With 36 apiaries and 20 different species of bees and growing, I'm struggling to set up my bee storage in an organized way. I'd like to know how others go about this. The problems to overcome are these:
(1) Extra Bees has the Indexer, which is intended for bee storage. It stores up to 1000 bees. However, (1) that's not all that much if you end up with a stack of drones per genome type, and (2) you can't pipe bees into it. LP pipes don't connect, and itemducts do connect but don't do anything.
(2) Applied Energistics: there you have the problem that every genome constitutes a different item type as far as AE is concerned, and the fuzzy formatting doesn't help since these data aren't metadata but something else. Which means that even long-term, after your bees' genomes have stabilized and you get one consistent type of drone per queen, you'll end up with four types per breeding queen: the queen unidentified and identified, and the drones identified and unidentified. That the princesses you find all stack by species means that they are genetically identical. Crossbreed one, and the next generation won't fit the same formatting slot, fuzzy or not. Which means that AE storage is simply not suitable while you're crossbreeding, and every time you use an Extra Bees machine to manipulate some bee, you'll have to reformat your storage cell. I have found no way to tell a storage cell "only bees allowed, but all of them".
(3) Well, I could create an AE subnetwork just for bees with lots of 1k storage cells. Except that to my surprise, it is also not possible to tell my Logistics Pipes system, which handles transportation from the apiaries to the storage system, that "all bees go here". The BeeSink module does not appear to work at all - I've tried to route all princesses to an Apiarist's chest and drones to another with this. The Apiary Refiller module works perfectly, as well as the drone terminus, but the BeeSink appears to have a problem (maybe that's because it can't handle Extra Bees/Magic Bees species?). I've also tried to route Princesses/Drones to a separate chest with a standard ItemSink module since they all have the same two item IDs but that also won't work.
(4) What I really need is a way to sort bees by species, so that I can differentiate between the stable production lines which need to be automated and the ones I'm crossbreeding which require manual intervention anyway. For the former, I might just keep a stack of drones and route the rest to the GenePool. Except, the only tool I know which can sort by species - the LP BeeSink - does not appear to work as it should. Apiarist's Pipes don't work in an LP system with active routing - it confuses the hell out of the LP system.
At the moment, bee storage requires a lot of manual intervention. So far that's ok since I'm mostly occupied with bees anyway, but things change, and then I want a more automated system.
(1) Extra Bees has the Indexer, which is intended for bee storage. It stores up to 1000 bees. However, (1) that's not all that much if you end up with a stack of drones per genome type, and (2) you can't pipe bees into it. LP pipes don't connect, and itemducts do connect but don't do anything.
(2) Applied Energistics: there you have the problem that every genome constitutes a different item type as far as AE is concerned, and the fuzzy formatting doesn't help since these data aren't metadata but something else. Which means that even long-term, after your bees' genomes have stabilized and you get one consistent type of drone per queen, you'll end up with four types per breeding queen: the queen unidentified and identified, and the drones identified and unidentified. That the princesses you find all stack by species means that they are genetically identical. Crossbreed one, and the next generation won't fit the same formatting slot, fuzzy or not. Which means that AE storage is simply not suitable while you're crossbreeding, and every time you use an Extra Bees machine to manipulate some bee, you'll have to reformat your storage cell. I have found no way to tell a storage cell "only bees allowed, but all of them".
(3) Well, I could create an AE subnetwork just for bees with lots of 1k storage cells. Except that to my surprise, it is also not possible to tell my Logistics Pipes system, which handles transportation from the apiaries to the storage system, that "all bees go here". The BeeSink module does not appear to work at all - I've tried to route all princesses to an Apiarist's chest and drones to another with this. The Apiary Refiller module works perfectly, as well as the drone terminus, but the BeeSink appears to have a problem (maybe that's because it can't handle Extra Bees/Magic Bees species?). I've also tried to route Princesses/Drones to a separate chest with a standard ItemSink module since they all have the same two item IDs but that also won't work.
(4) What I really need is a way to sort bees by species, so that I can differentiate between the stable production lines which need to be automated and the ones I'm crossbreeding which require manual intervention anyway. For the former, I might just keep a stack of drones and route the rest to the GenePool. Except, the only tool I know which can sort by species - the LP BeeSink - does not appear to work as it should. Apiarist's Pipes don't work in an LP system with active routing - it confuses the hell out of the LP system.
At the moment, bee storage requires a lot of manual intervention. So far that's ok since I'm mostly occupied with bees anyway, but things change, and then I want a more automated system.
