Bee question to the experts
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Thanks. So for my own info, where should you stop using the soul frames in the mutation process? Obviously you'd want to use them if you have, say, only 1 unactive trait of the bee you're aiming for, but you say not to use them when you have 2 of each trait? Can you explain why? Is it because both of the traits for the species I want are already both on the active side? If I instead had a cultivated majestic princess and a matching drone, with the majestic trait on the inactive side on both, then I'd still need to use the soul frames for that generation yes?
A noble bee together with a cultivated bee has a base chance of 8% to mutate to a majestic bee. Each soul frame multiplies that chance by 150%, so three frames grant a 337.5% multiplier. In the case of the majestic bee mutation, three frames should bring you up to a 27% chance to get a majestic trait per bee produced - so long as the parents are noble and cultivated. Those are the only match that can be used to mutate to majestic.
Cultivated and majestic bees together have no chance to mutate into anything. Hence putting soul frames in gives you a great big multiplier to your 0% chance to see a new species appear, leaving you with a 0% chance of seeing a new species appear. Soul frames have nothing to do with whether active/inactive traits will swap or disappear altogether - that's an entirely different matter.
Cultivated and majestic bees together have no chance to mutate into anything. Hence putting soul frames in gives you a great big multiplier to your 0% chance to see a new species appear, leaving you with a 0% chance of seeing a new species appear. Soul frames have nothing to do with whether active/inactive traits will swap or disappear altogether - that's an entirely different matter.
the short answer is yes if a bee can mutate the soul frames will help, when you have hybrids with the species you want & one from the previous strain you can rebreed with chocolate frames to force the bees to die off faster to get to pure a little faster, us only use soul frame to aid the mutation, the soul frame will mutate the species not the traits, lets say you have pure princess & a hybrid drone you mate both you see the queen in the dominant so if you ID you see that as the first row, the second row is whats added from the drone "not exactly but for this its fine" then on death you see a new princess & 3 drones the drones are not stacked so we know there not the same, after IDing all we see one is pure but has lost the explorer (as ref only
) trait we wanted, the other 2 are hybrids but both have the required trait, we discard the pure as its useless to go any further with that, we check the 2 remaining drones to see what are the best trait along with the required one we want, so one has nocturnal so that would be of more use but the other has high fertility, now is when you make a choice as to what would suit you best, the second choice is held in reserve as it may be of use later, you keep doing this type of thing until you have the bee you want, yes its very slow but with frames its not as tedious.the other option is the easy way out, you make extra bees machines, genpool used to extract liquid DNA from scrap bees, the isolator used to grab traits from bees & place in a serum, be warned its random, the 2 others machines to process the dna I forget names atm, the inoculater thats take the processed serum & injects it into a bee & there for changes that trait, this can be done multiple time to a bees so you a can make supper bees more or less, most of mine are max fertility/production/nucturnal/flyer along with what ever the given species trait is.
one point is that its is possible to corrupt a bee by adding to many traits the bee gets - after its name, when this happens I start over its not worth the effort to rework that princess, & as a note when changing trait do not use queens use a princess & a drone & match the traits this will give a stable queen that most times the offspring stack, (meaning there all the same & stable).
Basically if you have a majestic-cultivated and a noble-majestic bee, use the soul frames. But then again, noble+majestic could mutate and possibly give you imperial. So in this case, soul frames would be your call.
If you have a majestic-cultivated princess and a cultivated-majestic drone, soul frames would not help anything at all as the bees can't mutate into anything else.
If you have a majestic-cultivated princess and a cultivated-majestic drone, soul frames would not help anything at all as the bees can't mutate into anything else.
Wait.. So this is where I've been going wrong then? I assumed that in the case of say, a cultivated princess and a cultivated majestic drone, using the soul frames would greatly improve my chances of them mutating into majestics? So that doesn't work then and if I want majestics then I'll have a better chance using soul frames on cultivateds and nobles?
