Tips/setup on quicker purebred bee breeding? (aside from frames and combinations)

[namae]

So yes... another bee tread. I felt like making one after spending 2 whole days on breeding and it feels worse than gregtech. So I know basics, mix bees, use soul frames blablabla. The problems are
1. all traits and species assigned on random (duh), and that would be bearable if there was not
2. there are 2 allele, so instead of 1 random number you get 2 random numbers, both of which you'll have to make same later if you want purebred. Actually no, you need 4, 2 for princess and 2 for drone.
3. traits are hidden including inactive species. What? you trying to get some purebred cultivated? Have some diligent and noble instead! That means you need honey for almost every random bee you get from breeding, which is a lot.
4. traits are wiped with mutations. This bites in the ass pretty hard when i tried to breed gem branch. Princess and drone with x3 fertility in 2 generation became a bunch with x1 fertility assuming I have no choice whatsoever (other than injecting them with fertility serum) and if theres inactive prior specie in allele have fun with ending up on bees of prior tier and pray to RNG god.

So to get purebred bees I had to spend up to few hours and buckets of honey on a single specie, mind you I used soul frames and oblivion frames constantly. And ofc all good bees require much more breeding. I simply do not wish to spend hours near my apiaries, especially if I gonna start a new world. So is there something what can ease my suffering?

 

[b0bst3r]

Extra bees machines - serums - race serums - trait serums, although it then becomes tedium making new "super" species with serums.

 

[namae]

Extra bees machines - serums - race serums - trait serums, although it then becomes tedium making new "super" species with serums.

Yes, that would be cool, assuming isolator and inoculator are not working on random either. Getting specie serum from randomly bred drones is a luck based mission, and princesses are out of question. Injecting every new specie with trait serums a bit more reliable, but for that i need at least a pure specie and drone and whole shelf of trait serums, and that would still use plenty of time/energy to get every trait injected.

 

[Bomb Bloke]

The short answer is that no, there's no super fast way to unlock all the bees. You can mitigate the time-sink somewhat but if you really want to get a whole bunch of different species working for you with decent traits, you'll want to just chunk-load a decent collection of hives and just work on them occasionally.

You either spawn in the bees you want or you spend hours on them. Well, days or weeks more like, depends how far you want to go.

2. there are 2 allele, so instead of 1 random number you get 2 random numbers, both of which you'll have to make same later if you want purebred. Actually no, you need 4, 2 for princess and 2 for drone.

Say you manage to get a rare mutation, but only the drone comes out the way you want it and the princess is stuck as whatever the parents were. Or maybe the princess comes out nicely but you get no drones.

You've got a few choices as to what to do, most of which I'll assume you've thought of. One which isn't obvious is to inoculate the bee you "want" with maximum fertility, then breed it with some bee that it specifically cannot mutate with. Doesn't matter what, just make sure it's something that can't produce mutations and also has maxed fertility.

The result will include a bunch of hybrids, generally enough to ensure you can keep on getting hybrids. In this way you'll eventually get enough drones to ensure isolation of the race (or whatever trait it was that you wanted). This method will allow you to eg find a single steadfast drone and pretty much ensure you get a racial serum out of it, even if you never had more then one pure bee at any given time beforehand.

3. traits are hidden including inactive species. What? you trying to get some purebred cultivated? Have some diligent and noble instead! That means you need honey for almost every random bee you get from breeding, which is a lot.

Compared to the amount of honey you need to create even one alveary (over a thousand drops) you don't really need all that much for breeding. Along with honey drops, honeydew also works in the beealyser, so the imperial bee line (which makes the royal jelly you need anyway) helps a lot there.

Also bear in mind that you only really need to get cultivated bees about once. When you've got a princess and drone, breed them over and over again to create a bunch more drones, then breed those with any princess until it comes to match their traits. This process is far easier to automate then regular mutation and allows you to turn, say, a regular marshy princess into a demonic princess (which gives lava and glowstone - awesome bee, that one) without having to use genetic machines or go through the mutation process again.

This process really beats inoculation hands down, as it also forces all the other traits of the drones (speed, effect, lifespan etc) onto the new princess. You just throw the whole stack of drones into the hive, cycle the princess in/out via pipes, and ignore the setup until it starts producing new drones that stack with the old ones.

4. traits are wiped with mutations. This bites in the ass pretty hard when i tried to breed gem branch. Princess and drone with x3 fertility in 2 generation became a bunch with x1 fertility assuming I have no choice whatsoever (other than injecting them with fertility serum) and if theres inactive prior specie in allele have fun with ending up on bees of prior tier and pray to RNG god.

Indeed, you need to keep that maximum fertility serum fully charged as you'll be using it a lot.

 

[Niels Henriksen]

First make a stack of each basic bee and use them to breed new species. When you get a new species then mix them with something that will not make mutation. I have tried that several times and is working fine. The goal is to get a stack of the new species before you move on to next.

With a stack of drones you can always take a rock princess and make her the drone species by putting her with the dones - it has to be pure drones.

 

[namae]

You've got a few choices as to what to do, most of which I'll assume you've thought of. One which isn't obvious is to inoculate the bee you "want" with maximum fertility, then breed it with some bee that it specifically cannot mutate with. Doesn't matter what, just make sure it's something that can't produce mutations and also has maxed fertility.

This is... actually pretty good idea, although its questionable if single allele specie can make stable offspring, and both allele is somewhat hard to obtain on random.

Compared to the amount of honey you need to create even one alveary (over a thousand drops) you don't really need all that much for breeding. Along with honey drops, honeydew also works in the beealyser, so the imperial bee line (which makes the royal jelly you need anyway) helps a lot there.

