Applied Energistics/DW20/Bees

[P46EY]

Hi guys, having watched DW20's Forgecraft vid entitled Bees and Knapsacks

I decided to try a similar setup using the version of AE thats currently installed with the latest (recommended) DW20 pack. Im having a slight problem getting the bees to go back into the alvearies. Im not sure if its something to do with the way AE handles the bees data or if Im doing something wrong.
The process I followed was to innoculate the bees with the serums I need to get them to be productive underground (ie rock pollination and cave dwelling) then let them do their business. Once the princess and drones were back in the AE system I put placeholders (couldnt think of a better description) in the ME-Export cable. The first time around everything seems OK.. Bees are pulled out of storage and back into the alvearies... however, once the next cycle is completed the bees end up staying in the storage discs. Nothing has changed as with the serums being applied to both princess and drones I would assume they would be classed as pure bred... Ive checked a few using the beealizer and none of the traits have been changed. Im just wondering if anyone can shed some light as to where Im going wrong or if this is even possible with this build of AE.
Sorry if Ive rambled on but Ive tried to answer as many questions as possible and be as descriptive as I could.
Cheers n Beers.

 

[b0bst3r]

Did you use Fuzzy export buses?

The bees only need 1 trait difference from what you put in the GUI to be a different bee (with normal BUSs).

Also whilst you brought this up DW20s method will only work if you have 1 apiary per bee breed, as soon as you start creating multiples of the same princess/drone bee species AE is no good.

To prompt the "oh no b0b yer wrong" lemme explain.

If you hook 2 centrifuges (forestry) up to AE and put in the same comb in the export bus, AE will only send to both when the first is full, it will not send equal amounts to each.

Now take that and apply it to your bees, 2 apiaries, 2 sets of identical imperial princess/drones in each apiary, once a cycle completes princess A goes back to apiary A, drone A goes back into apiary A, princess B goes back into apiary B (because the queen occupies apiary A slot) and drone B goes into apiary A, leaving apiary B without a drone.

It will only work with 2 conditions, apiary A is full and both apiary princesses are making more than 1 drone per cycle.

 

[P46EY]

I didnt use a fuzzy export bus as they are not included in the build that comes with the latest DW20 pack (at least I cant find it in NEI) to I just used a plain old Export Bus. Im just running another test cycle now (it takes its time as the bees have longest lifespan traits already from the old BC set up) but I think it may be because Id put the princess through the beealizer (may be but not confirmed).
As for the 2 alvearies setup... yeah I just found that out. One of the alvearies got all 14 drones whereas the other just got a princess... thats been fixed now as having 2 sets of emerald bees was just greedy LoL (my last setup using BC has generated 10k emeralds so its not like Im running short).
As I say, Ill run this cycle through and post again as to the results as I know none of the bees currently in the Export Bus slots have been through a beealizer.
Thanks for the reply btw.

 

[P46EY]

Nope still no dice... The system has no issue with the drones and replaces them no problems... the queens however all just seem to go back into storage. Im going to try running all the bees through an analyzer (if AE doenst struggle with that too) and see if that makes any difference... its as though something minor is changing when the queen reaches the end of her life cycle although none of the traits have actually changed.


Edit..... I think I worked out whats going wrong... It would seem that Princesses have a trait that shows how many generations have been bred in captivity... but drones dont. Looks like that might be the issue as obviously every cycle the number of bees bred in captivity would change.... looks like its back to build craft and apiarists pipes for the auto breeding

 

[P46EY]

K, so I managed to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. Problem was the current build of AE included with DW20 pack does not contain Fuzzy Export/Import buses. The problem is these buses look specifically for what is put into their sorting slots and therefore when a new generation of princess is "born" she will have slightly different values to the previous one (generations in captivity) and will therefore not be input into the alveary by the ME-Export Bus. The work around I used (for anyone interested in using AE for bee products) was to setup an emerald pipe that would just pull out the princess and drones, apiary pipe to sort bees back into the alveary (standard BC/Forestry/ExtraBees stuff) and an overflow pipe which links to a chest. For bee products I just setup an ME-Import Bus but filled the slots with the relevant combs (so it doesnt pull the bees out).I also added an import bus onto the "overflow" chest so that any excess bees can automatically be sent to the Genepool for processing into DNA.
The main reason for this setup is my distilled bees produce more oil than Im currently using so this will use the ME-Storage as a kind of buffer before stuff hits the squeezers and centrifuge. Hopefully this post will help someone out if they hit the same wall I did.