Honey, Inc. Epic Research: all 18 honeycomb upgrades
Epic research is bought with Honeycombs and kept forever — it is the only upgrade track in the game that survives a reincarnation reset.
Honey, Inc. epic research is a separate tree of 18 permanent upgrades, purchased with Honeycombs rather than cash. The headline fact is simple and it changes how you should play: epic upgrades persist through reincarnation. Your farm resets, your regular research tree resets, your buildings reset — the epic upgrades stay exactly where you left them.
That makes epic research the game's real long-term investment. Everything else you buy is rented for one run. These 18 are owned.
Why the persistence matters
Idle games live or die on how the reset feels, and Honey, Inc. answers that with two persistent things: Royal Jellies, which grant a capped earnings bonus, and epic research, which is not capped in the same way and covers far more of the farm. Because the Royal Jelly bonus tops out at +25%, the compounding part of your long-term power comes overwhelmingly from this tree.
The practical consequence is that Honeycombs spent on epic research can never be wasted by a badly timed reset. Honeycombs spent on boosts buy you speed right now; Honeycombs spent here buy you every run from now on. Both are legitimate, but if you are unsure, the permanent side is the safer default.
Where Honeycombs come from. Tapping wasps, opening crates, mail rewards, the daily login cycle, watching ads, and referrals. None of that income is lost at reset either — Honeycombs carry over with the epic upgrades they buy.
The 18 epic upgrades
Below is the complete list, grouped by what part of the farm each one addresses. Exact values and Honeycomb costs are shown in the game's epic research screen, so this table describes what each upgrade addresses rather than reproducing numbers.
Hives and nurseries
| Upgrade | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Rapid Hive Activation | The speed at which hives come online and start producing. |
| Epic Nursery Mastery | The nursery side of hive output — where new bees come from. |
| Epic Internal Nurseries | Internal hive nursery capacity, the epic counterpart to the regular tree's Internal Hive Systems. |
| Nursery Redistribution | How nursery output is allocated across your hive slots. Relevant because a farm has only four slots. |
| Nursery Hibernation | Nursery behavior while the farm is idle, which puts it in the same territory as offline progress. |
| Epic Luxury Habitats | The permanent counterpart to the regular Luxury Bee Habitats line. |
Flight and swarm
| Upgrade | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Epic Flight Efficiency | How efficiently bees complete their fly-out, collect and return cycle. |
| Epic Swarm Multiplier | A multiplier on swarm output — the broadest of the bee-side epics. |
Economy and discounts
| Upgrade | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Discounted Contractors | Cheaper construction. Building levels are the biggest cash sink on the farm, so discounts compound. |
| Fleet Negotiations | The cost side of the vehicle fleet housed in the Shipping Depot. |
| Research Subsidies | The cost side of the regular 13-tier research tree — which you rebuild every single cycle. |
| Creative Accounting | An earnings-side economic upgrade. |
| Transport Industry Lobbying | A second, broader transport economy upgrade beyond individual fleet purchases. |
Storage, prestige, wasps and research speed
| Upgrade | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Storage Time Extension | The storage clock. Read it alongside offline progress, where the away window starts at 2 hours and grows by 1 hour per honey jar. |
| Royal Jelly Amplification | Amplifies the Royal Jelly side of prestige. See Royal Jelly. |
| Reincarnation Mastery | Improves the reincarnation cycle itself. See reincarnation. |
| Enhanced Wasp Drops | Unlocks better reward bands from wasps — verified, and the clearest single effect in the tree. See wasps. |
| Rapid Research Mode | Research speed, applied to the regular tree you rebuild each run. |
On the descriptions above. Where the game does not publish a fixed figure, this page describes what the upgrade addresses rather than inventing a percentage. The live numbers are always in the epic research screen — trust those over any wiki, including this one.
Three upgrades that reach into other systems
Most of the tree improves your farm in place. Three do something more interesting: they change how other systems pay out, which means their value depends on how you actually play.
Enhanced Wasp Drops is the most concrete. Wasps fly across the farm and give cash or Honeycombs when tapped, in rarity bands — common, uncommon and rare, plus an epic band on Elite wasps. Common wasps appear roughly every 30 to 90 seconds and Elites roughly every 8 to 14 minutes, so this upgrade rewards players who keep the app open and tap. If you play in short idle check-ins, it does less for you than it does for someone watching the farm.
Royal Jelly Amplification and Reincarnation Mastery both sit on the prestige loop. Because Royal Jellies grant +1.2% earnings each up to a +25% ceiling, the base prestige bonus is deliberately modest — these two are how the reset loop grows beyond that. They are worth most to players who intend to run many cycles rather than one very long farm.
Research Subsidies and Rapid Research Mode deserve a mention for the same structural reason. The regular tree — 13 tiers, 57 groups — is destroyed and rebuilt every cycle. Anything that makes rebuilding cheaper or faster is paid back once per reincarnation, forever.
How to spend Honeycombs
There is no single correct order, but there are honest principles.
- Buy things you re-pay for. Upgrades touching the regular research tree and construction costs are re-earned every cycle, because you pay those costs again every cycle.
- Match upgrades to your play pattern. Wasp drops reward active tapping. Nursery and storage-clock upgrades reward long absences. Buying the wrong half for how you actually use the game is the most common way to feel like epic research "did nothing".
- Do not hoard. Honeycombs sitting in your balance produce nothing. Since the upgrades are permanent, spending early gives them more runs to compound over.
- Broad multipliers before narrow ones. Something that multiplies swarm output touches the entire chain from bee to farm value; something that speeds one hive activation does not.
If you have not reincarnated yet, epic research can look like a side menu. It is the opposite — it is the part of the game that is still there tomorrow. New players should read how to play first, then beginner tips, and treat the first few Honeycombs they earn as seed money for this tree rather than as boost currency.