Vanishing Princesses

[Tumm]

I've had some odd occurances with bee breeding. I've only noticed it with Lapis bees. Sometimes, I'll return to the apiary, and it will be full of drones, but have no princess in it.

I use the extra bees serums to change a princess and a drone to be what I want it to be, and it's getting frustrating because of all the princesses I have to use to keep replacing the ones that vanish.

Should I just start fresh? I've heard that serum quality can affect bees negatively. I'm not sure if I used Excellent quality with these bees or not.

 

[drazath]

I've never used anything but excellent serums, but I've heard that one of the potential side effects of using lower quality serums is turning your bees into something similar to swarmer bees. That is, they get that [-] tag to signify they can just die without producing new princess offpsring.

 

[Watchful11]

I've never used anything but excellent serums, but I've heard that one of the potential side effects of using lower quality serums is turning your bees into something similar to swarmer bees. That is, they get that [-] tag to signify they can just die without producing new princess offpsring.

Useful info

 

[Sphinx2k]

I've had some odd occurances with bee breeding. I've only noticed it with Lapis bees. Sometimes, I'll return to the apiary, and it will be full of drones, but have no princess in it.

I have the same problem without the use of extra bees. Sometimes i get no princess and that is really annoying. I used and apiarist pipe to automate the process so i don't know if the problem comes from this pipe or if there is another problem that kills my bees.

 

[Hydra]

Are you sure you removed every bee from the apiary? If the queen dies and theres no room in the apiary you'll lose the princess.

 

[Poppycocks]

Can I remove the swarmer bee ... thingie?

 

[Zavvias]

Also if the serums You use to change bees arent excelent quality (purifier dont work on them any more) bees will die after few generations

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Did the apiary get filled up with junk?

If there's only 1 or 2 spaces left in the right hand slots, they'll get filled with drones, and leave no room for the princess to appear. I'm not sure if the princess get spat out and despawns after 5 min, or is just lost from the start.
(I lost one of my imperial princesses like this- +4 fertility, and only 3 empty slots, luckily 5 drones were enough to clone a new one.)

Theres also a current bug with alvearies loosing bees when their piped in.

 

[trunksbomb]

If the rightmost inventory of the apiary has no slots remaining, there are a few "overflow" slots that the bees get fed into that you can't see. Take out some of the drones/products in those slots and anything in the overflow will fill into it automatically. My princesses end up in the overflow a lot of the time when I'm purebreeding by hand.

If the overflow slots in the apiary are full, then no new drones/princesses/product can be inserted. You'll get a warning on the top-right tool tip about inventory space, with a red X over a chest.

 

[Peppe]

Can I remove the swarmer bee ... thingie?

Swarmer princesses have a chance to die off -- that is by design. They are only from Alveary or creative mode.

OP might check that they didn't grab swarmer versions if they used creative to get some bees at any point.

 

[tunnen]

I've had this issue too. I use a fully automated system of apiaries and buildcraft pipes with autarchic gates. Every once in a while I'll have a princess go missing. My assumption was it had to do with princesses being in transit while the chunk unloaded. I've heard that in the past that BC pipes would sometimes drop things while the chunk was being loaded/unloaded, but I don't know if that is in fact the problem. I'm currently running an array of 36 apiaries and have lost 3 princesses over the past 5 days. So it appears to be a semi-rare occurrence.

Another possibility, do bees have a chance to die after x generations? A lot of my bees are up to the 200+ generation now.

 

[Peppe]

I've had this issue too. I use a fully automated system of apiaries and buildcraft pipes with autarchic gates. Every once in a while I'll have a princess go missing. My assumption was it had to do with princesses being in transit while the chunk unloaded. I've heard that in the past that BC pipes would sometimes drop things while the chunk was being loaded/unloaded, but I don't know if that is in fact the problem. I'm currently running an array of 36 apiaries and have lost 3 princesses over the past 5 days. So it appears to be a semi-rare occurrence.