Anyway, managed to get a pure noble princess and matching drone now so going to put those in my automated line for a while to get a bunch of drones. Still trying to get the pure diligents at the moment. I had a pure drone but I lost when running it with a common princess + souls.
Maybe I should've kept the pure dili drone to one side until I had a <something> dili hybrid princess and then run it with that for a good chance of getting pure dilis?Mutations are a process where breeding species x with species y gives you species z. Species z will never mutate to species z because it already is species z.
As netmc points out, putting your majestic/cultivated hybrid princess (z/x) in with a noble drone (y) would benefit somewhat from soul frames, but if the parents don't offer both x and y races then there's no chance of further mutation.
Saving pure drones would be your best bet. Even if after five cycles you don't have the princess you want, if you've been putting aside pure drones, then you no longer need to mutate in order to get your princess.I had a pure drone but I lost when running it with a common princess + souls.
Say you have a few pure diligent drones and you want a diligent princess. You put one of the drones in with a princess of any type, that princess is going to get the diligent trait as either active or inactive - this isn't a mutation, so you won't be using soul frames, this is just pure inheritance. You'll then have a diligent/hybrid princess.
You put that in with another of your diligent drones. Again, the resulting princess takes on the diligent trait from the next drone as either active or inactive - if its other trait happens to be the diligent trait it already had (50/50 chance of this), then you've now got a pure diligent princess. If not? Throw in the next pure diligent drone.
There's still some luck involved, so on average expect to require at least three or four pure drones to do it. You should be using this process to produce extra princesses before trying to mutate to a new species so's you don't lose the ones you currently have. Go scoop up a few more hives if you're running low on spares.
Thanks bomb. Getting the hang of this now. 
Using these latest tips I've managed to get not only the pure majestics but now the diligents as well . I'm gonna run these for a while to get some drones then try for the imperial and unweary, then industrious.
Is it best to let them run with impregnated frames or just get the drones quicker by running them with chocolate frames? I have large stocks of honeydew, honey drops, bee wax, propolis and silk already.
Using these latest tips I've managed to get not only the pure majestics but now the diligents as well . I'm gonna run these for a while to get some drones then try for the imperial and unweary, then industrious.Is it best to let them run with impregnated frames or just get the drones quicker by running them with chocolate frames? I have large stocks of honeydew, honey drops, bee wax, propolis and silk already.
Chocolate Frames. You can recycle the bee products if you like. But they have some uses. If you really don't want to keep the stocks, recycle excess items. Throw in the choc frames. They will be some great help killing your bees.
EDIT: Once you get the imperial bee, start toward an Alveary. Then you can add even more Chocolate Frames with the Frame Housing block on the Alveary.
EDIT: Once you get the imperial bee, start toward an Alveary. Then you can add even more Chocolate Frames with the Frame Housing block on the Alveary.
I recommend saving your seed oil for alveary construction. They're not cheap to build, but are much more effective at getting resources out of bees then even fully framed apiaries are. For now, getting new races is more important.
Don't throw away any of the resources your bees are giving you, with the possible exception of the propolises - in fact, given that the stringy combs give you nothing BUT propolises, you can probably throw those away too. They're handy for making apiarist pipes and rubber, but you'll need neither of those in the quantities stringy combs provide.
But in terms of honey and wax and such, you'll want about sixteen stacks of honey (dew or drops), seven of wax, and various stacks of other resources to build a single alveary. Note that you need an imperial AND an industrious bee for some of the resources - imperials alone will only allow you to start using the advanced genetic machines.
Don't throw away any of the resources your bees are giving you, with the possible exception of the propolises - in fact, given that the stringy combs give you nothing BUT propolises, you can probably throw those away too. They're handy for making apiarist pipes and rubber, but you'll need neither of those in the quantities stringy combs provide.
But in terms of honey and wax and such, you'll want about sixteen stacks of honey (dew or drops), seven of wax, and various stacks of other resources to build a single alveary. Note that you need an imperial AND an industrious bee for some of the resources - imperials alone will only allow you to start using the advanced genetic machines.
