Honestly, I like bees for things that are hard to automate otherwise. I particularly like them for ghast tears and emeralds (until I started Infinity Expert mode today, nothing had died in my smeltery that didn't spawn there.) Admittedly, without Gendustry I'm not a huge fan, because wait and hope isn't something I enjoy (I either watch the bees or I get distracted by something else and the bees sit doing nothing for hours.)
Bees in FTB are the worst addition ever?
- Thread starter pehn420
- Start date
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I think a large part of the problem, is that people look at bees, and see how in depth and intensive it can be, and try to dedicate focus to it. And that doesn't work out well at all. Unless you're running a maxed out gendustry setup, or direwolfing. (Using the stupid fast bee killing frames from magic bees.)
Otherwise, I find that the best thing to do is start them early and check in every time you come back from mining, or when you take a break from building to fill up on materials. Check on them, and then go back to what you were doing.
On the other hand, I have on more than one occasion, simply laid down one or two apiaries and set about tree breeding. I had a massive tree farm, built off just a few apiaries, with some well managed tree combinations.
Otherwise, I find that the best thing to do is start them early and check in every time you come back from mining, or when you take a break from building to fill up on materials. Check on them, and then go back to what you were doing.
On the other hand, I have on more than one occasion, simply laid down one or two apiaries and set about tree breeding. I had a massive tree farm, built off just a few apiaries, with some well managed tree combinations.
Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
Thats likely the other issue- DW tends to nuke the living crap out of bees with a 3-4 episode spectacular. Not overly interesting to watch, and binge breeding bees is hellishly boring- as players who emulate Dire often find out.
Hit it once to get kicked off, then little and often is the key to success. Having a literal notepad is very useful so you can always return to your exact progress.
It doesn't help that he decides to go for the highest tier, hardest to reach bee, then persists in clicking on that bee in NEI and backtracking all the way back to common, every time he wants to check the next step.
'Okay, we're making ludicrite bees. They have to be bred in an Alveary in the Nether on top of a 3x3 of manyullyn blocks, and are the last link in a 256-step breeding chain. So if I put a Meadow princess and a Forest Drone together...' ARRGH!
'Okay, we're making ludicrite bees. They have to be bred in an Alveary in the Nether on top of a 3x3 of manyullyn blocks, and are the last link in a 256-step breeding chain. So if I put a Meadow princess and a Forest Drone together...' ARRGH!
I feel like Forestry get some unjust flak for what other mods are adding. Forestry has a lot of interesting bees, but probably none of the species you consider important or necessary in any way. Imperial and Industrial is in my opinion a good entry point. Past that you are probably dealing with bees and breeding hierarchies from other mods.
Mods that adds more bees and larger hierarchies also have a responsibility to add ways to handle the added complexity. Binnies mods add a lot of machinery so you can speed up the breeding process. Magic bees also have extra frames, but probably rely more on Binnies mod to be installed along with it. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Then you have the industrialization with Gendustry.
Mods that adds more bees and larger hierarchies also have a responsibility to add ways to handle the added complexity. Binnies mods add a lot of machinery so you can speed up the breeding process. Magic bees also have extra frames, but probably rely more on Binnies mod to be installed along with it. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Then you have the industrialization with Gendustry.
Agreed, and those are bees that should absolutely be tough to get. I use Binnie's not for the extra bees, but the extra trees. I like the additional wood options, and it takes time to breed those. And that's fine, because I enjoy the effort. At one point, I had written a computer program, that would display all steps to reach a certain bee on ComputerCraft monitors over and behind the apiaries. Unfortunately, I lost interest in it, and in the world it was in. But you could type noble and it would pop up on a group of monitors the steps needed to produce it, starting from common. Yes, it was kind of unnecessary, but not having to constantly refer to NEI, and being able to step the process along was very nice. I may give it another go at some point.
The flak forestry gets, isn't so much for the actual bees themselves, which aren't too bad. It's for the time taken. In a modded minecraft world with MFR mining lasers, and x3 speed Ender Quarries, and Tesseracts, people get used to instant gratification, and when it doesn't happen, they complain. Incessantly. And those who complain loudest, are the ones that get listened to. Fortunately, who ever is running forestry at the moment (I think it's still Sengir?) has the sense to ignore them.
The flak forestry gets, isn't so much for the actual bees themselves, which aren't too bad. It's for the time taken. In a modded minecraft world with MFR mining lasers, and x3 speed Ender Quarries, and Tesseracts, people get used to instant gratification, and when it doesn't happen, they complain. Incessantly. And those who complain loudest, are the ones that get listened to. Fortunately, who ever is running forestry at the moment (I think it's still Sengir?) has the sense to ignore them.
