I am really terrible at bees.

[Velotican]

An update to the existing information:

Extra Bees 1.5 and Forestry 2 have made changes to the Alveary such that it is now possible to get any bee to operate in any biome, but the more extreme the difference between the local climate and the climate you need, the more effort and resources you need to invest into the system. Expect to suddenly need to use MJ to keep the artificial climate stable as well.

It is considerably more cost-effective in the long-term to breed bees with universal heat and humidity tolerances, but also much harder.

Finally, a point that was never mentioned up until now: certain mutations require that the Queen is bred and working in a specific biome. You will need access to every vanilla biome to guarantee an efficient, low-cost breeding program.

Spoiler

Easily the best location for a bee base is on the border between a Plains and Forest biome. It's not perfect but it provides the widest support for bee mutation in one place.

 

[whythisname]

Do you guys know how many of each you need to change their tolerances? Are we talking a few blocks or stacks?

It's a random chance I think and with every level of tolerance the chance for improvement drops like a brick. With a bee with 0 tolerance it is easy to add 1-2 levels of tolerance, but anything beyond that and you'll need stacks upon stacks of materials and it'll take ages.

I got Desert bees which I increased the tolerance of so they can operate in Meadows, that already took a little while, but it's doable. I also tried to make Nether bees (the ones you find in hives in the Nether in ExtraBees) and I've tried to get those to work in Meadows as well, but you need lvl 3 temp. tolerance (I think). The humidity wasn't that hard, because with 2 tolerance there you can have a bee in a "normal" humidity climate. For temp. tolerance however I've used stacks upon stacks of ice and snowballs, it's been in the acclimatizer for days and then I finally gave up and decided I would breed them in the Nether. The temp tolerance did increase by 2, but it seems almost impossible to increase it beyond that.

If I ever get so far that I can automate putting ice/snowballs into the acclimatizer I might give it another go, but I'm suspecting it'll take many hours. I'll try that when I've bred some more Nether bees.

So basically, from 0 tolerance up to 2 is doable, anything beyond that is going to take a looooooong time (to the point I'm doubting if it's even possible). This also means that a bee that naturally has 2 tolerance is almost impossible to improve as well.

 

[Celestialphoenix]

You can use the tier III mechanics to make serums off any bee trait, and use it to change the traits of any bee.

You need several rather expensive machines (cant remember which ones- watch Dire's spotlight), which each use 50-100MJ/t and a lake or 2 of liquid DNA.​

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Essentially take any bee with high tolerance (I think rocky types have both+3 or something), isolate that trait and inject it into your desired bee.

(If you do it right, you wont harm your bees.)​

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This is a crazy expensive process, so it might be easier just to chunkload the area around your nether portal and keep them there.

I'll probably do this to give traits that cant fixed through other means (drones 4, fast[er/ist] working ect)​

 

[Atdiy]

It's a random chance I think and with every level of tolerance the chance for improvement drops like a brick. With a bee with 0 tolerance it is easy to add 1-2 levels of tolerance, but anything beyond that and you'll need stacks upon stacks of materials and it'll take ages.

I got Desert bees which I increased the tolerance of so they can operate in Meadows, that already took a little while, but it's doable. I also tried to make Nether bees (the ones you find in hives in the Nether in ExtraBees) and I've tried to get those to work in Meadows as well, but you need lvl 3 temp. tolerance (I think). The humidity wasn't that hard, because with 2 tolerance there you can have a bee in a "normal" humidity climate. For temp. tolerance however I've used stacks upon stacks of ice and snowballs, it's been in the acclimatizer for days and then I finally gave up and decided I would breed them in the Nether. The temp tolerance did increase by 2, but it seems almost impossible to increase it beyond that.

If I ever get so far that I can automate putting ice/snowballs into the acclimatizer I might give it another go, but I'm suspecting it'll take many hours. I'll try that when I've bred some more Nether bees.

So basically, from 0 tolerance up to 2 is doable, anything beyond that is going to take a looooooong time (to the point I'm doubting if it's even possible). This also means that a bee that naturally has 2 tolerance is almost impossible to improve as well.

Thanks! And yeah I will venture into liquid DNA at some point, but hand breeding for now