Bee Breeding Thread.

[Codex]

Bees are some of my favorite things in this modpack, and I would love to hear what all you have to say on the matter. Success stories? Failures? Theorizing? Bee breeding tips?

Please share them !

Currently on the server I'm playing on, I've been breeding commons, and it seems no matter what, the game always decides giving me forest-common hybrids is the only way to go! I should probably change what I"m breeding. I did get 2 pure cultivated drones so far though

 

[Spikednate12]

I have two pure Imperial princesses, four noble princess pure, four majestic princesses pure. Multiple cultivated princess pures and a decent amount of mundane speices. Honestly i didnt think bee keeping would be something i did, but now clearly i am a little OCD with it. Still do it all by hand as well.

 

[Poppycocks]

Heh, I always get cultivated hybrids when I try to clean up the common strain. Also, for some reason, I often get majestic bees when trying to clean the cultivated strain . Wish there was a biome more suitable for cleaning those two strains as they're a base for many other.

I currently have 8 apiaries with imperials, they strain is so pure that I only ever get Fast / Normal / nocturnal. It's nice as I don't have to waste time/honey on analyzing anymore. And since I'm still running an old pack (the one with extra bees in them) I'm thinking about... converting them to those... greek thingambob bees, as you get royal jelly and honey combs from them - which sounds good for alveary production.

Getting industrious bees was a pain in the arse, I've been getting majestic bees constantly, bloody nuisance lemme tell you. The strain ain't exactly perfect and I'm thinking about mixing some of the imperial fanciness into them, that would be nice .

Why's the alveary so horrendously hard to make anyway?

 

[Codex]

I got a pure cultivated princess and a bunch of cultivated-noble drones!
Also getting fast strain on most of my bees now, all thanks to cultivated taking ages.


I believe its because you can change the temperature and humidity with the alveary... I'm probably only gonna use it for sinisters >.<

 

[Rakankrad]

I've played with bees for quite a while (about 8 months maybe).. It takes quite a while to get used to. The best tip I can give you is to keep at it. There's a few good breeding charts out there if you want to get spoiled on how to breed certain bee types. http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic...sion-new-extra-bees-combinations-coming-soon/ is a good one.

Personally I'm hoping that Extra Bees gets stable enough cause the machines it adds are really neat. I always end up with too many hybrids that I don't want and instead of void piping them, I can turn them into liquid DNA to make other bees (or serums in the latest versions of EB).

Success story: Bred Ender Bee with Beatific instead of End effect, Fast Worker and Long Life
Failure: Lost a whole pure bred Heroic line by trying to make it have better genomes

 

[Codex]

I know a fair bit about breeding, just never really gotten into it before. Really excited for extra bees though. I really need a valiant princess for my valiant line.

Yeah, the gene splicing thing looks like a good solution for the countless drones I get but never use... I can only imagine it getting worse as time goes on. I saw a neat design for a cloning machine for bees though. It slowly spreads the genomes by sending the drones from one pair to a bunch of apiaries in a line, until they all have the same genomes.

 

[Mero]

. Wish there was a biome more suitable for cleaning those two strains as they're a base for many other.

Create your own perfect bee breeding world with mystcraft.

Tiny biomes: Plains, Forest, Desert, Jungle, Tagia, Swamp
Always Day
No Weather
Flat

You can find a spot where all of those biomes meet in a very small area.

They will all work 100% of the time as there is no rain or night.

 

[JuliCash]

Is Anyone have tried to make the breeding automaticly?
Im also doing the breeding manually and just the production automated, but i think there are maybe some possibilities...

It would be cool, if someone showing their progress so far...

 

[Codex]

I got a majestic-noble hybrid drone and a pure noble princess. Should I breed them?

Or would pure cultivated and the princess be better? I also have cultivated-majestic and cultivated-noble

 

[zemerick]

Is Anyone have tried to make the breeding automaticly?
Im also doing the breeding manually and just the production automated, but i think there are maybe some possibilities...

It would be cool, if someone showing their progress so far...

Yea...I've been trying. Note the word try though

I've had issues with overflow all over the place. Thinking about just voiding anything not purebred ( and keeping a few pures out of the system in case I ever need them. ) Well, princesses would be exempt from the void obviously.

