Alveary automation and Thermal Dynamics

[Anton_]

Nifty. Again, pyure's curious: Are you able to get itemducts to pull from alvearies the way anton is trying to?

Do you mean using servos on the alveary end? If so, then no, all I could make work was your suggestion to use only a retriever on the chest end.

Alveary -> chest
-----------------
Attaching a servo to the alveary doesn't work.
Attaching a retriever to the chest does work.

Chest-> alveary
-----------------
Attaching a servo to the chest does work.
Attaching a retriever to the alveary doesn't work.

So (it seems) attaching servos/retrievers to alvearies is where the problem lies!

I found the same - Alvearies are happy to have things pulled from them or pushed at them by distant inventories.

Also, specialised Alveary blocks like daylight, sieves, etc., or the top level of blocks, cannot be used for duct attachment.

Here's my revised setup, which works:

Things are pulled and pushed through the same Alveary block - i.e., the one just above the Alveary Lighting block. Pulling is by the Retriever (empty blacklist) on top of the Crate, and pushing is by the Servo (whitelist Princess and Drone, ignore NBT/metadata/oredict/modowner) to the side of the Crate.

Because the distance from Crate-side to Alveary is shorter than Crate-side to Crate-top, the bees go to the Alveary - without that extra distance, the bees just go round and round through the Crate (out the side, in the top, and repeat). If the Crate was up against the Lighting block, the Crate-top and the Alveary would be the same distance from the Servo, and it seems that the Retriever wins.

Pollen Clusters (and Combs) are also pulled into the Crate, but not the pollen collected by the Alveary Sieve block.

 

[Pyure]

Nice guys. Science!

 

[SolManX]

... but not the pollen collected by the Alveary Sieve block.

I'm not sure how the addon blocks work but have to ask if you've tried a separate retriever/itemduct line directly on the sieve block?

 

[Anton_]

I'm not sure how the addon blocks work but have to ask if you've tried a separate retriever/itemduct line directly on the sieve block?

I have - it does nothing. I even tried a Hopper directly below the sieve block, again nothing.

 

[SolManX]

I have - it does nothing. I even tried a Hopper directly below the sieve block, again nothing.

That's a shame.

 

[Anton_]

At the risk of belabouring the point, here is the most compact setup I've found:

• the Retriever pulls everything (but not Pollen Sieve pollen!) from the bottom of the Alveary block into the Crate, and
• the Servo pushes bees out from the top of the Crate back into the Alveary.

With dirt back in place it looks quite tidy, and the Crate remains accessible.