Yeah, the way mutations work is that a mutation is basically a hybrid that transforms into the new species.
So to get a Majestic mutation, you actually got a "noble/cultivated" hybrid, but the game rolled some dice and decided to make it a Majestic. If you check the wiki and find the mutation combinations, those are the ONLY hybrids that get that chance. Here is where soul frames are useful. They're like loading the dice. Of course, if there's no dice at all (that hybrid can't mutate into anything) then it's not going to do anything.
This is a separate mechanic from I'm going to refer to as "purification." Purification is what you are trying to do when you combine two bees with at least one trait in common. Like combining a Noble/common with a Noble/common to try to "purify" it into a Noble/Noble. This mechanic makes a lot more sense if you draw out a Punnett square. The punnet square is basically a 2x2 grid where you put the two traits from one bee at the top and the two traits for the other bee on the left side. Then you mark down the combinations and see how many are the one you want out of a total of four.
Here's an example using your Cultivated + Cultivated/Majestic pair.
As you can see, you basically had a 50% chance of losing the majestic trait and 0% chance of getting a pure Majestic/Majestic.
Anyway, managed to get a pure noble princess and matching drone now so going to put those in my automated line for a while to get a bunch of drones. Still trying to get the pure diligents at the moment. I had a pure drone but I lost when running it with a common princess + souls.
Yup. Always have at least one side of the trait you want on both bees.
@ snoder, I actually got the diligents from just one inactive trait on a common drone with a pure common princess. I'm pretty sure I got the pure diligent drone from that breed along with a common diligent drone and a common diligent princess. I did use soul frames and thought that they were the reason why I got the pure diligent drone, but from your post (and others) they wouldn't have had any effect as there were no cultivated traits involved and so it was just pure luck?
Correct. For purification purposes use only chocolate frames if anything, because they mainly reduce the lifespan of your princess, thus giving you the next generation faster. Soul frames also reduce lifespan a bit, but they last shorter (80 bee ticks instead of 240 bee ticks) and should be mainly used to receive a new mutation.
Regarding mutation: Only the last bee tick (the one where the queen dies and produces offspring) is relevant for mutation, so if you want to minimize the damage to your soul frames, you could add them to the apiary only for the very last bee tick.
A list of the capabilites of the frames can be found on the official FTB Wiki.
Yes, I already do that with the frames : 2 "ticks" with chocs then take the queen out and per her in my soul frame apiary for the final 2 ticks (obviously only for mutations).
I was wondering, do any of you guys have an automated way to mutate them? For example, can you set up some sort of redstone contraption with a timer so that after the 2nd tick it pulls out the queen and puts it into a soul apiary? It is really annoying and time-consuming to have to babysit them so that that the choc frames don't kill them before you get chance to take the queen out.
I must play in some alternate universe where even the smallest farm can produce more seed oil than needed for frames, and tree farms produce wood in truly staggering quantities. This universe also has plentiful supplies of soul sand widely available. Lastly, in my universe, apiaries work even when I'm not staring at them.
Seriously. Slap two bees in, soul frames if you care that much, and watch the 100 year special on paint drying on netflix.
Seriously. Slap two bees in, soul frames if you care that much, and watch the 100 year special on paint drying on netflix.
I only asked in case there was an automated way of doing it 
. Of course I could've just put them in soul frames to begin with but I wanted to 'level up' quicker. Anyway it's kinda moot now because I've got the pure imperials and industrials now. Had some really bad luck trying to get the industrials - I had 3 separate instances of getting a pure industrial princess but never had better than an industrial diligent drone. All 3 times I lost the princess back to diligent hybrids 
. Very frustrating but with the help of a 2nd line I got there in the end and managed to get/retain fast pollination on the drones as well so I have one set running like a machine on my trees and the other set is making jelly 
.
I've learnt more about bee breeding from you guys than any of the wikis or youtube vids (including Florastar's which don't really tell you anything at all imho). For example, the advice in this thread about breeding pure drones with a random princess to get a clone of a species you want to keep is not mentioned anywhere that I've seen but this is a REALLY important and useful piece of info in the breeding process. Without knowing that you won't get very far, which is what was happening to me originally when I kept losing my good princesses.
