one thing I always fear is the moment to start on bees. I am not that good at bees, and I like to automate it as much as possible. but I never really found a good way to effectively automate the bees. that includes rebreeding the bees, breeding new species, keeping a small amount of drones of each species and dumping the excess and processing the items. so I was wondering if anyone has build a setup like this before and is willing to post some images of it...
Bee Automation
- Thread starter Yusunoha
- Start date
-
The FTB Forum is now read-only, and is here as an archive. To participate in our community discussions, please join our Discord! https://ftb.team/discord
i've got a basic setup to produce bee-products with some buildcraft pipes and 2 diamond pipes...
Pull out your bees/products out of the side with a wooden pipe, sort them into queen/drone/other stuff with a diamond pipe, pipe the queen back into the top, the drones back into the bottom (i am using a diamond pipe like an insertion pipe with one valid route into the hive and one into a voidpipe to dispose of the excess drones.) and combs into a chest.
It's pretty basic, still learning about bee stuff, but it gives me a healthy supply of honey drops and wax
Will post some pics when i get home.
Pull out your bees/products out of the side with a wooden pipe, sort them into queen/drone/other stuff with a diamond pipe, pipe the queen back into the top, the drones back into the bottom (i am using a diamond pipe like an insertion pipe with one valid route into the hive and one into a voidpipe to dispose of the excess drones.) and combs into a chest.
It's pretty basic, still learning about bee stuff, but it gives me a healthy supply of honey drops and wax
Will post some pics when i get home.
Here's some pics of my setup. All my breeding new species and getting the right traits is done manually, then when a species is finished and 'standardised' they go into the automatic setup.
The autarchic gates on the sides of the apiaries have the 'missing queen or princess' condition so that when the bees are finished everything is extracted out all in one go. They're then fed into apiarist pipes, with princesses going up through the white route, drones going down through black and items heading right through the blue route. I've got four of this setup chained together with all the items exiting the right side into the processing area. The first drone is fed back into the apiary with the 'drones' condition, further ones exit into the void pipe with the 'any bees' one. The void pipe can be replaced with a chest if I need drones but at this point I have quite enough so all excess drones are getting voided.
In the processing area combs are fed into the hopper on the centrifuge, with a 'has work' gate to turn on the peat engine when needed. The fact that all combs are extracted at the end of a queen's cycle rather than as they are produced helps with not wasting fuel. This works especially well if you have identical princesses which are synchronised together like my two tropical princesses, who offload 5 or 6 silky combs each at about the same time.
Another autarchic gate and wooden pipe empties the centrifuge, and loops honey drops and silky propolis back into the original item line. Other items head into the gold chest. The silky propolis goes back into the centrifuge with the combs, and the honey drops carry on into a squeezer with a similar 'has work' gate setup to the centrifuge. The honey is then piped into the iron tank which in turn keeps the analyzer full. A final autarchic gate pumps the propolis into the bee products chest.
I usually wait for a buildup of honey drops before I put peat in the squeezer's engine as I sometimes want to save a stack for other things, and it's more fuel efficient to squeeze a lot at once anyway. Bees is the thing I do a lot of manual work on while all my other automatic stuff slaves away so I'm usually around to keep an eye on it.
At the minute I've got the two nocturnal, poison free, normal biome tolerant tropical princesses I mentioned going so I plan to add a carpenter that makes woven silk automatically when I enable it, and later swap it over to make candles. The other two princesses are fast Industrious, I'm using a third to try breed a nocturnal version at the minute. I have Majestic going in my manual apiaries but haven't standardised an Imperial princess yet. Once I've done that and got royal jelly it's on to getting an alveary for my demonic princess so I can get her out of the nether for good, hooray!
The autarchic gates on the sides of the apiaries have the 'missing queen or princess' condition so that when the bees are finished everything is extracted out all in one go. They're then fed into apiarist pipes, with princesses going up through the white route, drones going down through black and items heading right through the blue route. I've got four of this setup chained together with all the items exiting the right side into the processing area. The first drone is fed back into the apiary with the 'drones' condition, further ones exit into the void pipe with the 'any bees' one. The void pipe can be replaced with a chest if I need drones but at this point I have quite enough so all excess drones are getting voided.