Another possibility, do bees have a chance to die after x generations? A lot of my bees are up to the 200+ generation now.

On the default difficulty (easy in the config) they do not naturally die off. If you change the config to hard mode i believe they have a chance to die and they live a lot longer, so mutation take a very long time to get.

I could see buildcraft pipes that output into an unloaded chunk dropping items.

You might try a chunk loader or if relays don't give you performance issues you might use a tube system for any risky sections of transit that cross chunk lines. You can turn on chunk borders in the minimap to help see where to be careful.

 

[tunnen]

I do have a chunk loader, though it is only active while I'm online (Server admin setting). I added a red alloy wire to turn off the gates a minute or so before I log off. I don't know if it's helping yet, but haven't noticed any additional losses yet. Though if the pipes are the problem, my shut off trick only works as long as I quit on my terms and not on a server error/crash.

I love tube systems and used them on my SSP system, though they increase the footprint size of my array quite a bit, so I've been trying to stick with just the apiarist pipes on the SMP server. I might reconsider this once I change my arrays over to alvearies though.

 

[Sphinx2k]

I will follow this topic maybe we can nail the problem down and work around it. My pipes are chunk loaded and i lost my princesses. Also an autarchic gate to pump the bees out so no overflow could cause the problem.

 

[bwillb]

Swarmer princesses have a chance to die off -- that is by design. They are only from Alveary or creative mode.

OP might check that they didn't grab swarmer versions if they used creative to get some bees at any point.

I think poppycocks may have meant can he inoculate that effect away like you can other negative effects.

 

[Tumm]

I do remember seeing a [-] next to some of my bees names. I'm guessing that using bad templates/serums is the cause here.

I don't think it was a 'not enough space' issue. When I would check on the apiary, I would see 4 drones and all the other slots were empty. Thankfully I've managed to isolate the lapis species trait.

 

[Poppycocks]

I think poppycocks may have meant can he inoculate that effect away like you can other negative effects.

Yeah, my question boils down to: "Can I have infinite princesses with inoculation and swarmers?"

 

[TheAtomicOption]

I'm pretty sure there are two separate issues here.

For those asking, the [-] trait can't be removed in any legitimate way, and AFAIK is only ever placed on bees that come from a swarmer. I don't think this affects serums isolated from [-] bees though.

I'm using Ultimate. I used buidcraft pipes+chunk loader to automate my bee yards and remove bee products, and I've also experienced rare random princess loss. I'm pretty sure it's just down to buildcraft pipes being glitchy. It seems to happen much more in places where the chunk is forced to be loaded, but I'm not present most of the time (like the nether) compared to places where I'm actually nearby most of the time (my base).

I also noticed that when I entered the nether near my hive, the princess/drones were always being piped out of the hive at that exact moment, so it seems that after a queen dies, the autarchic gate wouldn't activate until I was near despite the chunk being loaded.

 

[Runo]

the main issue ive found is with apiarist pipes. set the export to 'anything' and the hive import to 'any bees' whild having the apiarists pipe directly connected to the hive. if you use one pipe for multiple have with species specifications, sometimes a pipe will send two identical princesses if received at the same time to the same hive and drop one, or a hybrid will fall out of the filter. always use one apiarist pipe per hive to avoid these problems.

 

[Bibble]

Yeah, my question boils down to: "Can I have infinite princesses with inoculation and swarmers?"

No.

As far as I know, there is no way to remove the [-] effect from a bee. This effect can only happen "naturally" by using a swarmer block in an alveary. I understand that it can also be added "artificially" by using an impure serum on a bee.

Any princess with the [-] effect will have a chance of producing no princesses upon death. This is intended, in both of the methods of producing such bees.

The issues with transport are different, and are probably more of a buildcraft issue than a forestry one. I've never had any issues with bee princesses going missing if they're treated properly, but I've not played with them too much in the newer versions.