Apiary Strategy Board Game

About this product

Build a hive worthy of the stars.

A competitive worker-placement strategy game from Stonemaier Games where highly evolved honeybees explore, build and prepare for hibernation.

Lead one of 20 unique Mellifera factions as you grow your hive, explore distant planets and turn each carefully placed worker into part of a bigger strategy.

Product Description

Humanity is gone, but life has found an extraordinary new path.

In the far-distant future, honeybees have evolved into the Mellifera, an intelligent civilisation capable of advanced technology and space travel. In Apiary, you lead one of 20 unique factions through the active months of the Flow before the approaching Dearth sends your workers into hibernation.

Your workers are at the heart of everything. Place them to explore planets, gather and convert resources, expand your hive, research seed cards, develop new technologies and create carvings. As workers are used, retrieved and bumped from action spaces, their strength can increase, eventually sending the strongest workers into hibernation.

Build your hive carefully, make the most of your faction's abilities and decide where each action will take your civilisation next. With changing worker strengths, tile placement, resource decisions and competing routes to victory, Apiary creates a strategic puzzle that keeps evolving until the final bees settle into the Hibernation Comb.

View the Apiary Rulebook (PDF)

View the Apiary Automa Solo Rulebook (PDF)

Why You’ll Love It

• A wonderfully unusual world: Lead an advanced civilisation of spacefaring honeybees across planets far beyond Earth.
• 20 unique factions: Different factions give you new starting conditions and abilities to explore across repeated plays.
• Workers that evolve: Workers increase in strength as the game progresses before eventually entering hibernation.
• Interactive worker placement: Action spaces are not simply blocked — existing workers can be bumped or shifted as other workers arrive.
• Build your own hive: Add farms, recruits, developments and carvings while expanding the shape and possibilities of your hive.
• Several paths to victory: Exploration, hive development, carvings, seed cards, faction abilities, Queen's Favor and the Hibernation Comb all contribute to scoring.
• Made for solo or multiplayer: Play competitively with up to 5 players or take on the dedicated Automa opponent when playing alone.

Quick Details

• Brand: Stonemaier Games
• Game: Apiary
• Product type: Strategy board game
• Designer: Connie Vogelmann
• Artist: Kwanchai Moriya
• Players: 1–5
• Play time: 60–90 minutes
• Recommended age: 14+
• Play style: Competitive
• Solo play: Yes — dedicated Automa mode
• Factions: 20 unique factions
• Core gameplay: Worker placement, hive building, exploration and resource management
• Guides & player aids: 1 teaching guide, 1 appendix and 5 player aids
• Boards & mats: 1 double-sided board, 5 hive mats, 5 docking mats and 15 frames
• Workers & faction pieces: 20 workers, 20 faction starting tiles, 15 player tokens, 35 hibernation tokens and 1 QueenShip miniature
• Tiles & cards: 40 farm tiles, 30 carving tiles, 30 recruit tiles, 29 development tiles, 15 planet tiles, 5 dance tiles and 45 seed cards
• Resources & tokens: 25 fiber tokens, 25 pollen tokens, 25 water tokens, 20 explore tokens, 15 wax tokens, 12 honey tokens and 9 dance tokens
• Automa components: 14 Automa cards, 1 Automa docking mat and 1 Automa Gained Worker Strength token

Good to Know

• Solo mode is fully supported: Apiary includes a dedicated Automa opponent with its own rules and components.
• Worker strength matters: Stronger workers can unlock better action benefits, while strength-4 workers eventually hibernate.
• Action spaces stay interactive: Workers can bump other workers rather than simply locking an action space.
• Hive building is permanent: Once a tile has been built into your hive, it cannot normally be moved.
• English-language edition: The supplied game and rulebooks are in English.
• Complexity: Apiary is a substantial strategy game rather than a light introductory family game; Stonemaier classifies it as a heavy game