In the processing area combs are fed into the hopper on the centrifuge, with a 'has work' gate to turn on the peat engine when needed. The fact that all combs are extracted at the end of a queen's cycle rather than as they are produced helps with not wasting fuel. This works especially well if you have identical princesses which are synchronised together like my two tropical princesses, who offload 5 or 6 silky combs each at about the same time.
Another autarchic gate and wooden pipe empties the centrifuge, and loops honey drops and silky propolis back into the original item line. Other items head into the gold chest. The silky propolis goes back into the centrifuge with the combs, and the honey drops carry on into a squeezer with a similar 'has work' gate setup to the centrifuge. The honey is then piped into the iron tank which in turn keeps the analyzer full. A final autarchic gate pumps the propolis into the bee products chest.
I usually wait for a buildup of honey drops before I put peat in the squeezer's engine as I sometimes want to save a stack for other things, and it's more fuel efficient to squeeze a lot at once anyway. Bees is the thing I do a lot of manual work on while all my other automatic stuff slaves away so I'm usually around to keep an eye on it.
At the minute I've got the two nocturnal, poison free, normal biome tolerant tropical princesses I mentioned going so I plan to add a carpenter that makes woven silk automatically when I enable it, and later swap it over to make candles. The other two princesses are fast Industrious, I'm using a third to try breed a nocturnal version at the minute. I have Majestic going in my manual apiaries but haven't standardised an Imperial princess yet. Once I've done that and got royal jelly it's on to getting an alveary for my demonic princess so I can get her out of the nether for good, hooray!
wow, that's quite an awesome looking setup, and it's not that complicated, quite awesome indeed.
I guess breeding different species really need to be done by hand, especially since apiarists pipes only have bees available that are currently known, so you can't set up the breeding of different species when you haven't discovered them yet.
I was already thinking why you just wouldn't constantly have the gate pumping, but now I see, very clever of you to save yourself some recources. I was always afraid of overloading the machines, but since there's hoppers now, and reduced item production, you won't overload them very fast. in a creative world I placed about 50 apiaries around, all with wooden pipes pumping out the resources and connected to a pipe line, and apiarist pipes putting the bees back into the apiary, but the pipes kept getting overloaded and spit out all the bees. I was able to breed upto dilligent and noble, but it was very inefficient and I often lost princesses.
I was thinking (but never tried) to also use apiarists chests to keep drones, with apiarists pipes telling what drones goes where, and any excess would get taken to another line where they'd get dumped/voided.
I also really want to know how to breed species with certain conditions, but I have no idea on how to do that
I guess breeding different species really need to be done by hand, especially since apiarists pipes only have bees available that are currently known, so you can't set up the breeding of different species when you haven't discovered them yet.
I was already thinking why you just wouldn't constantly have the gate pumping, but now I see, very clever of you to save yourself some recources. I was always afraid of overloading the machines, but since there's hoppers now, and reduced item production, you won't overload them very fast. in a creative world I placed about 50 apiaries around, all with wooden pipes pumping out the resources and connected to a pipe line, and apiarist pipes putting the bees back into the apiary, but the pipes kept getting overloaded and spit out all the bees. I was able to breed upto dilligent and noble, but it was very inefficient and I often lost princesses.
I was thinking (but never tried) to also use apiarists chests to keep drones, with apiarists pipes telling what drones goes where, and any excess would get taken to another line where they'd get dumped/voided.
