[Forestry] Bees breeding, where to look?

[Zerro]

Greetings,

I know there are probably millions of threads on this forum and throughout the web when it comes to bee breeding. That's the problem though; which thread should I look at for help and information?

I've read this thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic...ith-sengirs-permission2nd-awesomeness-update/ and learned which two species are needed to breed hybrid off springs.

I was wondering, is that all there is to bee breeding? Do I just put a princess from one breed and a drone from another into an Apiary, let them mate, do there thing, and then I have a chance for a new hybrid off spring or is bee breeding more complicated than that? Do I need to take climate and dominant/recessive genes into account?

Once again, just looking for information or other threads/videos to visit that gives tutorials on bee breading so I don't end up losing bees (seeing as how it took me forever to find Tropical Bees and I haven't found any Nether bees yet)

Thanks

Zerro0713

 

[Rakankrad]

Well, it can get pretty complicated once you go in depth (which is probably why a lot of people hate bees in dw20 videos.. which is sad really). It gets a little more complex if you have extra bees installed. You mention Nether bees so I'm assuming you're on the mindcrack pack, OR added EB to another pack. For EB, Haighyorkie (http://www.youtube.com/user/haighyorkie) has some pretty good tutorials. For vanilla bees, Florastar is the queen of bees (http://www.youtube.com/user/florastar and http://www.twitch.tv/florastar/videos). She has a small series called Bee University.

In a recent update, Binnie (from Extra Bees) added 3 (4th being available only from NEI cheat mode) frames for apiaries that have special effects. Chocolate which increases production but at the price of life and something else (the production increase is negligible tbh. Not worth it for that. It is however very good if you want to just make your bees die quickly to feed your DNA needs). Restraint frame which reduces the range of the effects (reduces life and production iirc.. It's not too good) and Soul Frames which increases mutation chance (it's by far the best frame ever).

As for the genes, well, that's a little complicated to explain, you'd be better off watching Flora's videos.

 

[Zerro]

No I'm currently running Direwolf v4 with the basic Forestry bees. I was thinking all the bees here (http://forestry.sengir.net/wiki/index.php?n=Items.Bees) were included in the base Forestry mod. I searched NEI and only saw Forest, Meadow, Tropical, Modest, Wintry & Marsh bees. Does NEI not show all the offspring type bees or do I need Extra Bees in the pack?

 

[whythisname]

NEI only shows the mundane bees, those are the ones you can find "in the wild". The other bees listed on the wiki page you'll have to breed by combining those mundane ones and then their offspring again with others, and again, and again.

Just to give you one of the evolution trees:
Mundane (wild bee) + Mundane (wild bee) = Common
Common + Mundane = Cultivated
Cultivated + Common = Noble
etc.

The Common and Cultivated bees are the base for many other evolution trees and you also got some trees completely separate (like Valiant/heroic tree). On the wiki and many other places on the web you can find more complete lists/charts of the possible evolution trees.

Just to clarify about hybrids btw, they are the ones you don't want. You want "pure" bred bees, so they will always stay the same when you don't want them to change/evolve anymore. If you leave them hybrid there is a chance they will "devolve" into a pure on their own and then perhaps not the one you want/need the most.
So when you get your Common bees you will want to breed them until you've got a nice pure type and then more on to the next evolution.

If you really like the idea of hybrids you can always get them after you've got your pure types, pure types are a lot harder to get in the higher evolutions though (which is what makes them so precious... my precious...).

So yeah, in principle it's "put 2 bees together and let them do their thing", but the fun part is in trying to control that process which has quite a bit of randomness in it. And of course you get some really useful resources out of it, especially if you have Extra Bees (you can get all sorts of precious metals, oil and some other cool and useful things).

 

[Zerro]

okay so I guess I was misunderstood. I thought the definition of 'hybrid' was breeding two different species but my goal is to get 'pure'.

So I won't find any find any bees in the nether in basic Forestry? Are there any hives in The End?

