Something I don't get about bee breeding

[Servillo]

I'm totally new to bee breeding, so a lot of the smaller details are kind of lost on me at the moment. I know my first goal is to get Imperial and Industrious bees. From there, I can get started on the advanced machines to make genetic manipulation much easier.

I know that whenever a Queen dies, I only get one Princess, but possibly a few drones. I'm worried that I'll eventually run out of Princesses. For example, if I breed a Meadows and Forest, I know I'll eventually get a Princess that's genetically a combination of Common, Meadows, Forest, or possible a pure combination if I'm lucky. If it's a Common/Something, I know that it's basically junk and won't be easy to breed with properly. Once I get a pure Common, I'm supposed to set it aside (for some reason; having a backup doesn't seem to make sense since if I've got a princess saved away, that's one less princess I have to use), and any pures afterwards can be used to breed.

Basically, I see myself using an absolute crapton of Princess bees for only the chance of getting purebreds, which will take more and more Princesses as I go down the line to Imperial/Industrious. And none of the guides or wikis I've ready really cover this either; they only give the breeding chains. Heck, they don't even really give details on what the products of most combs can do for me, so I see a bunch of bees that may or may not be useful.

I definitely want to get into bees, and I'll be following generikb's tutorials pretty closely, but they also don't come out all that quickly. I just need some idea of how bee breeding is supposed to work other than "combine these two types of bees to get another type of bee."

Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[YX33A]

Well, actually, bee breeding is just about "take these two bees and breed them until you get the traits you want". You might want to look up Florastar on Youtube. She did a pretty good beginners bee tutorial series. It's a bit dated now, but it's worth looking into.

But you aren't likely to run out of princesses any time soon if you have more then zero and you aren't using a Alverary with Extra Bees stuff to mutate your bees super fast. You will always get one princess when the queen dies, so they're stable in that regard.

Mind you, I don't think the Extra Bees in FTB was nerfed yet, so chances are you're fine.

 

[DoctorOr]

Mind you, I don't think the Extra Bees in FTB was nerfed yet, so chances are you're fine.

It was made reasonable literally months ago. Before 1.5 was released by Mojang.

 

[Ako_the_Builder]

You get a decent amount of rocky princesses from quarrying and once you have flight (mps, jetpack etc) flying around the overworld at night (hives give off light) can get you quite a few princesses too.

Anytime you want a princess of a particular type you just need to run it for a few cycles with drones of the target type.

For example, you've got a pure cultivated pair that is giving you 1 princess back and a couple of drones, so you eventually end up with a stack of cultivated drones. If you now want another cultivated princess just grab any hive princess (meadow, forest or rocky etc) and put it in an apiary with pure cultivated drones for a few life cycles, you'll end up with a second cultivated princess at the end.

Quite a few of the bees in the industrious and imperial lines are used as base bees for breeding other bees later on so its useful to be able to get more princesses of a bred type this way.

That said, once you get to extra bee stuff you can pull species serums from drones and then inoculate these into princesses to change species that way.

Hope this actually answers what you was asking, if not let me know and I'll try again

 

[YX33A]

It was made reasonable literally months ago. Before 1.5 was released by Mojang.

I meant I don't think that the version of Extra Bees in FTB has the "Too high Mutation chance means your princess is now a swarmer princess" nerf.

 

[DoctorOr]

I meant I don't think that the version of Extra Bees in FTB has the "Too high Mutation chance means your princess is now a swarmer princess" nerf.

That's base Forestry.

 

[ThemsAllTook]

You won't lose princesses through breeding, though you may have to repurify them by repeatedly breeding with drones of a particular type. You'll only need roughly as many princesses as bee species you want to keep around, plus any extras if you want to double up on a particular species. Get a good supply of drones and you won't have to worry about the type of your princesses; any type of princess can be turned into any other type of princess through repeated breeding.

