Help me breeding bees please :/

[1234Daan]

Hi there,

this is my first thread on this forum. I have joined a server about a month ago and I recently started getting into bee breeding. I have got some common, cultivated and diligent princesses/drones, but every wiki sais that pure-bred bees are the best types to get new species. So my question is: how do I 'purify' my hybrid bees? Is it even necessary?

I am waiting for your feedback,

1234Daan

 

[Bibble]

If your bees are "pure" then they have the same traits on both the active and inactive sides. This means that there will be no change between them from generation to generation. There will be no mutation, and the drones will stack.

Best bet to purify them is to throw them into a repeating apiary for a bit (i.e. one that automatically pulls out the princesses and drones, and puts them back in for breeding). After a few generations (typically less than 10) you usually have a pure bee, but it might not have the traits that you are wanting on it, and might have already mutated, if the initial bees were mutatable. You can also include things like the chocolate frame, which discourages mutation and reduces lifespan, or the stabilizer (alveary, 1.5.X only). These will reduce the chance of mutation. You could pick the bees to breed, but I usually find that this extends to process, but it does give you more control over the output.

 

[1234Daan]

So should I purify my Unweay-Diligent drone before I breed him with a diligent princess?

 

[Bibble]

So should I purify my Unweay-Diligent drone before I breed him with a diligent princess?

Depends on how obsessive you are, and what mods you have installed. If you have Extra bees, you could extract the species serum, which would allow you to recreate either your unweary or your diligent bees at any time. I'd probably recommend stabilizing at each point, and getting a few drones (I usually go with a stack), in case the species is needed in later mutations (putting a stack of about 5-10 bees in a repeating apiary will typically result in overwriting the princess traits with those of the drones).

 

[1234Daan]

Yeah the thing is that in order to get serums I need royal jelly, and that's why I'm breeding the bees in the first place. Additionally, how would I get more princesses of a certain type? Just crossbreeding it's parents again?

 

[quantumllama]

I turn any non-purebred bee into liquid DNA. I'm kind of a bee fascist.

 

[Bibble]

Yeah the thing is that in order to get serums I need royal jelly, and that's why I'm breeding the bees in the first place. Additionally, how would I get more princesses of a certain type? Just crossbreeding it's parents again?

The best way to get princesses of a certain type early game is to recycle them in apiaries with a stack of drones of the type that you wish to imprint on the princess. The point being that the descendant drones are discarded, while the princess always mates with essentially identical drones. Eventually, the princess takes on all of the properties of the drones. The easiest check of whether it's done is when the number of drones starts going up (i.e. the drones being generated are the same as those in the source stack). This is usually the easiest way to "archive" a species in early game, simply get a stack of the drones, and throw them into a chest somewhere.

 

[PoisonWolf]

OP, I strongly recommend, before even getting further into advancing bee-breeding is to build a "common strain". You want to get the x4 drone production from the Wintry princess, and all the tolerances from the Rocky bees. You can put these traits into any bees if you want, but I personally choose the Common bee for this. This will take manual finagling and will require a substantial amount of honey drops as you identify them, etc.

Once you have the common strain going, use the common strain to spread it to the other basic 8 bees (Meadow, Forest, etc). This will make advancing bees much easier as the traits are passed on. Eventually, once you get industrious bees, get the Fast trait and merge that with your common strain.

But if anything is to be taken from my suggestion, be sure to get the x4 drone production ASAP. It makes bee-breeding a crap tonne easier as more drones = more chances = easier to purify any breed.

And purifying bees, without the use of machines, requires manual labor on your part. You need to identify the drones, and essentially "weed out" the species you don't want by putting in the species that you do want. For an example:

Princess is Common - Diligent.
Drone A is Dilligent - Dilligent
Drone B is Common - Dilligent
Drone C is Common - Common.

If you want to get a pure-bred Dilligent, you'd use Drone A, and repeat the process iteratively with subsequent drones until your princess is Dilligent - Dilligent. If you want a purebred Common, you'd use Drone C, etc.

Once you have species purity, then getting trait purity is extremely simple. Just a matter of rebreeding until your princess produces a stack of drones where the stack is equivalent to how many drones she can produce (x1 to x4).

Hope this helps.