Maybe the beekeepers used to harvest combs much, much faster, at which point you'd only need two apiaries to get the maximum spawn rate of 2 honeycombs per day, and more wouldn't help.

But since it takes iirc 5+ days for them to harvest a comb plus walking times and logistics, you'll need a lot more apiaries than 2 to reach that 2 per day limit.

A lot of things have outdated tooltips in ML. Fuel consumption e.g. isn't doubled in winter since EA release, yet there was a tooltip still claiming that.

Thanks a lot for this thread, very useful.
The post-scriptum is also useful, but why does it say in-game that yields won't increase after the first two apiaries per region?

I have build 30 once to confirm the maximum, but that's more than enough. With a dedicated granary next door, burgages nearby, no wax perk ('cause then the storeworkers would also have to empty that quickly), and maybe large veggie gardens for the wife and son, so they don't interfer much, you should theoretically be fine with 12-15. 50-60 honey per year is my output per apiary with low numbers. But I think I had 16 once and didn't quite reach the 730 honey per year maximum - though I didn't bother to truly optimize.

If you achieve that with 16 or less, let me know. But you gotta add the honey that was being consumed (luckily all food types are consumed equally).

I assume the info on beekeeping is correct, that means the tooltip in game is incorrect, which says that you can only have 2 apiaries per region? I think I remember being unable to build more than two, but I might misremember. In your experience, how many apiaries (provided one can build more than two) are required (each with one worker) to get to max production?

Hunting Grounds only affects farming, not backyards like apples or veggies (as those are entirely unaffected by fertility) @Anima Mundi.
It's still a decision to make though, because even with bad fertility it's useful to supplement your barley/malt imports with a low own production of barley, and thus keeping costs low. Obviously you can skip that if you have another fertile region producing barley for all of your infertile regions.

And yeah, Hunting Grounds is OP, especially for regular deer regions - as long as you don't do any farming there at all.

Those 66 lambs a year give you not just 66 hides/leather but also 132 meat, or 264 meat per year with the 2x meat perk (as that applies to deer, sheep, pigs and goats, but not trapping). If you have a town with 3 other food sources, you can produce enough meat for 88 families with that alone, so far from useless. And you'll always have deer, likely will add pigsties if you took the double meat perk anyhow, so you can more easily supply even large towns with meat with a minimal amount of labour invested.

The gestation (pregnancy) period is 145 days +- 1 or 2 days or so of variance. All sheep are ewes, so you get 26 lambs from 26 sheep every 145 days, or almost 66 lambs per 365 days. If you have more sheep than that, you reach the hard cap of about 66 lambs per year, because you can never have more than 2 lambs being born within the last 10 days plus the current day (so actually 11 days). The rest of the pregnant ewes will simply remain pregnant until you fall under this hard cap - so they might actually remain pregnant for many more months before the game allows them to birth a new lamb.

This is not the maturation period - iirc they take 1 full year to mature from new born lamb to sheep.

I usually just get 30 sheep, then set all lambs to be slaughtered for meat and hides (they give the same amount as mature sheep for some reason). And 30 sheep times 9 wool per year is way more yarn/clothes than anyone needs anyhow, especially until clothing is actually being consumed over time.

@† N † no, it seems correct. You get 66 lambs per year, lambs are born every 10/11 days. That's the "gestation" period. What OP meant to say there for the 145 days is the maturing time, not gestation.

66 Lambs per year also seems to be the hard cap. I get this is made to limit trade exploitation, but then it makes it useless as a food source (max of 10 meat /month or 20 with skinning perk), while you can still scale up Yarn production and still exploit trade.
Makes this Sheep perk only attractive to fire and forget: get 26 sheep so the village can get a constant 660 silver /year.

This whole mechanic of livestock would be more immersive if it could be a viable food source and require the player balancing pastures with space for crops (or taking perk for Fenced fields), yarn production, and the ratio of slaughter to birth rate. my 2 cents

Curious if the HG policy also affects backyard extensions, haven't seen it mentioned anywhere.
If not this should be even more attractive to any region with bad fert, saving a lot of space on veggies and apples

I don't quite understand how you get 66 lambs a year from 26 sheeps. 26 sheeps give 13 lambs every 145 (+-1) days. Isn't that right?