Apiary Planner
The answer
Formula
+2% region yield per apiary, capped at +10% — 5 hives reach the cap and further hives add honey but no yield. 50g each. Honey → mead 1:1 at a brewery. Meadow percentage sets both the per-hive yield and how many hives a region carries: a region supports about half its meadow figure in hives, community-tested.
Apiaries are the cheapest yield upgrade in Manor Lords and most players build one, look at the honey, and move on. Honey is the side product. Pollination is the reason to build them.
What each hive actually does
Every apiary adds about +2% yield across the region, and the total caps at +10%. Five hives reach the cap. The bonus is not limited to grain fields. Orchards and backyard vegetable plots get it too, all at once, with no work area to draw and nothing to micromanage.
Cost is 50 gold each. A five-hive set runs 250 gold and pays for itself inside the first year on any region with real farmland. Few things on the build menu return that fast.
The ceiling nobody mentions
Two limits sit on top of the arithmetic, and the calculator states them rather than hiding them in the number.
The first is meadow. A region's meadow percentage sets the yield per hive and how many hives the region will support. A high-meadow region carries a full set at full value. A dense forest region does not, however much gold you spend. Felling trees to open meadow is therefore a yield decision as well as a timber one.
The second is the calendar. Apiaries are seasonal. Hives fill through spring and summer, then harvest in autumn. A hive placed in September earns nothing that year. Build them early or accept a season of nothing.
What to do with the honey
Honey converts to mead at a brewery, one for one. Mead and cider between them let a region meet tavern demand without growing a single row of barley. Regions with orchards or apiaries can skip the malting chain outright.
Honey is also one of the safest things to barter away. Nobody eats it, wears it or fights with it. Draining honey and wax to zero costs you the goods and nothing else, which is the opposite of the risk you take selling food.
How many should a region run
Five, and then stop. Five hives reach the +10% cap, and a sixth does not move the yield number at all. Building ten is 250 gold spent for nothing extra, which is the mistake the calculator above is there to catch.
Hives past five are not wasted, exactly. They still produce honey and wax, which barter away safely and turn into mead at a brewery. Build them for that if you want them. Do not build them expecting yield.
One caveat on the bonus itself: it lifts crops, fruit and vegetables. Breeding is untouched. A high-meadow region grows better plants, not faster herds.
