• The freeware computer game "Beehive Solitaire," created by NZP, uses a standard deck of 52 playing cards. Each card is a bee, and the object is to arrange all the cards into piles, called the flower garden, by face value. While the NZP version is a computer game, "Beehive Solitaire" can also be played with real playing cards.
  
  

Setting Up

• Shuffle the cards. Flip the top six cards over and arrange them face-up into six foundation piles to form the flower garden. Deal a pile of 16 cards--this is known as the beehive. Flip the beehive over so that only the top card of the pile is face-up. The remaining 32 cards form the draw pile. When using the draw pile, take the top three cards and flip them over, creating a discard pile.
  
  

Playing the Game

• The top cards of the beehive and the discard pile can be moved to a foundation pile that shows a card of the same value. Any foundation-pile cards with matching values can be combined into one pile, and the top card from the beehive or the discard pile can be used to form a new foundation pile to bring your total back up to six piles. Similarly, once you've created a pile with all four cards of a single value, such as four 3s or four queens, those cards are removed from play, and you can place the top card of the discard or beehive pile in that foundation. When the draw pile runs out of cards, you can flip over the cards from the discard pile and begin cycling through the deck again by threes as many times as you need to. You win the game of "Beehive Solitaire" when all of the cards have been separated into groups of four.
  
  

Strategy

• The beehive pile is crucial to winning "Beehive Solitaire," and you'll have to get those 16 cards into play as early as possible. Since you can only play one card from that pile at a time, the top beehive card should always be used to fill an empty foundation pile. After the beehive pile is depleted, you can feel free to use cards from the discard pile to form foundations. Flip through the stock pile slowly, particularly if you're playing the computer version, so you don't accidentally flip past a playable card. While there's a chance that the card will come up again when you take another pass through the stock, the order of the deck will change when other cards are put into play.