Apiary Almanac

You have one colony and fifteen weeks, spring to autumn. Each week you roll two dice. One says how much nectar came in. The other says what the weather did, and you read it off the table for the season you are in. Then you spend the nectar on your sheet, cell by cell. An empty hexagon is comb the bees drew. A dot in it is brood. Filled in solid, it is capped honey.

The choice is the same every week and it does not get easier. Honey in the supers is points. Honey in the brood box is what the colony eats in January, and when the winter's bite is rolled at the end of the year you pay it out of there or they do not come through. The queen wants room to lay at the same time, and the room she wants is the comb you were going to fill.

What is in the PDF:

• Three pages of rules and one week worked through
• A seasonal sky table, read every turn
• An almanac of thirty-six notable weeks, reached when the dice match
• The hive sheet, one printed per player
• An apiary sheet for running two colonies off one roll
• A year log and three scoring cards to cut out
• Six variants, including a hard winter and a second-year campaign

Play it alone against the scoring ladder, or with up to four people off the same roll, everyone marking their own sheet at once. Two dice, a pen, about half an hour. A4 and US Letter, the same eleven pages in each.