Idle Beekeepers
A slow idle game about keeping bees the way beekeepers really do, from one hive to the county's beekeeper.
You start with a single hive in your home yard and grow it, season by season, until you are the county's beekeeper.
It runs in your browser with nothing to install. Your farm saves itself and keeps going while the tab is closed, and you can move a save to another device from Settings with Export and Import.
Updates
October 2026
Tom comes back the spring after, as he said, then says goodbye
The highlight breathes without redrawing the page
On Tom's farm the new-button note no longer makes them glow; The highlight's ring draws over the buttons beside it
Tom's week watches the entrance the first day the bees fly
Tom's wait for warmth shows the calendar; Tom's wait for warmth no longer says reading fills it
A small farm's hive a week unlooked in swarm season needs you; What a new player met playing a year with Tom in the browser
Before you start waits for an answer on sharing play data; Tom's wait for warmth says to read on meanwhile
Switching to Tom in Settings during the first week starts his week; Tom sees a beginner through the first year's mites, swarms and honey
Simpler play is the answer already picked on Before you start; Tom says who he is before the tour starts
Idle Beekeepers 0.49.1 released.
A new player chooses how much help, and the mentor's progress is kept with the farm; The guide's tips glow what they point at, and the weather is a large icon before the date; Tom, the mentor, walks a new player round the screen, the farm held until he's done
A new farm opens its hive on Start, the hive says to tap it, and the Journal shows its books first; The story says who you are and how the book reached you, and reads as French in French; A new farm pauses on its first warm day, and stays paused under its story after starting over
The groundwork for languages: a message formatter, the language per device, and an English golden file; A reply, a diary line and a pause can be a message, shown in the player's language; The names of things by id, in any language, with English read from CONFIG
Before you start explains every choice beside its button
No feeding on the spring flow with a super on; Simpler play counts mites monthly outside the windows; Space no longer rings the "i" marks
The books read as styled text: paragraphs, key terms in bold, lists, and a Remember box per chapter; A book's box is there only where it earns it: a lesson, a note, or a fun fact; A new tab's tip is drawn above the page, never under a hive card's text
The front page's pictures never hold the deploy: their farms show everything, and the step is time-limited
A new farm starts on the hives alone; each place appears as the guide reaches it, with a tip
Every page of the site and the game's Settings say whose the game is, all rights reserved
The developer tools are hidden from players; ?dev in the address shows them
A chapter's picture keeps its place while it loads, so the text doesn't jump
A "Needs you" box gathers what needs a decision, with links to the hive, the book and the supplies
A book named in a hive's advice has a link to it; Worth trying: set your rules for orders
Simpler play's daily care says what it does and never feeds a colony carrying a crop; an empty super can come off
Opening a hive on a wide screen opens every card in its row
The debug log keeps the farm's last year as JSON, each hive day by day as it was and as its card showed it
Nucs are sold until mid-August, mated queens until the end of September
Syrup eaten out of the supers no longer taints a later crop; the show asks for an extracted jar first
The stores bar is measured against what the colony needs now
Tall trees on the map are drawn whole, crown and trunk
Techniques have five levels at doubling prices, six new techniques, and the ending stays reachable
September 2026
Techniques say what they do in plain words, and those for hired hands say so
A task done early no longer moves the guide past the chapters still to do
The keeper's tip stays a minute of real time, with a "Next tip" link
An error the game reports by itself carries the last 30 days
A debug log of the last 30 days, to copy from Settings or attach to a bug report
The site counts its page views, storing nothing on the device
An automatic pause stays on the day that paused it
A second-season chapter, and things worth trying that no chapter asks for
The warm-day pause is a sun button beside play, the speed is a list, and the header reads at 13 px
What a first year ran into: knowledge from books can be spent, and the guide moves on while winter waits
The front page opens less close on the farm, faint behind the title
A shared link to the site shows a card: the name beside the game window
Where the farm is: home, the cold north or the Mediterranean, kept for the farm's life; The Beekeeper's Year gains a chapter on the cold north and the Mediterranean; In the Mediterranean dearth a weak colony is warned, then may be robbed out or taken by hornets unless fed, narrowed and guarded
A gardener who sows the strips again each spring and replants beds and trees past their years
A grower who hires you again through the broker pays 40% more, not 25%
Six books get covers of their own instead of borrowing another's
Saves are kept under the game's new name; a farm under the old one moves over once
The game is named Idle Beekeepers
Hive types: the National, two Langstroths, the Warré and the top-bar, opened by two new books; Every nuc bought can come in any unlocked hive, and a top-bar crops less than a National; A Warré is a fair choice: its boxes and their comb cost what their size does, and crushed comb is charged once
Premium honey as a path: single-flower yards, organic at +30%, show ribbons that build the brand; Pollination as a path: choose each contract's size, a second truck, a broker, gentler transport; Pollination tuned so a farm that leans on it earns its keep
A wiki beside the game: the books in a reader, how the game works, and the glossary; The wiki's three doors are the same height
Open days, beekeeping experiences and a visitor guide, and the county projects wait on people taught; Tours are booked ahead, fewer and smaller so the bees aren't disturbed; The front page opens on the farm in its own pixels, then tells its story block by block
A link to a game screen opens that screen: the rewrite goes to /game/, which Cloudflare doesn't redirect
The site's front page at the root, the game at /game/
The pitch page back to its first width, 1180 px
The site's build uses Node 24, and a picture step that can't start never fails a deploy
The header's chips keep one size when a tappable one shares their row
Idle Beekeepers 0.18.4 released.
Watch the entrance is always on the hive card, greyed on days the bees don't fly
Starting over goes back to the start for the new farm's story, from its own block
The pitch page uses a wide screen, up to 1600 px for the pictures
The pitch page shows every picture on a phone or a computer, to match the screen, and zooms on a tap
A pollinator corridor and a queen-breeding station before the Foundation
The pictures page tells the game's story, as a pitch
Settings links to the pictures page beside the game; The pictures page shows the game on a computer, dark, at five stages from the first spring to year 21
A pictures page beside the game, retaken at every release; Reload for a new version always reloads, even when another tab found the update
The farm map draws its own buildings, the truck and the timber trees
Pixel icons for every co-op supply, the rest of the diary and the status lines
Spring rent waits for the harvest, and colonies are never sold for it; Pixel icons in the farm map's colours for the tabs, header, diary and weather
The family farm, passing the book to an heir; A dark rim round the coin, so it shows on gold buttons
Woodworking, building frames, boxes and whole hives by hand; Hives wear over the years; leaks, pests and winter repairs; A joiner who works through a build list
Five and ten perfect winters with 10+ colonies, both; Each hive keeps its own paint; Paint pictures in Settings and on every hive card
Things to show off, unlocked by achievements and finished farms; Hive paint and the farm sign on the map; A jar of honey wearing the chosen label
Lifetime achievements engine, kept across new farms; Achievement banner and the Journal's Achievements page; Achievements for the first days, the hive, growing and staff
Seasonal occasion buyers pay above the gate, a third of orders; Balanced bee strains, and a sim that plays like a person
A new farm earns its progression again, and unlocks the next bees; Bee strains that play differently, chosen when a new farm begins
A staffed farm keeps going while you're away, for up to a year; A staffed farm away also stops when the staff can't be paid
An error report carries the minute of play before it, for players who share play data; A skipped goal no longer holds the guide back, and goals can be hidden; A new farm asks its three setup questions on one page after the story
Idle beekeeping prototype with a business late game; Unlock faster speeds with automation; Keep supplies in the shed, with a co-op account to restock it