getting started with bee breeding.

[eric167]

ive been messsing around in a creative world i use for trying stuff out, and i want to start into bees.
what ive found:
rocky
meadows
unusual
sorcerous
modest
what ive bred:
cultivated
common
both hybrids for the moment.

so is bee breeding at its most basic as simple as mix and match until i get what i want?
since im using unleashed, ill eventually want to get to the special bees that produce metals.
ive read up on it, but would still appreciate any tips/tricks/general advice to be had.

 

[Yashagoro]

Early on what you want to do is just mix and match until you get the bees you want. Eventually you will get to the part of it that's more about genetically altering bees to create the ideal bee with your ideal traits for it to have.

Go for Imperial bees for the moment because they will lead you to the path of diamond bees

 

[Flipz]

Early on what you want to do is just mix and match until you get the bees you want. Eventually you will get to the part of it that's more about genetically altering bees to create the ideal bee with your ideal traits for it to have.

Go for Imperial bees for the moment because they will lead you to the path of diamond bees

You'll also want Industrious bees so you'll have all of the materials you need for an Alveary.

 

[SpitefulFox]

Bee breeding is, mostly, just mixing and matching the right breeds until you get the mutations you want. If you're one of those "I Hate Spoilers" types, you can just experiment or study bees in the Escritoire to discover possible combinations. If you'd rather just know which combinations get which bees, you can check out the wiki. A couple of the more interesting bees may require special conditions in order to breed, such as the Apiary being in the Nether, or having a solid block of metal underneath the Apiary.

 

[Yashagoro]

if you have NEI you can just hover over the drone press U and you will get spoils

 

[Methusalem]

+1 for getting Imperial and Industrious as fast as possible. Alvearies make also breeding a lot faster. A mutation block with Uranium Ore (for x10 mutation rate) and a frame housing for an Oblivion Frame to kill the queen in a single tick.

First two things when getting a new species: 1. Put the princess and a drone into an Apiary and get more drones. 2. Extract all interesting traits, especially the species using the Extra Bees machines.

For breeding I use Rocky princesses infused with Max Fertility a lot, at least for the more difficult mutations. The Precious Bee for instance is Glittering and Shining with a 2% mutation chance. (20% with Uranium). I use a Shining Drone, turn one of the Max Fertility rocky princesses into the Glittering species and stuff them into the Alveary. The chance to get a good mutation from 4 drones is much higher than when you get only 2 drones. (And I don't have to touch the original princess and can store it for later use.)

For production I also use Rockys, this time infused with the best speed and longest life, that is available. You need to do it for the princess and a drone and then give both the species that you want. Rocky Bees work at night, under ground, when it's raining, they don't need flowers, produce only one drone, have some temp and humidity tolerance etc. Their default traits build a really great foundation for turning them into other species.

 

[Lisranda]

One of the earliest concepts to understand, and one that I've actually run into several people who don't quite get it right away, is the difference between breeding and mutation. When you breed bees, you take a Princess and a Drone with their own sets of traits, each coming in pairs that may or may not be the same. The resulting bees when the Queen dies can have any combination of these traits, including the species. In this way, you can make a Princess of any species or with any traits just by breeding enough Drones with those traits against enough Princesses over enough iterations without any external genetic manipulation.

Mutation isn't "breeding" in the same sense. You can breed a Monastic Princess by throwing Monastic drones at any Princess but you can't mutate a Monastic anything.

Some great first-time goals for beekeeping are to get pure and stable Common and Cultivated lines. Pure meaning that their Species traits are Common/Common or Cultivated/Cultivated. Stable meaning that the primary and secondary traits of both the Drones and Princesses are 100% identical such that if you kept throwing them in an Apiary they would continue to do their business and multiply without ANY chance of their traits changing -- some people refer to this as getting to "Stacking Drones" because from that point on that particular species will always be identical and the drones will stack.

Once you have pure/stable Industrious and Imperial bees, the world opens up to you. You gain access to all of the top tier Extra Bees machines for genetic manipulation, which will make breeding and mutating bees significantly more interactive and more importantly you gain access to the Alveary. If you don't feel impressed by the rate that your Apiaries work at... that's because they are terribad by comparison.

In my experience, once people get their first Industrial and Imperial lines locked down their thinking about resource supply issues becomes... "I wonder if there's a bee for that?"

 

[Labhras]

In my experience, once people get their first Industrial and Imperial lines locked down their thinking about resource supply issues becomes... "I wonder if there's a bee for that?"

Check my sig for the answer

>>Methusalem

Multiple mutator blocks stack, so no need to limit yourself to just x10

 

[Methusalem]

Check my sig for the answer

>>Methusalem
Multiple mutator blocks stack, so no need to limit yourself to just x10

It does. But if you go beyond x10 Mutation rate (or x16 production chance with frames), then your princess will turn into a swarmer and disappear after a few cycles. This was a fairly recent nerf, the mods in 1.5.2 are the first version that includes these restrictions.

Once you have pure/stable Industrious and Imperial bees, the world opens up to you. You gain access to all of the top tier Extra Bees machines for genetic manipulation, which will make breeding and mutating bees significantly more interactive and more importantly you gain access to the Alveary. If you don't feel impressed by the rate that your Apiaries work at... that's because they are terribad by comparison.

