resistance, you should be solidly armored with a weapon that can reliably land hits against their low AC. Stealth is a useful property for clearing beehives, allowing a hero to employ selective noise-making and draw away the killer bees from their queen a few at a time. Crowd-control tactics like scaring bees via bugle or tooled horn and funneling them through hallways can keep the queen off your back until you have dealt with the weaker bees, and is especially ideal to prevent the royal jelly in the hive from being eaten if you want an easier fight and/or want to eat the jelly yourself.
History
The queen bee is introduced in NetHack 3.0.0, which also introduces beehives.
From NetHack 3.0.0 to NetHack 3.6.7, including some variants based on those versions, the queen bee's poison stings can cause instant death—applying a unicorn horn can cure strength drain from the queen bee's stings or their poisonous corpses. NetHack 5.0.0 removes the ability of poison attacks to cause instant death via commit d0b11fd2, and also removes the unicorn horn's ability to restore attributes via commit 43d331c4. Furthermore, homemade tins of queen bee meat grant 40 nutrition rather than the standard 5—this is changed in NetHack 5.0.0 via commit 39bd259b.
Origin
A queen bee is typically an adult, mated female of a honey bee species that lives in a colony or hive—the term "queen bee" can be more generally applied to any dominant, reproductive female in a eusocial bee species colony.
The queen is usually the primary bee with fully developed reproductive organs, and thus the mother of most (if not all) of the bees in the beehive. Queens are developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed with royal jelly in order to become sexually mature; the bees usually follow and fiercely protect the solitary queen. In some species such as the Brazilian stingless bee, a single nest may have multiple queens or even dwarf queens, ready to replace a dominant queen in a case of sudden death.
Messages
- The <queen bee> buzzes angrily.
- You chatted to a queen bee that was hostile.
- The <queen bee> drones.
- You chatted to a queen bee that was not hostile.
- You feel very comfortable here.
- You sat on a throne while polymorphed into a queen bee, and no effect occurred.
Variants
NetHack variants based on NetHack 3.6.7 and previous versions may or may not retain the ability of a queen bee's sting to cause instant death, as well as the ability to restore attribute damage from being stung or eating one's corpse with a unicorn horn. They may or may not also include the ability to turn killer bees into queen bees with royal jelly.
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, queen bees can cause instant death with their sting as in NetHack 3.4.3—strength drain from the sting or from eating a queen bee corpse can be cured with a unicorn horn, though unicorn horns in SLASH'EM require a higher enchantment to more reliably cure troubles.
A bug causes beehives to only generate on special levels—as a result, in most games the only queen bee encountered will be the one in the Wizard's Tower.
GruntHack
In GruntHack, queen bees can cause instant death with their sting as in NetHack 3.4.3, and strength drain can be cured with a unicorn horn.
UnNetHack
In UnNetHack, queen bees can cause toxic poisoning rather than instant death with their stings, and strength drain cannot be cured with a unicorn horn.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, queen bees are a lawful species and can cause instant death with their sting as in NetHack 3.4.3, and strength drain cannot be cured with a unicorn horn.
Queen bees that are generated in the Lawful Quest have a 3⁄5 chance of being generated with armor made to fit their body shape: a 1⁄10 chance of generating with plate mail, a 2⁄9 chance of generating with scale mail if plate is not given, and a 3⁄7 chance of generating with a gentlewoman's dress if scale mail is not given. Queen bees that receive a suit of mail this way will also generate with a helmet.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, queen bees can cause instant death with their sting as in NetHack 3.6.7, and strength drain cannot be cured with a unicorn horn. Poison resistance is also a partial intrinsic, and a hero needs 35% intrinsic poison resistance to prevent instant deaths from queen bee stings unless they obtain the intrinsic by gaining experience levels. Conversely, a hero with extrinsic poison resistance can eat queen bees to increase their intrinsic levels of poison resistance (with a gain of +5% per bee).
Honey badgers have a mutual grudge against queen bees and can generate on levels with beehives, and will move towards the royal jelly within the hive if they are closer to it than they are to you—this makes it possible that the badgers will awaken the hive before you are prepared to deal with either them or the hive's bees.
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, in addition to SLASH'EM details, the Gnome King's Apiary is a variant of Mines' End that contains a beehive with a queen bee and several killer bees, as well as a statue of a queen bee.
Hack'EM
In Hack'EM, queen bees can cause instant death with their sting as in NetHack 3.6.7, and strength drain cannot be cured with a unicorn horn. Partial intrinsics function as in EvilHack, although a hero only requires 25% intrinsic poison resistance to avoid instant death from queen bee stings and other poison attacks. The mutual grudge between bees and honey badgers from EvilHack also applies.
Encyclopedia entry
- See the encyclopedia entry for bee.
References
- ↑ src/sounds.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 903-L906
- ↑ src/mkroom.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 352
- ↑ src/apply.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 3615-L3683: use_royal_jelly() function
- ↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 2529-L2532
- ↑ src/monmove.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 390-L420: bee_eat_jelly() function
- ↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 2066
- ↑ src/monmove.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 866-L874
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 1023-L1029
- ↑ src/dogmove.c in NetHack 5.0.0, line 255-L259
