Bee Breeding: A Few Questions

[Eunomiac]

Bees: Of all the things on this Earth, I have never felt so clueless about a topic while everyone around me seems to understand it so well. I have a ton of questions, but I suppose the most burning ones are the four that follow; any answers/insight you are able to provide will be much appreciated!

1) Does anyone know a ball-park figure for the odds of a given trait being passed on when the two competing traits are ...

• Both Dominant
• One Dominant, One Recessive
• Both Recessive

... and, do the traits on a Princess have a greater/lesser chance of being passed on than the traits on a Drone, or is bee type irrelevant?

2) After a Queen dies and leaves a litter of Drones behind, are the traits of each Drone determined completely independently of each other? Or does the system distribute traits among them following some sort of logic?

3) What do I do with hybrid bees? Are they still valuable in breeding for mutations, or should I ignore them in favor of purebreds? Speaking of...

4) How do you purify a line of bees? I hear people talking about this all the time, but I have no idea how to do it --- if the traits passed down are random, it seems to me you're just as likely to take a step backwards than you are to purify your line, no?

I know it's a lot to ask, but a quick example addressing questions #3 and #4---perhaps by running through a few generations and showing how the traits/species/mutations might progress---would be a huge help. I'd happily repay the kindness by editing all I learn into the FTB wiki; while bees aren't my thing, writing is!

 

[ManaaniWanderer]

4.Purifiying bees is done by repeatedly breeding bees together that have the same trait as hybrid and repeating until that trait is pure ie you'd breed a common/cultivated with a common/cultivated repeatedly until you got a pure princess and drone and then over several more generations the other genes should even out.

 

[MilConDoin]

Without looking at the code or alternatively using a huuuge number of test cases exact answers aren't possible (I think). So the following is an interpolation of my experience:
1) Dominant/Recessive has an equal change of being chosen, but the resulting princess will always use the dominant one in their primary allele, if a dominant and a recessive trait are competing. Also the offspring doesn't seem to care in regard to probability of the received stats.
2) Each trait is chosen independently from another trait. It chooses the primary or secondary allele of the princess and the other one of the drone. Each offspring chooses their traits independently of the other offspring.
3) Keep them for a while, if they have traits you don't have in pure bees. When you have pure bees for all these traits, put them in the genepool.
4) Breed bees with the desired traits. Analyze after each cycle. Refine on and on. Try to breed in the maximum fertility as soon as possible (4 drones, e.g. via wintry bees), so that you'll have as many chances as possible for good bees. When you breed through the mutations, repurify after each step until everything is stable again, then produce ~20 drones of this stage, so that you can always go back to the stage, if you have bad luck with future mutations. Use soul frames when you want to mutate and chocolate frames when you want to purify.

 

[Yippy Kai Aye]

This doesn't answer your questions, but I had the same questions when I began bees. My answer was to go immediately to the top tier bee machines. Once I had these it wasn't long until I had the traits and bees I was looking for. If I were you, I would work my way to the Imperial and Industrious bees and get those machines. Direwolf20 did a mod spotlight that was really helpful.