 

[Servillo]

Okay, that explains exactly what I needed. Someone in a previous topic kind of alluded to being able to send a princess through a few cycles, but I wasn't too sure. That also tells me that all those Marbled Princesses I picked up will be useful for something. Hopefully generik's next tutorial will cover automation a little more so I can speed things up a bit.

 

[Bihlbo]

You will lose princesses through breeding if the queen dies, the products fill all available spaces in the aviary, and then the chunk gets unloaded before the princess has space to be deposited.

Normally if all the spaces are filled when the queen dies, you can just pick something out and whatever didn't have space to get deposited will show up in the now-free slot. Usually that's the princess. So if you think there's a chance of your queen producing a litter of cross-bred drones who won't stack with one another along with a couple kinds of combs, don't run off and let the chunk get unloaded. Better yet, pipe out all the products of every apiary all the time and you won't have to worry.

 

[Maldroth]

Okay, that explains exactly what I needed. Someone in a previous topic kind of alluded to being able to send a princess through a few cycles, but I wasn't too sure. That also tells me that all those Marbled Princesses I picked up will be useful for something. Hopefully generik's next tutorial will cover automation a little more so I can speed things up a bit.

Yeah if you want to save any bee species to use later get your self a half or full stack of drones when you make a species. You can take a brand new hive princes and breed her with say your distilled bees over and over until she becomes a distilled princess and here drones stack with the others.

I use this trick all of the time when I need to expand my operation or get back a previous bee species for another mutation. I also personally think this trick is faster than using genetic machines if your drones already contain the traits that you want.

 

[Phantom27]

You don't really need "an absolute crapton" of princesses. It is of course entirely dependent on you how many princesses of each species you want to have, but if your goal for now is just to breed up to Imperials and Industrious bees, then I'd say you only need two princesses for each species. One to keep (either as backup, or to continuously breed in order to get honey or beeswax for example) and one to use for the next mutation.

So, that's:
2 common + 2 cultivated + 2 noble + 2 majestic + 1 imperial (1 because it's the end of the line) + 2 diligent + 2 unweary + 1 industrious (since end of line again) = 14 princesses

Again, it's up to you how many you want to have, but 14 princesses should be plenty enough to breed both imperials and industrious. Maybe have a few extra Forest and Meadows just in case.

This is the rough process you need to follow:
- Breed a meadows princess with a forest drone, (or forest princess with meadows drone). Make sure to have 3 soul frames in your apiary.
- You will eventually get a common. If you get a Common/Forest hybrid, breed with a Meadows using Soul Frames; this will hopefully give you a pure common. If Common/Meadows, do the same but with a Forest one. If you somehow end up with a Meadows/Forest princess, don't worry, just keep breeding it anyway. It will eventually become either Common, or revert back to pure Meadows/Forest, in which case go back to step 1.
- Once you get at least one pure common bee, breed it with another bee (doesn't matter what species) and hope that you get several common hybrids. Now breed these hybrids until you get both a princess and a drone that are pure common.
- If you have got this far, give yourself a pat on the back, the worst part is done. Breed your common princess and drone together a few times at least, so you can get a surplus of common drones.
- Use the drones you got in the previous step to convert another princess into common. What I mean by this is, keep breeding a princess (any) with your common drones, and the princess will eventually become common too.
- Now you should have two common princesses, as well as several common drones. Put one princess somewhere safe, or cycle it through an apiary with your common drones if you prefer to get honey and beeswax (you will probably need an apiarist's pipe to do this, although you might be able to do it with a diamond pipe too)
- Now repeat the same process, but instead of using meadows and forest bees, use your second common princess and either forest or meadows drones. You should eventually get cultivated bees. If your common bee regresses back to forest or meadows, use your extra common drones to purify it and try again.

And that's pretty much it. You can repeat the same process for any mutation you want to get. As soon as you manage to get up to Common (or maybe Cultivated) you no longer need a tutorial, you can progress on your own. Because it's the same thing again and again, just different species to get different mutations.