 

[whythisname]

Yeah, it's a bit unclear about hybrids and 'pure'. You start with 'pure' bees, the ones you find in the wild, but while you are breeding them to get better bees you will get hybrids. Those hybrids aren't the ones you want, you want the completely new type of bee that can come out of breeding different ones together (you might think of that as a hybrid, but in Forestry that will be considered a new 'pure' type).

Once you get a bit into the whole genetics thing you'll understand better. Basically, each bee has 2 sets of genes. A pure bee has 2 sets that are identical, a hybrid has 2 sets that are different. Trying to mix 2 bees and thus get some hybrids back to pure again can be hard. Especially if you want to keep only 1 gene, which is usually the case.

In basic Forestry you won't find hives in the Nether, but that doesn't mean you can't breed bees there... Biomes can also play a role in getting certain evolutions of bees (I don't want to spoil it all for you ). I don't know about the End, I know I have them, but I play with Extra Bees (the Mindcrack pack). But I think they are vanilla Forestry bees (afaik Extra Bees adds 4 more Mundane types: Water, Nether, Rock and Marble). But beside those hard to find ones you can already do a lot with the more common Meadows, Forest, Marshy, etc. types. I strongly advice you to start with those, because if things go wrong it's not a big deal with those common ones as there are plenty. If you ruin your End bees it might be a lot harder to get more/new ones.

 

[MavericK96]

Yes, there are End bees in vanilla Forestry. DW20 pack has them.

 

[Icarus White]

Although the utility of those bees is rather questionable - you'll need huge amounts of pulsating propolis and a carpenter to make one pearl, and you could easily do that by slaughtering Endermen in the End instead. On the other hand, you could move the automation to the overworld, so this isn't completely terrible.

 

[Rakankrad]

Although the utility of those bees is rather questionable - you'll need huge amounts of pulsating propolis and a carpenter to make one pearl, and you could easily do that by slaughtering Endermen in the End instead. On the other hand, you could move the automation to the overworld, so this isn't completely terrible.

To be fair, you could do it automatically in the overworld already thanks to Soul Shards + Turtles. And also, that lets people who prefer playing on peaceful a way to get eyes without changing the difficulty setting.

 

[SunnyDaze]

Hi there! I'm currently working on a very in-depth guide to Bees on my server's forums, that covers Forestry and Extra Bees. I just started it yesterday, but there's a lot there on getting started and breeding already, and placeholders with helpful links until I get my own versions up.

You are welcome to check it out: Sunny's Bee Guide. I am aiming for one of the most comprehensive and inclusive guides to Bees around, and would love feedback anyway.

 

[Zerro]

Thanks people

Checking out Florastar's Bee University and will check out SunnyDaze's walkthrough.

So yesterday I just went hunting for beehives. Found many meadow, desert, wintry, marshy beehives but little to no tropical or forest. Also I went back to the village that sold Proven Frames and the dude was gone :\ I think some jerk killed him off

 

[Zerro]

So I am sort of running into a fuel/humus issue.

Setup:
4 tree farms
2 peat farms (stacked)
Wheat Farm
7 Peat Engines
7 Commercial Engines
3x3x4 LP Solid Boiler

When I only run the Peat engine, I generate enough Peat to make a surplus when fueling the boiler
When I turn on all the farms (4 trees + wheat), the Peat is unable to keep up. I have the 7 Peat Engines just so I can get ash to make compost for more Humus. I also notice that I am losing Humus as well.

Now I don't really need the tree farms anymore but I just use them for the sand to make more Bog Earth.

Any thoughts?

 

[ItharianEngineering]

Igneous Extruder to a Pulverizer could get you your sand, but requires power. Also using mulch and making the humus in a carpenter is an option and gives you more gain. Mulch is easy to obtain with a moistener. It decays wheat to either create mycelium from seeds or make mossy cobble/stonebricks from cobble/stonebricks. The decayed wheat ends up as mulch. Just power the carpenter and you can get your humus without the ash.

 

[Icarus White]

Hmm... If you're running tree farms, you might be able to divert some charcoal into the boiler. That might help a little.

What exactly are you powering with the boiler, anyway? I'm not sure what I'd do with 72MJ/t.