Bee Purifying Help Needed

[ShameWillFollow]

I've finally gotten some automatic apiaries set up with a few choice pure-bred species producing some things for me, and I realized (after noticing how slowly my pollen gets produced) that I could probably benefit from making all of my producing bees into fast workers. Unfortunately, I have no experience with any of these higher-tier bee machines required to do this. I realize I could read up on what they do (and I have, so don't tell me I didn't try) but I'm too new to bees to really understand how I can apply them to what I want to do.

Basically, how do I create that "perfect bee" that I can use for automatic item producing? I'm assuming I'd need a perfect princess and a perfect drone to start with, so that they produce more "perfect" bees and the cycle will continue. In order for that first perfect pair to produce nothing but perfect offspring with the same traits, does this mean that both the active and inactive traits for the drone and princess need to both be perfect and identical? That way there is no chance that the offspring will have anything but those perfect traits.

Am I on the right track with my thinking, here? I'd like to make sure I actually know what I'm talking about before I jump into trying to replicate it. Thanks for any advice.

 

[ThemsAllTook]

Yep, sounds exactly right to me.

 

[ShameWillFollow]

When inoculating a bee, will it transfer the trait of the serum to both the inactive and active trait of the bee?

 

[ThemsAllTook]

I think each charge of serum has a chance of changing either the active or inactive trait, and the bee will stay in the inoculator's active slot until both have been changed. Leave the bee in for long enough (assuming you have enough serum) and both should change. Mine usually get fully inoculated in about 4 cycles.

 

[ShameWillFollow]

Ok, ok, sounds easy enough. And just to make sure I understand the machines correctly, the isolator creates the serum of the trait I want, I can replicate this serum in the replicator to get multiple vials of the same trait, I'll want to purify these serums in the purifier (using liquid DNA from the genepool) and then I can put these purified serums into the inoculator with the bee I'd like to make "perfect". That sound correct?

 

[ThemsAllTook]

Yep! The replicator isn't super useful, really; you'll put your serum vial into a synthesizer first to fill it up to 16 charges, then into a purifier to increase its quality, then into the inoculator to apply it to a bee. After you've used some of its charges, you can put it back into the synthesizer to restore them, and the purifier again if its quality decreases.

 

[ShameWillFollow]

Ok so the charges on the serum indicate how many "uses" it has? Also, I'm assuming there's some sort of indicator that shows you the quality of the serum?

 

[ThemsAllTook]

Yeah. For example, after you've filled up some serum in a synthesizer, its tooltip will look something like this, for example:

High Fertility Serum
16 Charges
Awful Quality

While it's in the purifier, Awful Quality will slowly change to Excellent Quality. Unless you have a severe shortage of liquid DNA or MJ, and/or want to take a risk, there's probably no reason to use anything other than Excellent Quality serum.

 

[ShameWillFollow]

Perfect. I think I've got a good grip on it now. I'll have to get started at making a few of these machines tomorrow. Thanks for the help!

 

[netmc]

You could also do it the old fashioned way by breeding bees together with the traits you want. Reading up on punnet squares is a good way to start, but it takes a bit of knowledge and a little bit of trial and error to figure it out entirely. If you decide to do it manually, clone the bees you want to breed together first, as when you breed cross-breeds together, you sometimes end up losing the strain you wanted to keep. If you get a bad combination, you can always go back to the "pure" pair and start the cloning process over again. Then as you get the desired traits in your bee, stabilize the strain (where queen and offspring have exactly the same traits), then the new strain becomes your "pure" pair, then you clone again and start with the next trait.

If you are breeding together a bee that has 1 drone (i.e. rocky), instead of breeding the queen, breed the drone with another queen that has 3 or 4 offspring. That way you have more chances to get the high fertility in the new princess.

 

[Bibble]

Yeah, doing it manually is a pain, particularly when you are looking for specific traits.

With regards to "production ready" queens, I'd recommend the following process (assuming that you have the machines up and running):
1. Find wintry bees. These have the highest fertility. Very handy trait when trying to make serums. Breed a few of these in a cycle, run through the isolator. Keep any you are interested in, but the one we're looking for is extreme fertility.

2. Use this serum to inoculate a native rocky princess/drone combo. These bees are fanstastic for traits. They have: Nocturnal, cave dwelling, flyer, both 2 temp and humidity and rock pollination. Grab the lot and you have a spectacularly versatile bee template.

3. Finally grab the fast production off of a cultivated line (inoculate with fertility for a few runs, if you like).

You can add a shorter/elongated lifespan to this, if you like. That one is entirely down to preference. You'll probably get an effect cancellation serum or two from it, too, which is useful for taming the more agressive species.


My previous setup was underground (hence the cave dwelling/rock pollinating), with a bee of most species that I encountered. The spare drones went into a chest, where they stacked up, so a stack could be analysed for a single honey drop (to double their DNA output). Once I have a stack of each, I tend to just let it go straight into the genepool. It runs on a server, so the amount of DNA I get is silly anyway.

 

[ShameWillFollow]

So your goal is to create a perfect pair of rocky bees as your template? How do you go about using this template to create perfect bees of other species?

 

[Exe19]

@ShameWillFollow: It's not about rocky bees itself, it's about extracting most valuable traits from them for your super-bee.

 

[Bibble]

Yeah, you need to get a lot of drones and throw them into the isolator. The serums that come out can be used to change specific traits of a bee without changing the rest.