It's not really as hard or complicated as it might seem at first, once you understand the basics, it's pretty simple, although admittedly quite time consuming.

Another thing you might want to do, if you haven't already, locate some tropical bees (found in jungle biomes) and keep breeding them in a separate apiary. Their combs can be centrifuged into propolis and silk wisp. Propolis can be used to make apiarist's pipes, which you will need for automation. Silk wisp can be used to make a set of the apiarist's clothes, which when worn protect you from any nasty effects some bees might have (poison for example), and can also be used to upgrade your forestry backpacks.

 

[gusmahler]

I'm having that exact problem as OP. I have 5 apiaries. And, coincidentally, I have about 5 princess at any one time. I have dozens of drones, but my selection of princesses is really small.

 

[Servillo]

- Once you get at least one pure common bee, breed it with another bee (doesn't matter what species) and hope that you get several common hybrids. Now breed these hybrids until you get both a princess and a drone that are pure common.

This is the only part I don't quite get. I thought the idea was to only use pure bees, and that hybrids were more difficult to work with. Also, with this, isn't there a chance that my pure princess will turn into a hybrid princess, getting rid of all the work I put into it?

I may just be misunderstanding how good or bad hybrid bees really are. I do appreciate all the help this topic has given me though, and I'll definitely be able to tackle bee breeding much more easily now.

 

[YX33A]

This is the only part I don't quite get. I thought the idea was to only use pure bees, and that hybrids were more difficult to work with. Also, with this, isn't there a chance that my pure princess will turn into a hybrid princess, getting rid of all the work I put into it?

I may just be misunderstanding how good or bad hybrid bees really are. I do appreciate all the help this topic has given me though, and I'll definitely be able to tackle bee breeding much more easily now.

Pay attention to what you're breeding with and you can get pure bees easily. But Hybrids aren't really bad. They actually can have better traits then pure bred bees, depending on what they were hybridized with. A real life example is the Africanized Honey Bee. I mean, there aren't many other bees out there which can effectively kill humans!

 

[Maldroth]

This is the only part I don't quite get. I thought the idea was to only use pure bees, and that hybrids were more difficult to work with. Also, with this, isn't there a chance that my pure princess will turn into a hybrid princess, getting rid of all the work I put into it?

I may just be misunderstanding how good or bad hybrid bees really are. I do appreciate all the help this topic has given me though, and I'll definitely be able to tackle bee breeding much more easily now.

Let's see if I can help.

Pure bees represent the default set of traits for a bee species. A Pure Common bee has the stats that you see out of the Bee database or wiki.

Stable bees are bees that are of the same type but their traits might be different. Stable bees will always produce the same offspring as the queen. i.e. the Princess and the drones are the same. Note that Pure bees are stable bees.

Hybrid bees are a mix of two types of bees. You usually get this when you breed one type with another. For instance a Forest-Meadows is a hybrid of a Forest and a Meadows bee. Hybrid offspring are not stable and you will always get a mix in the offspring. Some that are Forest. Some that are Meadows, and some that are a hybrid of Forest-Meadows. This instability is how you can either mutate to new species if you get he right mix, or move traits from one type of bee to another. You can move a fertility x3 train from a Forest bee to a Rocky bee if you breed a Forest and Rocky bee together. You can mix the resulting hybrids to try and get a Rocky bee that has x3 offspring.

Eventually when you keep encouraging the traits you want to see the bee line will stabilize and you will get drones that match the princess. The biggest clue this happens is when the drones auto stack in the hive.

The trick to all of this is using the Beealyzer on each and every bee that comes out and putting together bees that have the traits you want to see move forward. I think a lot of folks don't use that and wonder why their bees regress. Only time I have had regression is when I'm working on a hard mutation such as the precious metal bees and it is my first mutation.

 

[Servillo]

Holy crap, that helped explain a lot. Now I think I understand a lot better.