On the plus side, it made me ridiculous amounts of resources before the overflow began. Something like 4 stacks each of dripping and honey combs. A couple stacks of pollen and a couple stacks of royal jelly. I might be able to make an alveary now.

I wish there were pipes for the specific genome attributes as well. Production speed, lifetime, etc. Since there is not though, I've found ignoring this while breeding up is best. Then, once you've got a few pure princesses and drones, breed in something better slowly.

I got a majestic-noble hybrid drone and a pure noble princess. Should I breed them?

Or would pure cultivated and the princess be better? I also have cultivated-majestic and cultivated-noble

I got my best results for upgrades when I only bred pures together.

 

[Rakankrad]

The best thing to automate bee breeding is to use Logistic Pipes and Additional BC Objects (Insertion pipes ftw). Logistic Pipes adds some bee based pipes. Then you can tell some other pipes to just supply 1 of each (princess and drone). I used to have a system for that made back in 1.3.2 but I got rid of the world when I moved on to 1.4.x

 

[Codex]

Got a pair of nobles, a pure majestic drone and a pure diligent drone...

Delicious progress!

 

[Larroke]

9 pure strains of normal normal industrious and Imperial, I think half the imperial are nocturnal.. Currently trying to get a Fast/Long (Both_2 so I can use in ocean biome) nocturnal Jungle bee strain to make me silky combs.

haven't tried the ender/nether bees yet,may start experimenting with that soon.

 

[Fuzzzie]

This helped me understand bee breeding a lot better. Includes the extra bees bees too

http://hexflower.com/

 

[WTFFFS]

Create your own perfect bee breeding world with mystcraft.

Tiny biomes: Plains, Forest, Desert, Jungle, Tagia, Swamp
Always Day
No Weather
Flat

You can find a spot where all of those biomes meet in a very small area.

They will all work 100% of the time as there is no rain or night.

Add in Hell biome\drop jungle since tropical bees can work cheerfully in normal biomes and it's perfect apart from having to wall\roof your workspace to avoid Ghastly explosions

 

[zemerick]

Warning: Apiarist Pipe seems to prioritize "Any Bees" over "Princesses". It took me a bit to figure out what was going on, when I finally saw a princess take the wrong path. Changing "Any Bees" to "Anything" worked. Drones would take Anything, and princesses would take princesses.

 

[JuliCash]

I have a little Question:
If two species are producing the same Output (e.g. cultivated and common), is there any difference in the rates they produce, or is this only trait-dependant.

thx

 

[Flipz]

Slightly off-topic but still bee-related question: I've read somewhere that bees have lifespans. Does this apply to bees stored in chests, or only those that are breeding and/or producing honey and combs? In other words, is it worth it to run around my world scooping up all the beehives (i.e. so they don't get blown up by creepers), or should I tough it out and wait until I can build the Apiarist's Chest?

 

[Maico]

Slightly off-topic but still bee-related question: I've read somewhere that bees have lifespans. Does this apply to bees stored in chests, or only those that are breeding and/or producing honey and combs? In other words, is it worth it to run around my world scooping up all the beehives (i.e. so they don't get blown up by creepers), or should I tough it out and wait until I can build the Apiarist's Chest?

The Lifespan applies to the time they lives once a princess and a drone are merged inside an apiary. So go ahead and scoop all hives you see

 

[Tenebrion]

After countless hours of getting purebreds of every end-of-the-line-bee I started building a automated breeder and I just thought I'll share what I came up with.

Here's the setup I made where I have three identical setups in different places with imperial purebred, Industrious and demonic (demonic located in the nether ofc).

I use the Autarchic Gates to pump out the content when the queen is missing, which is an option already built in.
Since Apiarist Pipe gives the things a speed boost, not unlike the golden pipe, the drones that doesn't fit in to the Apiary it will shoot out of the pipe and hit the obsidian pipe in the middle of the setup and it'll disappear through the voidpipe. So the apiary will always get one new drone and princess when the queen has died, all items will pump right in to the enderchest and the overflow drones will go right in to the void. Then I just use a worldanchor in the middle to keep the process going when I'm not around.