Yes, I was stupid enough to go for gem branch without single alveary on hand, it still costs me about 10 honey on average to get a single purebred specie.

When you've got a princess and drone, breed them over and over again to create a bunch more drones, then breed those with any princess until it comes to match their traits.

Yes, I'm aware of that and already have chest full of drones of different species. Actually thats the main reason why I always go for purebred.

Lastly is there any flexible setups which can at least partly automate breeding process?

 

[Ako_the_Builder]

A good feature of bees is that there is several ways to go at them.

My preference:

Start with forestry and meadows, breed them to industrious and imperial (apiary with soul frame or magic bees breeding frame). This is the longest bit as you have lowest chance for mutation when going for these 2 species.

Once you have imperial and industrious you can work towards your first alveary; you need pollen (industrious), royal jelly (imperial), beeswax and a good amount of honey (can be easy to forget these when concentrating on pollen and jelly).

Make a breeding alveary with 1x mutator, 1x frame housing, alveary lighting and rain shield - this is your breeder everything is easier from here - use uranium ore in the mutator for 10x base chance (and 0% swarmer chance) to get the best mutation chance on any bees, use oblivion frame (looted from chests, can be crafted later) in the frame housing to make breeding take 1 bee tick (27.5 seconds).

Once at this point you can also make extra bees machines: serum everything

 

[Bomb Bloke]

This is... actually pretty good idea, although its questionable if single allele specie can make stable offspring, and both allele is somewhat hard to obtain on random.

One allele (my new word for the day) is picked from each parent at random for each trait for each offspring. So indeed, if you only manage to get one allele you want on one bee, then you'll usually want to keep mutating instead.

For example, you have a pure energetic bee (which you want more of) and a diamond bee. On breeding them together, each offspring WILL have energetic as either active/inactive and diamond as the other. By sticking with bees that can't mutate, you ensure you keep your fertility and lifespan traits.

On breeding the hybrid energetic/diamond princess with one of the drones, each of the offspring has a 50% chance of being another hybrid, a 25% chance of being a pure diamond, and a 25% chance of being a pure energetic.

Obviously you won't always want to do this. Sometimes it'll be faster to just throw the results of the very first mutation you achieved into the isolator (get four hybrids and the odds are decent). Sometimes you'll just want to keep trying to mutate the princess until you get a pure pair (probably always fastest in terms of the clicking you have to do, even if it'll likely take longer overall due to lost fertility/lifespan traits). You'll also want to factor in the rarity of mutation (some races have really low mutation rates), and the resources you've got on hand for frames etc will affect your decisions, but it's an option to consider if you get only one pure bee and nothing else to work with.

Yes, I'm aware of that and already have chest full of drones of different species. Actually thats the main reason why I always go for purebred.

If you can isolate the race, then you can just inoculate it onto a princess/drone with all other traits already maxed out. If you get given a whole bunch of hybrids then sacrificing them to the isolator for this purpose is usually a better gambit then attempting to purify them in the hives.

Lastly is there any flexible setups which can at least partly automate breeding process?

IIRC correctly (and if it hasn't changed), apiarist pipes are bright enough to spot the difference between hybrid and pure bees without the use of the beealyser. You should be able to use this to cycle a princess between two hives (one filled with drones of parent race A, the other filled with drones from parent race B) and have all offspring of desired race C dumped into a chest while all other drone offspring get binned.

The process'll likely stop before you get a pure princess and drone, but you'll at least know everything in the chest has at least one allele of the race you want. You can then beealyse the lot and decide where to go from there (based on how many you got and how many were pure).

 

[namae]

snip

Boy, this would be so perfect if I could actually stick nether stars or more than a single uranium in mutator without getting corrupted bees (just whos idea was that you should get corruption on bees from using nether star? why even bother with it then?). Although alvearies suck on frames in blink of an eye, and I wasted all my uran for dust... Anyway, thanks for the tip, if only I'll figure out how I can make most of it...

 

[twisto51]

The time investment is quite small compared to the return, which is infinite. If you don't want to spend hours on bees then don't do bees, it really is as simple as that.

That said, the actual work in the process is quite small. You don't have to sit there twiddling your thumbs while waiting, you could be off doing other things.

 

[Ako_the_Builder]

Boy, this would be so perfect if I could actually stick nether stars or more than a single uranium in mutator without getting corrupted bees (just whos idea was that you should get corruption on bees from using nether star? why even bother with it then?). Although alvearies suck on frames in blink of an eye, and I wasted all my uran for dust... Anyway, thanks for the tip, if only I'll figure out how I can make most of it...

You get swarmer bees if you raise the bees base chance over 10x, the uranium ore gives 10x so you are always safe (and at max safe chance) with 1 uranium ore. Multiple uranium or a nether star will almost always create swarmers (it's a chance not guaranteed), but they still maybe useful if you're getting frustrated with a bee that has a base chance of 2%

 

[namae]

You get swarmer bees if you raise the bees base chance over 10x, the uranium ore gives 10x so you are always safe (and at max safe chance) with 1 uranium ore. Multiple uranium or a nether star will almost always create swarmers (it's a chance not guaranteed), but they still maybe useful if you're getting frustrated with a bee that has a base chance of 2%

Yes. I'm just saying that if you mix 2 purebred bees and mutation chance is 100%, all offspring will be 100% mutated, thus reducing breeding attempts to one, thats where nether stars/multiple uraniums could come in handy, but with high chance of losing princess in the process its not really worth it.