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 3.6.7 - src/monst.c, line 138 |
A queen bee, a, is a type of monster that appears in NetHack. The queen bee is an insect that is a much stronger version of the killer bee, and is an overlord to her kind.
A queen bee has a single poisonous sting that can drain strength, 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 drone, or buzz angrily if hostile.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.
Per commit dbd39f2c, statues of queen bees and other tiny monsters have a minimum weight of 100.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.
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.[1]
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.
Per commit 4159dd98, killer bees can eat royal jelly to grow up into queen bees if no queen already exists on the level, and pet killer bees will actively seek out nearby royal jelly to do this. If queen bees are genocided, killer bees will die upon eating royal jelly. Per commit 5e26589f, this also applies to a hero polymorphed into a killer bee that eats royal jelly.
Per commit d44c83d4, applying non-cursed royal jelly to a killer bee egg will turn it into a queen bee egg; cursed royal jelly will kill the egg ('The egg quivers feebly'), while non-cursed jelly will revive it if it is stale ('The egg quivers briefly'), and blessed jelly will make the newborn creature consider the hero its parent, so it is guaranteed to hatch tame.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 obtaining 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.
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 an excellent property to use in clearing beehives, and crowd-control tactics like scaring via bugle or tooled horn and funneling them through long hallways can keep the queen off your back until you have dealt with the weaker bees.
The following information pertains to an upcoming version (3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that the information below is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate it.
Per commit d0b11fd2, poison no longer causes instadeath, but still results in significant damage to maximum HP and attributes. Per commit 43d331c4, unicorn horns no longer restore lost attributes.
Since killer bees will eat lumps of royal jelly to become queen bees, it is prudent to save the original queen for last when clearing out a hive if you want an easier fight and/or want their jelly for yourself. Per commit 677b32c2, an attack on a monster that is generated asleep which does not kill the monster will cause it to wake up noisily, which in turn will awaken nearby monsters—this means that stealth is trickier to clear beehives with, though it is still possible.History
The queen bee is introduced in NetHack 3.0.0, which also introduces beehives.
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
- You feel very comfortable here.
- You sat on a throne as a queen bee, and no effect occurred.
Variants
SLASH'EM
In SLASH'EM, 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.
dNetHack
In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, queen bees are a lawful species.
Some queen bees are encountered on the Lawful Quest, and can be generated with armor made to fit their body shape. generated on the Lawful Quest has a 3⁄5 chance of generating with armor: 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, poison resistance is a partial intrinsic, meaning that queen bees can be more dangerous for a hero since they need 35% poison resistance to prevent instant deaths from their stings, unless they can obtain the intrinsic by gaining experience levels. Conversely, a hero with extrinsic poison resistance that finds a beehive can eat the corpses of the killer bees and queen bee there to increase their intrinsic levels of poison resistance.
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 bees.
SlashTHEM
In SlashTHEM, 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, partial intrinsics function as in EvilHack, with the exception that only 25% partial poison resistance is required to avoid instant death from queen bee stings and other poison attacks. The mutual grudge between bees and honey badgers also applies.
Encyclopedia entry
- See the encyclopedia entry for bee.
