Bee question to the experts

[baw179]

@ BB, thanks for taking the time to write all that, it's really helpful and appreciated. I spent most of my time doing tree breeding yesterday but I did get a genepool and RC tank built and currently have about 10 buckets of DNA. I've not tried it yet, but is it possible to automatically pump bees in and out of the indexer?

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Beats me, I've yet to build one. Saw the people bawling about them getting client crashes because of them and decided to steer clear. Made a few regular bee chests and found I can pump stuff in/out of them no worries, and that they've got more then enough storage as it is.

Though come to think of it, I've read reports that one of the crash fixes for the indexer is to pump stuff out, so I guess the answer's "yes" for that, too.

 

[egor66]

yes it is possible indexer is only a chest really.

 

[snooder]

@ BB, thanks for taking the time to write all that, it's really helpful and appreciated. I spent most of my time doing tree breeding yesterday but I did get a genepool and RC tank built and currently have about 10 buckets of DNA. I've not tried it yet, but is it possible to automatically pump bees in and out of the indexer?

It is, but you have to watch it, cause drones have a tendency to unstack if you pump them in with BC pipes. And they don't stack up when they enter the indexer like you'd think they should.

 

[baw179]

Me again.

So these serums... No humidity/temp tolerance serums. What does this mean exactly? Does it mean that if I apply it to the bee it will work in any humudity/temp, like up 2 and down 2 or does it mean something else? Also what does fast flowering serum do and same for default territory serum and why/when would I use them? I see some people say that shortest lifespan serum is a good one to have, but why?

Another question : for max productivity is it better to keep the bee alive as long as possible and use proven frames, or is it better to have them with shortest lifespan?

 

[Hydra]

- No, it means that it has no tolerances. It's basically the 'default' for most bees. You really want to get atleast the both_2 tolerance serums. It's also really easy to get ones that are even better if you just use an acclimatizer to increase the tolerance. Since it's a genetic trait you can get both_5 temp tolerance serums that way.

- Longer lifespan is better because it will spend less time recycling back into the alveary.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Fast flowering means that if the bee can pollinate trees, it'll do so faster then it usually would. (Having two different types of trees within the bee's working range may result in some leaf blocks mutating. Using grafters on these blocks increases (guarantees?) sapling drops from them. Yes, you can breed trees like bees, using bees.)

The territory serum increases the working range of the bee (or in your case, sets it to average). Higher range means the bee doesn't need its flower-type item to be so close, nor do trees need to be so close to get pollinated, nor do things need to be so close to benefit (or suffer) from the bee's effect.

Most bee species you come across are only of any use in order to mutate to another species. Given that mutation only happens when a princess dies and produces more offspring, decreasing lifespan as much as possible will lead to faster advancement through the different races. The racial trait isn't the only way to do it, mind you.

While alive, a bee will produce at the same rate regardless of its lifespan. But a dead bee isn't producing resources, so even in an automated setup where your hives are automatically refilled with princesses and drones, longer lived bees will produce slightly more resources (as they spend less time in your piping system and more time in the hives).