Help with Alveary Mutations for Oily Bees

[Bloomer]

So I need some help from some of you Apiarists. I have been trying for several days to get to the oily tree branch for base power production. I am currently playing on Direwolf20 - 1.6.4 ver 14. I have breed my way to Primeval and Ocean bees. Along the way I have stopped and purified the lines with several stacks of each.

I now have several Alvearys, one with 5 mutator blocks. For the past two days I have tried at least 30 times to get the Oily Bee. I have tried using 2-5 uranium ores and Nether Stars. I now have a chest full of Primeval-hybrids. The closest I have gotten is only 1 Oily-Hybrid drone and zero pures.

I have tried this in both my meadows biome and a ocean biome. What could I be doing wrong?

 

[TheAwesomater]

First, check the mutation definitely exists
Second, go to the extra bees wiki and look at the oily bee, the wiki will provide all the information
Otherwise try and use gendustry machines to do the breeding for you

 

[trajing]

Check with NEI

 

[hiroshi42]

Some hopefully helpful hints:
Uranium ore (the block that you get while mining) does not seem to be terribly effective anymore. Try the enriched uranium fuel that goes in the fuel rods for IC2 nuclear generators. That seems to have a 100% mutation chance (testing got me 1 full queen and 2 full stacked drones) [EDIT: Ahahha of course its not guaranteed, that would be easy.]
Nether star did not have a great return on investment, I got one mutation in the one test I did.

Other than that make sure your bees are the maximum fertility you can get so you get the most chances for each mutation attempt.
And make sure you are scanning every bee, when not using uber-mutators you have just as good a chance of getting a oily-something as getting a something-oily. (Ok the odds probably vary based on if a species/mutation is dominant/recessive but I could care less.)

 

[Bloomer]

Thx for the replies. NEI does show that I have the correct bees. I even checked the Master Apiarist Database.

Maybe I just have really poor luck. I just was worried I was doing something wrong when so many videos show people using the mutators and always having success with new breeds.

Interesting idea that the items in the mutators got nerfed. I understand uranium but nerf nether stars?

 

[TheAwesomater]

Nether stars got nerf end when people started getting them through uncrafting gravity guns/force armour which was considered OP. There will probably be an option in the confit files to male the nether star better again.

 

[Bloomer]

Some hopefully helpful hints:
Uranium ore (the block that you get while mining) does not seem to be terribly effective anymore. Try the enriched uranium fuel that goes in the fuel rods for IC2 nuclear generators. That seems to have a 100% mutation chance (testing got me 1 full queen and 2 full stacked drones)
Nether star did not have a great return on investment, I got one mutation in the one test I did.

Thank you, this was what I needed. I switched over to using straight Uranium instead of Uranium Ore and it worked as I expected with all Pures as the result. I found out enriched uranium is not needed just the regular uranium is fine. 2-3 mutators with it seemed to be pretty much a 100% success rate.

Thanks for all of your help, I now have Refined bees with fastest and longest traits with the help of mutators and the advanced bee machines.

Is any of this helpful advice listed anywhere, it appears none of the wikis show this?

 

[MigukNamja]

I've also found the MagicBees Metabolic Frame to be quite powerful. Using just those frames, I can get 2% bees in just a handful of attempts in an Apiary. In all of my previous worlds in 1.6, 1.5, and 1.4, I had used Alvearies. But, the MagicFrames are powerful enough to use just Apiaries for breeding.

Granted, I don't wait for Pures. I make sure the hybrid Princess and hybrid Drone get Max Fertility and then throw them in another Apiary with a single Oblivion Frame, usually acquired from a chest and repaired with the [TT] repair thingy.

 

[hiroshi42]

Thank you, this was what I needed. I switched over to using straight Uranium instead of Uranium Ore and it worked as I expected with all Pures as the result. I found out enriched uranium is not needed just the regular uranium is fine. 2-3 mutators with it seemed to be pretty much a 100% success rate.

Thanks for all of your help, I now have Refined bees with fastest and longest traits with the help of mutators and the advanced bee machines.

Is any of this helpful advice listed anywhere, it appears none of the wikis show this?

I only found out about the fuel thing from an @Ako_the_Builder video. Further testing trying for Glittering bees (2% base mutation chance) reveals that nothing I can think of gives a 100% mutation rate, although plutonium seems to give the highest. It also reveals my hatred of potion swirls (should have given myself a rad suit) and it supports my long held belief that alvearies use (oblivion, possibly other) frames 5x faster than apiaries which I have never seen documented anywhere.

AS for official stuff: it would be nice wouldn't it? The best I think we can hope for is for someone to go code diving to look at the actual numbers for the mutator/other frames.

and I alway forget about magic bees' stuff, do we have official word on what the various frames do or are we back in the dark ages of 17 conflicting oppinions on that too?

 

[MigukNamja]

frames 5x faster than apiaries

Yes. They also are 10x more productive, baseline. But, one doesn't care about productivity when mutating. These days, I use Apiaries to mutate and Alvearies (with automated Impregnated Frames) for production.

and I alway forget about magic bees' stuff, do we have official word on what the various frames do or are we back in the dark ages of 17 conflicting oppinions on that too?

The 'official' word I use is the Thaumonomicon and other people's experiences. I do *not* know the numbers behind the Metabolic Frame. I agree it would be nice to know the numbers to compare, for instance, Metabolic vs. Soul Frames.

However, I can tell you from experience with multiple (at least 3) 1.6.4 worlds with bees that Metabolic Frames kick the snot out of Soul Frames and, if you have a way of cheaply producing Metabolic Frames, are a great alternative to souped-up, multi-Mutator Alvearies (which I have done many times). The Metabolic Frames with Shortest Lifespan Princesses/Queens should last you at least 5 or more Queen lifetimes. And, they will almost always produce at least 1 hybrid, even with 2% species like Glittering (Gold). They are pretty much guaranteed to produce pures with species 10% or more.

Another really nice Magic Bees frame is the Necrotic Frame. Three of those are *almost* as good as an Oblivion frame, seriously. And, they last a long time in an Apiary. Necrotic kick the snot out of Chocolate.

Edit : I forgot to mention what made me try Metabolic Frames : biome-specific breeding. In my quest for Quantum Bees for Certus, I got tired of building souped-up Alvearies in The End, The Nether, and a Desert biome. I died several times to radiation poisoning because I forgot the hazmat suit.

So, I figured I'd try Metabolic in a simple Apiary. I was very pleased with the results and have been using Metabolic since.

 

[Bloomer]

Oh yeah, I spent some time with Thaumcraft and created the Necrotic Frames. With the help of Necrotic Frames and Uranium I was able to move up several bee trees in 1 day.

For frame comparisons I found this table yesterday, not sure how up to date it is though: http://wiki.feed-the-beast.com/Comparison_of_Frame_types_and_Bee_Housing