The Quick and Dirty Bee Tutorial

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Quandary
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The Quick and Dirty Bee Tutorial

Post by Quandary » Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:37 pm

Bees require a lot of tin, and a lot of bronze (tin+copper). You'll want easy access to a hot/arid biome (e.g., desert) and a normal/normal biome (e.g., grassland/plans). You will want a location that is clear of other items/not heavily traveled, as the bee breeding process can cause conditions that are hazardous to players and items.

To start out, you'll want to make a bee smoker and a scoop. Wield the smoker, and right click on a hive to sedate it. Switch to the scoop and mine the hive to get its bees/combs.

You'll want to collect lots of natural bees. Mundane bees (from the desert/hot-arid areas) are a key ingredient to the bee trees we're interested in, so I'd recommend doing several runs through the desert collecting every hive you come across. You will also want a Valiant Bee (princess and drone), which is acquired at random from hives -- so, again, this comes back to collecting every hive you come across.

You are going to need lots of princesses while working up through the bee trees. In the end-game, you're going to want to work with *Pristine* princesses, rather than ignoble ones -- the difference is that "ignoble" stock will (aside from use in a Bee House) eventually die off/disappear/fail to produce a new princess. Pristine princesses, however, do not have this shortcoming - their hives will be able to regenerate (produce a new princess) every time. However, this will only be important once you have "production" facilities going (e.g., anything not being done in a Bee House), and the distinction is not super important in the early game.

To start out, we're going to aim for the top-tier Assassin Bee, and take a very brief side trip to get the Honey-Smelter bee, and the attendant Bee-Bee Gun. A Bee-Bee Gun, loaded with honey (fluid transposer + honey drop -> honey; fluid transposer + Bee-Bee Gun + honey -> filled Bee-Bee Gun), and loaded with an Assassin Bee queen or princess (Bee-Bee gun selected in hotbar, shift-right-click to access gun inventory, place queen/princess in), makes bee breeding trivial.

You'll need to build these machines to start:

Mutagen producer (feed it with RF and blocks of redstone)
Advanced mutatron (place it next to the mutagen producer; feed it with RF, mutagen, and Genetic Labware)

These machines are expensive, but critical - they take all the guesswork and randomness out of the bee breeding process. You put in a princess, a drone, mutagen and Genetic Labware, and the machine presents you a list of bees that can be bred from the two inputs, and also guarantees that the bee you select will be generated. The machine generates queens which have to be put into a hive (in our initial case, a bee house) to split out into princesses/drones that can then be further bred.

So, let's get started with some powergaming! You'll need a couple of Bee House blocks, one in a hot/arid climate and one in a normal/normal climate. If the Bee House gives an error about one climate (e.g., desert) move to the other (e.g., plains). You will need a flower (e.g., dandelion) near the Bee House in the plains, and you will need a Cactus and a Nether Wort planted near the Bee House in the desert. You will want to remain WELL CLEAR of the bee boxes for later bee types, as they can harm you and/or damage their surrounding environment as they breed.

Drone Queen Result
Natural Natural Common x2
Common Natural Cultivated
Cultivated Common Student
Student Common Graduate
Graduate Valiant Police
Graduate Modest Smelter
Cultivated Modest Sinister
Sinister Modest Fiendish
Fiendish Sinister Demonic
Smelter Demonic Devil
Devil Police Assassin

---
Assassin Bee queen ready
---

Smelter Graduate Honey-Smelter

---
Bee-bee gun + assassin = FAST TREE PROGRESSION
---

To use the Honey-Smelter bee, you'll want to put its queen into a Bee House that's surrounded by Flower Pedestals (28 should be sufficient). In each pedestal, place an Iron Ingot. Randomly, over time, the bees will change these into Honey Ingots, which can be used to craft the Bee-Bee Gun. Once you have the Assassin Bee in the Bee-Bee Gun, all that waiting you just did to get to this point (that is, waiting for the queens to split into drones/princesses) can be bypassed - just put the queen in a Bee House (the environment doesn't even have to support the bee!) and right-click with the Bee-Bee Gun. Bam - next generation of bees completed. With this tool in hand, the following progression should be quick to hand, given sufficient starting stock:

ENERGY BEE O.M.G....
Graduate Graduate Armorer
Graduate Armorer Sharpening
Armorer Sharpening Repair
Graduate Student PHD
Cultivated Common Noble
PHD Noble Engineer
Engineer Smelter Clockwork
Clockwork Repair Energy

Normal speed (for energy bee)...
Natural Natural Common
Cultivated Common Diligent
Cultivated Diligent Unweary