. Of course I could've just put them in soul frames to begin with but I wanted to 'level up' quicker. Anyway it's kinda moot now because I've got the pure imperials and industrials now. Had some really bad luck trying to get the industrials - I had 3 separate instances of getting a pure industrial princess but never had better than an industrial diligent drone. All 3 times I lost the princess back to diligent hybrids . Very frustrating but with the help of a 2nd line I got there in the end and managed to get/retain fast pollination on the drones as well so I have one set running like a machine on my trees and the other set is making jelly .I've learnt more about bee breeding from you guys than any of the wikis or youtube vids (including Florastar's which don't really tell you anything at all imho). For example, the advice in this thread about breeding pure drones with a random princess to get a clone of a species you want to keep is not mentioned anywhere that I've seen but this is a REALLY important and useful piece of info in the breeding process. Without knowing that you won't get very far, which is what was happening to me originally when I kept losing my good princesses.
Glad you got to your short term goal & the best part as you stated you learned as you went, this will help you no end as you progress deeper, keep the faith mate armed with this knowledge makes the next couple of steps a lot less grueling.
Now that you have imperial bees, if you want to advance further in beekeeping the advanced genetic machines allow access to an easier mutation method.
Build the genepool first, if you haven't already. Rig up an apiary with max fertility bees to automatically breed and breed and breed, and every time you get a full stack of 64 drones, beealyse it (you can do the whole stack with a single bit of honey) and throw it in the genepool.
Next build an isolator, synthesiser, purifier and inoculator. These each require an advanced genetic machine each as part of their construction. Rig up a waterproof pipe system to go from the genepool to the synthesiser and purifier.
Note that all these machine chew up MJ (Buildcraft power). They'll do this whether they're in use or not, so make sure you rig the system so's you can easily disable their power supply when they're no in use.
They're simple enough to use; empty serum vials (made using royal jelly from the imperial bees, along with a few other things) go in the isolator along with some drones. Random serums come out, each set to a specific trait from those drones. This occasionally kills the bees, so don't put anything important in (eg princesses) in.
To start with, concentrate on getting shortest lifespan and maximum fertility serums. Once you have either of those two, throw them into the synthesiser. This will start to charge the serums - they go up to 16 uses tops. After this put the serums in the purifier and leave them there until it gives a red warning symbol telling you it can't improve them further.
Finally, bees you want to alter go in the inoculator along with the finished serums. Each charge that is applied randomly affects either the active or inactive traits on the bees.
Empty serums can be put back into the synthesiser, but remember to put them in the purifier after that - even if they still appear to be top quality. Unwanted serums can go through the furnace to revert them to empty so they can go back in the isolator.
Now, how all this relates to breeding: Take a princess and drone each of your two parent species, and fully inoculate them with the maximum fertility and shortest lifespan traits (on average you'll use 3 charges per bee, but it's best to budget for 4 - the serums will be mostly empty by the time you've done four bees).
Allow these two bees to breed a few times to build up a stack of identical drones. At this point you should throw away any other remaining drones you have of these species (if they don't stack then don't bother putting them in the genepool; it's faster to only use stacking drones there). If you have any princesses of these species then breed them with the stacks you just made so that they get the new traits too.
Now when you go to mutate, you'll be spending a lot less time at the hives. Princess goes in with a drone stack and some soul frames. Lots of drones come out. Throw away any drones that lack the new traits you want. Throw any drones that DO get the new traits you want in the isolator. Depending on what sort of princess you get out, switch the drone stack with each breeding cycle. Keep your serums charged in case the princess loses its fertility via mutation and keep going until you have the serums you want.