Having pure/stable Imperial and Industrial bees changes beekeeping so much, that is would make even sense to rush to these branches and skip the "Stacking Drones" part. It's risky. You could totally destroy the princesses, if you don't know exactly the possible mutations. But if/when you got Imperials/Industrious' and an Alveary, then it takes literally 10 minutes to go back and create stable princess/drone pairs for the species you skipped.
(I wouldn't suggest this to somebody new to beekeeping though. )

 

[PoisonWolf]

My advice to you OP is to do bee-breeding with nothing more than standard apiaries and alvearies. Don't use machines to help you (e.g., serums, etc), at least not until you fully understand the mechanics of bee-breeding. I find that once you start relying on machines, it becomes a crutch and you never fully understand how the breeding mechanics work and you just start "hoping for the best" whenever you're breeding.

 

[eric167]

My advice to you OP is to do bee-breeding with nothing more than standard apiaries and alvearies. Don't use machines to help you (e.g., serums, etc), at least not until you fully understand the mechanics of bee-breeding. I find that once you start relying on machines, it becomes a crutch and you never fully understand how the breeding mechanics work and you just start "hoping for the best" whenever you're breeding.

so figure out how to get everything the normal, quote unquote "hard" way before going to the machines for quicker solutions.
not a problem.

have one common drone, a common/cultivated, and a cultivated/common.
next step should be to stabilize the common and cultivated.
after that go for industrious and imperial.

fun question time.
what is your favorite bee species/line and why?

 

[SpitefulFox]

When you're trying to purebreed a line that's a hybrid between two species that can mutate, such as Common/Cultivated, a handy trick is to put the bee into a Bee House instead of an Apiary. Bees can't mutate in Bee Houses, which makes them extremely handy for that.

 

[Flipz]

In my LP world, I'm trying to not only get "stacking" Common and Cultivated bees, I'm also trying to get stacking Common/Cultivateds with the BEST traits possible (for my limited selection of traits; my best working speed other than Cultivated bees is "slower") with regards to tolerance, working speed, lifespan, etc. That way, when I move on to the more advanced mutations, I'll already have a spectacular base from which to work from.

Incidentally, I HIGHLY recommend getting your Commons by crossing Wintry and Unusual bees; Unusual bees have a temperature tolerance of +-2, and Wintry bees have a fertility of 4 drones. If you can get them stackable on both traits, your bees will be GODS in terms of breeding compatibility.

 

[Labhras]

It does. But if you go beyond x10 Mutation rate (or x16 production chance with frames), then your princess will turn into a swarmer and disappear after a few cycles. This was a fairly recent nerf, the mods in 1.5.2 are the first version that includes these restrictions.

Well, shit, thanks for pointing that before I built an alveary.

 

[Skavid]

Ive got question that might help the OP so i thought i would post it here. How many bees are there in a bee line cause i cant quite work out if there are 3 bees per line or four and its bugging me enough to ask about it before i spend any more time trying to breed for it witch might not even work if there's not 4 bees in a line lol. Thanks for any help

 

[Labhras]

Ive got question that might help the OP so i thought i would post it here. How many bees are there in a bee line cause i cant quite work out if there are 3 bees per line or four and its bugging me enough to ask about it before i spend any more time trying to breed for it witch might not even work if there's not 4 bees in a line lol. Thanks for any help

Varies between branches.

 

[PoisonWolf]

so figure out how to get everything the normal, quote unquote "hard" way before going to the machines for quicker solutions.
not a problem.

have one common drone, a common/cultivated, and a cultivated/common.
next step should be to stabilize the common and cultivated.
after that go for industrious and imperial.

fun question time.
what is your favorite bee species/line and why?

Actually, bee-breeding is by no means hard at all. It's just an iterative process, that gives the illusion of difficulty. Now, Sengir could go even crazier and implement the effort value system found in pokemon breeding/leveling, etc. Now that would be the $hits in added complexity. Lol. But yes, do it manually first, and you'll get a hang of it soon enough. I recommend cocoa frames to speed up the breeding/mutation processes.

Get two alvearies running first for your industrious and imperial. That will make creating your next 30+ alvearies super easy

My favorite bee species? I have three favorite bees. Platinum Bee, Demonic Bee, and extra bees Diamond Bee (gives Diamond Nuggets).

In my LP world, I'm trying to not only get "stacking" Common and Cultivated bees, I'm also trying to get stacking Common/Cultivateds with the BEST traits possible (for my limited selection of traits; my best working speed other than Cultivated bees is "slower") with regards to tolerance, working speed, lifespan, etc. That way, when I move on to the more advanced mutations, I'll already have a spectacular base from which to work from.

Incidentally, I HIGHLY recommend getting your Commons by crossing Wintry and Unusual bees; Unusual bees have a temperature tolerance of +-2, and Wintry bees have a fertility of 4 drones. If you can get them stackable on both traits, your bees will be GODS in terms of breeding compatibility.

It's better to just pass the x4 Wintry trait to a Rocky bee.

 

[Flipz]

It's better to just pass the x4 Wintry trait to a Rocky bee.

True, but I'm having bad luck finding Rocky hives this world. I know they're not that rare, but I seem to be digging in all the places they're not for some reason.

 

[PoisonWolf]

True, but I'm having bad luck finding Rocky hives this world. I know they're not that rare, but I seem to be digging in all the places they're not for some reason.

Go to ravines and walk around the walls. That's a cheap way to get them before you get to quarries.
But you're right, they are tough to spot. But with a quarry, it's ridiculous how many rocky bees you get lol.

 

[Flipz]

Wait--I thought quarries would just break the hives without yielding bees.

I've avoided quarries for all this time for NO REASON WHATSOEVER?!