Sengir stopped years ago, Mezz has been running Forestry for a good while now. It would totally ruin how Forestry was played to do near instant results without putting any effort at all.
Ah, didn't know that. I agree. It definitely should be a long process. No point if it's not. (Even Gendustry isn't instant.)
Forestry was my favorite mod back in those days. Being able to make things renewable was fun. And bees were a lot easier to get into back when you didn't need a giant automated farm churning out seeds by the metric ton in order to get enough seed oil to make your first apiary and keep it supplied with frames.
I got into bees specifically so I could make dissipation capsules to get rid of rain. xD
I love bees because they give an alternate way to get your materials, and all the trees are pretty.
<nostalgia>
Oh man, those days were amazing. I remember the days when most packs were based on BC, IC2(heck, i remember the time when you had to download a patch to get IC1 and BC to work together, back in beta 1.5), Forestry, Railcraft, and RP2. Back in the days before minetweaker and HQM, when kitchen sink packs reined supreme. I remember the day when IC2 came out, and it was such a new and innovative mod, back when i used Steve's Carts to treefarm for saplings to make ethanol so i could fuel a railcraft boiler and power my quarries, which fed into my macerators, then made into blocks via autocrafting tables and stored in crystal chests, all connected and sorted via redpower tubes.
Those were the days.
</nostalgia>
<nostalgia>
Oh man, those days were amazing. I remember the days when most packs were based on BC, IC2(heck, i remember the time when you had to download a patch to get IC1 and BC to work together, back in beta 1.5), Forestry, Railcraft, and RP2. Back in the days before minetweaker and HQM, when kitchen sink packs reined supreme. I remember the day when IC2 came out, and it was such a new and innovative mod, back when i used Steve's Carts to treefarm for saplings to make ethanol so i could fuel a railcraft boiler and power my quarries, which fed into my macerators, then made into blocks via autocrafting tables and stored in crystal chests, all connected and sorted via redpower tubes.
Those were the days.
</nostalgia>
OK. Here goes. Step by Step.
*****MOST IMPORTANT THINGS TO REALISE*******
1. You can bring any princess back to its original species (or make it into a new species) by breeding and rebreeding it a maximum of 3 to 5 times with identical pure drones of the species you want. For example, you can make a rocky princess into a meadows princess by breeding it a few times with pure meadows drones and bring it back to a rocky princess afterwards by breeding it again with perhaps 5 pure identical rocky drones. So make sure to have tons of spare identical drones available for resetting your princesses. The same applies from mundane up to common to cultivated to majestic to imperial and all the way back down again. So long as you have drones of a species, then u can make a princess of that species. Breeding a princess 3 to 5 times with pure bred drones (even without soul frames) will make the princess a pure bred of the drone species. But it might take up to 2 more breedings with the pure identical drones to give the princess the exact same traits as the drones so that breeding her will then produce stackable drones again.
2. Discard/destroy useless mixed drones. Having them lying around just confuses everything. Never use these (unless u put them into binnies mods - if u r using this mod- to extract a trait u want or to fill the genepool).
3. Automate. Automate. Automate. Watch this vid on youtube on automation. Use the 1st version explained - chest, apiarists pipe, normal transport pipe and an autarchic gate because its the simplest
OK. Those points above are the keys to bee breeding.
Now, a few simple things to get you started.
1. Build a ton of apiaries. Keep them all breeding or crossbreeding. This increases the chances of getting a pure bee. Its a numbers game. The more apiaries you have working the higher the probability that you will get what you are looking for.Only use frames if needed. I dont use frames when Im breeding a stack of drones or if I have 10 identical drones and Im trying to turn my princess into the same species as the drones. This all happens without frames. Soul Frames do help for reaching new species, but thats all I use them for.
2. Start by breeding a ton of pure identical drones of each species until they stack. This is the foundation of your bee breeding. If they stack, then all the bees in each stack are identical. Thats what u want.
3. Always keep one stack of pure drones in case you mess up your princess.
4. Always try to use Pristine Princesses. The ignoble ones can be used for crossbreeding and other general purposes, but I normally dont waste my time on them as they will die at some point.
5. Your goal should be Alvearys. To get there, you will need both industrious and Imperial bees (pollen and royal jelly). This should be your focus. Dont get sidetracked by other species you might want. Once you get alvearys, things will get easier.
Be prepared for grind, because thats what this is. I have often had to reset my princesses and start over or breed a bunch of lower princesses with drones from the next higher species up the ladder so I have enough princesses to keep going. You need one pure drone and one pure princess to start breeding a species. Never mess up a pure princess unless you have pure identical drones to bring her back to her previous species. No getting around the hard work. I hope this helps you get your bee breeding sorted.
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