I also really want to know how to breed species with certain conditions, but I have no idea on how to do that
Thanks! With logistics pipes these systems get even crazier and faster on the item processing end, can't wait to have them back. You're exactly right about breeding species you haven't discovered, it is a challenge to get around. With apiarists pipes you can effectively build a condition like this though:
This bee is NOT pure common OR pure cultivated OR cultivated-common OR common-cultivated
...therefore it must be at least partially diligent or noble, pipe that bee through the 'any bees' direction to a chest or whatever and put the rest back into breeding. Then you have that species in your apiarist pipe menu and you can rebuild your system using better conditions. As far as put hive bees in, get EoL bees out though it's very difficult to account for every possible situation that might occur without a veritable mass of pipes. Besides, I like to tailor mine to have all the right traits and produce as much of the right resources as I need as I go along.
Certain conditions like nocturnal or cave bees you mean? I can probably offer some rough advice, with a bit of work I can usually end up with what I'm after. It's mainly picking a good two initial species to cross and just weeding out the unwanted traits while keeping the good ones. To get my nocturnal non-poisonous bees for example it took a lot of modest-cultivated crossing to get nocturnal cultivated, followed by a lot of crossing those with tropical to carry over the nocturnal and 'none' effect, then crossing those back with more tropical to eliminate the cultivated gene whilst trying not to lose the desirable traits I already bred in. It can be a very protracted process and sometimes you just get unlucky and get all the traits you didn't want, especially if you're aiming for recessive ones. That makes it extra awesome when it goes right though!
*goes back to apiary building for another few days*
This bee is NOT pure common OR pure cultivated OR cultivated-common OR common-cultivated
...therefore it must be at least partially diligent or noble, pipe that bee through the 'any bees' direction to a chest or whatever and put the rest back into breeding. Then you have that species in your apiarist pipe menu and you can rebuild your system using better conditions. As far as put hive bees in, get EoL bees out though it's very difficult to account for every possible situation that might occur without a veritable mass of pipes. Besides, I like to tailor mine to have all the right traits and produce as much of the right resources as I need as I go along.
Certain conditions like nocturnal or cave bees you mean? I can probably offer some rough advice, with a bit of work I can usually end up with what I'm after. It's mainly picking a good two initial species to cross and just weeding out the unwanted traits while keeping the good ones. To get my nocturnal non-poisonous bees for example it took a lot of modest-cultivated crossing to get nocturnal cultivated, followed by a lot of crossing those with tropical to carry over the nocturnal and 'none' effect, then crossing those back with more tropical to eliminate the cultivated gene whilst trying not to lose the desirable traits I already bred in. It can be a very protracted process and sometimes you just get unlucky and get all the traits you didn't want, especially if you're aiming for recessive ones. That makes it extra awesome when it goes right though!
*goes back to apiary building for another few days*
I have the following setup. I only put pure bees in there, and cross breed them manually
The turtles take out all items in the apiary and compare them to the last 2 slots (Which are a princess and a drone). It will then place 1 princess and 1 drone into the wooden chest on the side, which is being sucked out by the pipes.
Excess drones and other items will be put in the diamond chests by the turtle, which is being sucked to the diamond pipe which seperates the drones from the goodies.
The turtles take out all items in the apiary and compare them to the last 2 slots (Which are a princess and a drone). It will then place 1 princess and 1 drone into the wooden chest on the side, which is being sucked out by the pipes.
Excess drones and other items will be put in the diamond chests by the turtle, which is being sucked to the diamond pipe which seperates the drones from the goodies.
That's a really nice idea, I've been meaning to do Computercraft and bees since Dire did it but I'm a bit too used to my old apiarist pipe method. I'm not amazing at coding but something like you've done isn't too hard, maybe I'll play with it later.
I generally build two simple types of systems, one for constant producing of bees and second for copying bees. First one (duplicated on creative) looks like this:
Basically everything is extracted from beehives, than in apiarist pipes bees go downward (black), items to the left(green) and anything upward (white). Princess and drone will get into apiary and any excess drones, as they can't go into black route, will go to anything route and then they will be voided. Of course drone output can be piped further to rebreading / storage / melting to DNA.