Now I won't be getting these anytime soon, but the advanced machines are my end goal of Industrious/Imperial bees, right? And those will make genetic modifications significantly easier, meaning I shouldn't worry so much about breeding over traits now, correct? Just make lots of drones on my way to Imperial/Industrious, and I should be able to make what I want overtime without all of it being crossbreeding.

Awesome. Now I just have to figure out some good BC power systems. I only ever did IC2, and I don't want to mess with it much this time around now that I've got the tools I want. Learning Buildcraft and Bees at the same time...should be fun.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

Getting industrious and imperial bees gives you access to alvearies, the enhanced form of apiaries. These require a lot of resources to build, and take up a fair bit of space, but bees output about 10x what they would in an unframed apiary while in them.

The advanced genetic machines only require the imperial bees. You're right in that you shouldn't worry too much about traits until you have them, but also don't worry too much about making drones: I mean, sure, you need something to feed into the genepool machine, but you should be planning to get rid of most of your drones sooner or later.

As a general rule, if a given drone doesn't stack with the other drones you have of that species, and that drone isn't immediately needed for a current breeding project, then that drone should be disposed of, not stored.

 

[baw179]

Getting industrious and imperial bees gives you access to alvearies, the enhanced form of apiaries. These require a lot of resources to build, and take up a fair bit of space, but bees output about 10x what they would in an unframed apiary while in them.

The advanced genetic machines only require the imperial bees. You're right in that you shouldn't worry too much about traits until you have them, but also don't worry too much about making drones: I mean, sure, you need something to feed into the genepool machine, but you should be planning to get rid of most of your drones sooner or later.

As a general rule, if a given drone doesn't stack with the other drones you have of that species, and that drone isn't immediately needed for a current breeding project, then that drone should be disposed of, not stored.

I set up my genepool machine and RC tank today, then I hooked up a wood pipe and autarchic gate from the side of my indexer to the genepool along with an overflow pipe back to the indexer. I don't know how many thousand bees I've genepooled but after a full day running I'm now left with 300 buckets of DNA and a much more manageable indexer holding a stack each of pure drones from each species and a bunch of princesses.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

300! That'll keep you going a while. You see now why I've personally taken to simply throwing unwanted drones on the ground, I hope.

Mind you, putting the excess DNA into a sealed pipe that goes nowhere would make for some pretty cool looking decoration. I've been considering doing that with lava (as I've got some bees that make it, and they output far more then is needed to power my comb processing system).

 

[_momomo]

I know this thread is kinda dated, but the OP had the exact same worries as I, meaning I didnt know how to get more pure princesses without the DNA machines. So I now know that I can just use my pure drones to breed with a forest/meadow princess , get hybrids, mate these with my pure drones again and hope to get a pure princess. but what I dont get is this:

- Now repeat the same process, but instead of using meadows and forest bees, use your second common princess and either forest or meadows drones. You should eventually get cultivated bees. If your common bee regresses back to forest or meadows, use your extra common drones to purify it and try again.

Do I need to use the common princess to advance to cultivated? I have a ton of pure common drones but only 2 princesses (one backup and one for breeding). As I understand this passage it means that breeding the common P with the f/m Drones will give me a pure cultivated or some cultivated meadow/forest hybrid (whichever i used).
But if I get a pure its either a drone or a princess (if i get both i am finished). How would I proceed from this point to get both a princess and a drone? Because if I get only one or a hybrid I will eventually lose it.

I dont think I can use the pure drone or princess to get more pure Cultivated bees without messing them up, or should I just breed them with common? Well in the case i need a cult princess as I only have a ton of common drones. If i get a cult drone I am kinda stuck as I only have one more backup common princess...

My problem basically is that I can turn a princess into another species by breeding them with target drones, but without a P and D of the trget i cannot get the amount of drones needed. So I only have one shot If i want to get from common to cultivated if I follow the path the quoted user describes.