Sometimes you'll "naturally" breed through to a pure princess and drone before the isolator gets the race trait for you. That's fine, but it's often worth getting the serum anyway: because you have already have stacks of drones with maximum fertility and shortest lifespan, it's easy to clone princesses by breeding them with that stack. You then take the princess and one of those drones and inoculate it with your new race, and hey presto! Unlike with the mutation system, which would've knocked all the decent traits off the parent drones, racial inoculation leaves all other traits intact - you've now got pure bees of a new species that are still fully fertile and don't take forever to die. And if the new species was outright dangerous (eg, radioactive bees have the "unstable" effect which can do you a whole lot of damage), then you've also just saved yourself the time of inoculating that out of them.
Every time you come across a new trait you like (eg "fast production" from cultivated, "fast pollination" from industrious, "explorer" from edenic, etc), produce a new drone stack that incorporates it and throw away all the others.
Build the genepool first, if you haven't already. Rig up an apiary with max fertility bees to automatically breed and breed and breed, and every time you get a full stack of 64 drones, beealyse it (you can do the whole stack with a single bit of honey) and throw it in the genepool.
Next build an isolator, synthesiser, purifier and inoculator. These each require an advanced genetic machine each as part of their construction. Rig up a waterproof pipe system to go from the genepool to the synthesiser and purifier.
Note that all these machine chew up MJ (Buildcraft power). They'll do this whether they're in use or not, so make sure you rig the system so's you can easily disable their power supply when they're no in use.
They're simple enough to use; empty serum vials (made using royal jelly from the imperial bees, along with a few other things) go in the isolator along with some drones. Random serums come out, each set to a specific trait from those drones. This occasionally kills the bees, so don't put anything important in (eg princesses) in.
To start with, concentrate on getting shortest lifespan and maximum fertility serums. Once you have either of those two, throw them into the synthesiser. This will start to charge the serums - they go up to 16 uses tops. After this put the serums in the purifier and leave them there until it gives a red warning symbol telling you it can't improve them further.
Finally, bees you want to alter go in the inoculator along with the finished serums. Each charge that is applied randomly affects either the active or inactive traits on the bees.
Empty serums can be put back into the synthesiser, but remember to put them in the purifier after that - even if they still appear to be top quality. Unwanted serums can go through the furnace to revert them to empty so they can go back in the isolator.
Now, how all this relates to breeding: Take a princess and drone each of your two parent species, and fully inoculate them with the maximum fertility and shortest lifespan traits (on average you'll use 3 charges per bee, but it's best to budget for 4 - the serums will be mostly empty by the time you've done four bees).
Allow these two bees to breed a few times to build up a stack of identical drones. At this point you should throw away any other remaining drones you have of these species (if they don't stack then don't bother putting them in the genepool; it's faster to only use stacking drones there). If you have any princesses of these species then breed them with the stacks you just made so that they get the new traits too.
Now when you go to mutate, you'll be spending a lot less time at the hives. Princess goes in with a drone stack and some soul frames. Lots of drones come out. Throw away any drones that lack the new traits you want. Throw any drones that DO get the new traits you want in the isolator. Depending on what sort of princess you get out, switch the drone stack with each breeding cycle. Keep your serums charged in case the princess loses its fertility via mutation and keep going until you have the serums you want.
Sometimes you'll "naturally" breed through to a pure princess and drone before the isolator gets the race trait for you. That's fine, but it's often worth getting the serum anyway: because you have already have stacks of drones with maximum fertility and shortest lifespan, it's easy to clone princesses by breeding them with that stack. You then take the princess and one of those drones and inoculate it with your new race, and hey presto! Unlike with the mutation system, which would've knocked all the decent traits off the parent drones, racial inoculation leaves all other traits intact - you've now got pure bees of a new species that are still fully fertile and don't take forever to die. And if the new species was outright dangerous (eg, radioactive bees have the "unstable" effect which can do you a whole lot of damage), then you've also just saved yourself the time of inoculating that out of them.
Every time you come across a new trait you like (eg "fast production" from cultivated, "fast pollination" from industrious, "explorer" from edenic, etc), produce a new drone stack that incorporates it and throw away all the others.