Another setup is for cloning bees (FTB map FTW):
It is slightly modified, items go one way and drones the other. Every apiary except the first has only princess inside. This way pair placed in the first apiary will be eventually duplicated in every other apiary. In this example I also got a good amount of frugal and austere drones, so it could also count as auto breading.
Basically everything is extracted from beehives, than in apiarist pipes bees go downward (black), items to the left(green) and anything upward (white). Princess and drone will get into apiary and any excess drones, as they can't go into black route, will go to anything route and then they will be voided. Of course drone output can be piped further to rebreading / storage / melting to DNA.
Another setup is for cloning bees (FTB map FTW):
It is slightly modified, items go one way and drones the other. Every apiary except the first has only princess inside. This way pair placed in the first apiary will be eventually duplicated in every other apiary. In this example I also got a good amount of frugal and austere drones, so it could also count as auto breading.
I second that wow. I always thought drones had to go in the bottom and princesses in the top, but I can actually make my system much more compact than it is. Nice work Zjarek.
I love this thread
I love this thread
I second that wow. I always thought drones had to go in the bottom and princesses in the top, but I can actually make my system much more compact than it is. Nice work Zjarek.
I love this thread
I think that has changed in the version changes in the past, but yea, drones and princesses can be pumped in from the same side
Yeah It's probably changed since I learned how to do that setup, I noticed Forestry got more clever with knowing what items go where in machines at some point. With my new found knowledge I cleaned my system up a lot and hid most of the pipes in the wall with facades, It still does exactly the same thing but it's so much more compact and nice looking now:
Thanks man, I'm loving the facades. I guess I could even run that liquid pipe through the wall too. You got anything going yet with all this inspiration? Nobody else seems to want to talk bees much (600 views though, come talk to us lurkers we won't bite) so this might as well be 'Yusu and Magic's bee discussion thread' now.
Thanks man, I'm loving the facades. I guess I could even run that liquid pipe through the wall too. You got anything going yet with all this inspiration? Nobody else seems to want to talk bees much (600 views though, come talk to us lurkers we won't bite) so this might as well be 'Yusu and Magic's bee discussion thread' now.
haha, our own personal bee discussion topic xD
I haven't been playing the 1.4.2 FTB modpack alot, instead I am playing the 1.2.5 FTB insanity map right now, for fun till FTB 1.4.5 gets released.
I'm not yet at the bee stage, but I have some ideas in mind on how to do it. right now I am figuring out how to make a compact solar array factory... I like logistics pipes, but in 1.2.5 they just keep getting jammed up or screw up whenever you log back into your world...
someone said in a video of DW20 that made me think how awesome it'd be to see what species you need to breed together to get a new species in NEI itself, it'd save me so much work if you could just look it up in NEI.
I also hope Extra Bees gets fixed and put back into the pack in 1.4.5... I never got to play with it, but I am interested, though they seriously need to put out a wiki...
Extra bees had almost exactly this functionality (it isn't in this shape at the moment). It basically show that there is mutation of bee with undiscovered species, or discovered species from give branch. For example first diligent bee would have information that it mutates with bee from common branch (cultivated to unweary) and second one with undiscovered branch (unweary to industrious). This was a thing which really got me into bees, it wasn't feeling as cheaty as guides, but provided fun game mechanics. Extra bees supposedly have the mutations fixed. I started 1.4.5 world recently, so we'll see (self mod installation with ftb configs).
yea, if extra bees can get the things working that it's showcasing, it'll be a really handy mod for the bees.
and diamond pipes have become a really good alternative in 1.4.2 when you don't have apiarists pipes yet, because they finally act like a semi-insertion pipe.
you can't get as complicated as with an apiarists pipe, but you can get things automated enough to get working towards one
and diamond pipes have become a really good alternative in 1.4.2 when you don't have apiarists pipes yet, because they finally act like a semi-insertion pipe.
you can't get as complicated as with an apiarists pipe, but you can get things automated enough to get working towards one
There is an MCF thread that shows you what to combine together.
** EDIT ** Does anyone know where a script for selecting particular traits using CCTurtles could be found?