Pollen cluster (for building Alviaries)...
Diligent Unweary Industrious

Royal jelly (for building Alviaries)...
Natural Natural Common
Cultivated Common Noble
Cultivated Noble Majestic
Noble Majestic Imperial

Robotic speed...
Clockwork Engineer Electrician
Clockwork Electrician Robot

Magic wax production (for Alviaries frames)...
Cultivated Unusual Eldritch
Eldrinch Cultivated Esoteric
Esoteric Eldritch Mysterous
Mysterious Esoteric Arcane


Now, all of these queens that you've made have their natural/default genetics. We don't actually want to use these bees, because depending on the environment of your base and the type of bee involved, they might not be happy with the climate, or might want inconvenient flowers, or might light everything on fire. As such, you're going to want to start a genetic engineering program with the following two machines:

Genetic sampler
Genetic imprinter

The sampler takes bees, blank gene samples, and Genetic Labware, and spits out a random genetic property from the input bee to the sample. If you get a sample that has a genetic property you don't want/don't care about, you can dump it in a furnace and get back a blank sample. Note that lots of these genes come from the Rocky Bee (and a few from its descendant, the Robust Bee). Note that, by default, these bee breeds only produce ONE drone and princess, making it difficult to get their genes. To start, breed up a large quantity of Modest bee drones, and run those drones through the sampler until you get Fertility 2. You can then use Fertility 2 and a Genetic Template, together with some Genetic Labware and the Genetic Imprinter, to apply "Fertility 2" to *both* a Rocky Bee princess AND drone. You can then process those two together in a Bee House with the Bee-Bee Gun, and make a stockpile of rocky bees to work with. Note that it may be more beneficial to work through to the Robust Bee first, since it has all the same properties as the Rocky Bee, but better temperature/humidity tolerances.

Genetic targets:
Speed: Robotic (Robot bee), capture separate Normal (Unweary Bee)
Lifespan: Longer (Ender bee)
Fertility: 2 (Modest bee)
Pollination: Slowest (Rocky bee)
Territory: Average is fine, if you happen to see Larger, snap it up
Flowers: Rocks (Rocky bee)
Effect: DO NOT SET (capture separate "None" from Rocky bee)
Cave Dwelling: Yes (Rocky bee)
Nocturnal: Yes (Rocky bee)
Rain Tolerant: Yes (Rocky bee)
Temp. Tol.: Both 2 (Robust bee)
Humid. Tol.: Both 2 (Robust bee)


With the above samples (do not include the ones marked "separate"), you can create a template that will be applicable to most of your "production" bees - e.g., your Industrious princess/drone pairs should have this template (robotic, longer, 2, slower, larger, rocks, cave-dwelling, nocturnal, rain tolerant, temp +/-2, humid +/-2 -- a total of 11 genes set, omitting species and effect) applied to them. It is useful to have a separate template that has only "effect: none" set (to "neuter" bees with negative world effects if you need them). For your Energy Bee stock, you will want to have a template with all 13 values set (Energy, Normal, Longer, 2, Slowest, Larger, Rocks, RF Producing, Cave-Dwelling, Nocturnal, Rain Tolerant, Temp. +/-2, Humid. +/-2) so that you can directly generate energy bees on demand for your hives.

And that comes up to - how the heck do you use them fancy energy bees? You'll need partially-charged energy cell, an Industrial Apiary, an Energy Bee queen (or princess+drone), and (optionally) the automation module and up to 8 production modules for the Industrial Apiary. Place the apiary, and access its inventory with right-click. Place your queen (or princess+drones) into the apiary. Place the partially-charged energy cell next to the apiary - making sure that all sides of the cell are set to output. In this configuration, the cell will now charge, and in turn, re-charge the apiary (the apiary won't directly charge itself). Now, the cell can be tapped for power, or other high-drain machines can be placed adjacent to the apiary to draw power directly. One apiary with six production upgrades will fully power a quantum quarry, and this level of easy, portable power is suitable for most players. You'll probably want to drain off the combs (optionally processing them) to ensure that these little power-boxes keep running maintenance-free. However, if you want to fill max-tier draconic energy balls... you'll want the alviary build alluded to earlier in this guide. The long and short is you'll need to build an Alviary with 11 frame slots available, fill it with an Energy Bee as spec'd previously, and tap it with a Flux Point (and a corresponding Plug feeding the power to the draconic core). Keeping these blocks fed with fresh magic frames is a bit of a hassle. You can find more in-depth information about Doing The Silly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXS43qfoutU

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Re: The Quick and Dirty Bee Tutorial

Post by Inner » Wed Apr 15, 2020 2:32 pm

Thanks Q!

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