Bees

Note: This is a WIP. But largely complete in text.

Bee Guide

Why Bees?

Bees are insects that Forestry and some addons provide that can gather produce for you. The majority of bees can produce honey and Beeswax.

The more sought-after bees can create Royal Jelly, Diamonds, Uranium, Lava (indirectly) and many more often hard to find resources. Some bees can even grant you regeneration or experience.

Bee Addon Notes

Sometimes, Apiarsts don't have all the tools at their disposal. Most notably when addons are absent.

Extra Bees (ExB)

Magic Bees (MB) Gendustry (GD)

Tools of the Trade

As a budding apairst, there are several tools you will find useful.

• Scoop - Allows you to safely retreive Bees from their Hives.
  • Thaumium Scoop, Manasteel Scoop (MB)- These are just repairable versions of the basic Scoop. They also boast a slightly improved base durabilty than the Scoop. Note that the Thaumium Scoop needs to be enchanted with Repair first, and follows all the usual conditions for that enchantment to work. The manasteel scoop requires a source of mana in your inventory in order to repair itself or prevent damage.
  • Scooporator MX200 Turbo (GD) - This is a powered scoop, that uses EU or RF instead of durability. It's also somewhat faster than normal scoops.
  • Other Unconventional 'Scoops' - Industrialcraft's mining Laser; Thaumcraft's Wand Focus: Excavation, Wand Focus: Equal Trade and the Arcane bore. Additionally most quarries will also safely retreive bees from any hives they do encounter.
• Beealyser - Allows you to anaylse bees to see more details about what they like.
  • Anaylser - A block version of the Beealyser, this uses Liquid Honey instead of Honey drops, but you still need the basic Beealyser to see all the details about the bee. This block also works on both Trees and Butterflies (and can be crafted with the Treealyser or Flutterlyser in place of the Beealyser)
• Flowers - Not strictly a tool per se, but many bees will like flowers around their housing, you'll only need one, and the bees will end up spreading them like wildfire once there are enough of them.
• Apairst's Suit - A four-piece set of equipment that you can wear. It doesn't protect you much against monsters, but it will protect you from the more spiteful bees. Be aware you do need to gather silk wisps from Tropical Bees, which can poision you while they are working. Some bees, especially those bred in or native to the nether or end, have nasty effects if you are not wearing this suit, or otherwise wean them off their spiteful habits. For those interested in breeding trees, the hat of the set also shows you pollinated leaves clearly.
• Carpenter - Used to make many bee-related products, most notably it's required for both the apairy and alvery.
• Squeezer - Used to squeeze liquids out of solids. For beekeeping the most useful two squeezes to know are Honey Drops > Honey and any kind of seed or nut > Seed Oil.
• Centrifuge - Used to Extract the produce found in Combs.

Finding Bees

In packs which have Forestry, hives are fairly well scattered, mostly above ground in the overworld. 

A typical Modest Hive. All Hives emit light.

Different bees are found in different biomes. The hives are often easier to spot at night, as they give off light. Once you have found your hive, you can use a scoop, (or equivalent) to safely extract the bees from the hive. You will get a princess, often a drone, and sometimes some combs the bee inside would produce. Princesses come in two flavors, or stocks. Pristine Stock bees will never die off, Ignoble Stock bees will eventually die off, and if you genetically modify them, might not survive the process. It is suggested getting a bunch of different bees, preferably of pristine stock, before starting to breed. You might find it advantageous to run some of the wild bees for a short period in order to build up drones.

Many wild bees are very picky about what conditions they like to work in. It's ideal if you can situate your bees in a normal/normal biome, as the vast majority of bees are comfortable working there. You can make them more tolerant later on, but this can be a major hurdle early on.

Addon Notes

Extra bees adds extra hives to the world, it's notable that all of the bees you find from extra bees hives will be Pristine stock.

Magic Bees adds extra hives to the world, many of which can only be found in magical biomes underground. It also adds a Botania flower that can make bees.

Gendustry allows the creation of custom bees, and recently has also allowed hive spawning as well via a similar syntax. This is beyond the scope of this guide, but the dye bee species from Gendustry are defined in this manner.

Skyblock Notes

In skyblock maps, you will instead need to attract bees to you. You first will need to make an artificial hive by combining a hay bale and woven mesh, put this in a barrel filled with seed oil in order to scent it. It's then a matter of placing it down and attracting bees. Bees attracted in this manner are fussy, and will need certain biomes and/or conditions to be attracted. As a rule of thumb, you will need to place it in a biome the bee likes and place things the bee likes (such as flowers) nearby.

Specialty Products

Some bees have what are known as specialty products. Usually this includes the most valuable thing the bee can give you. Bees will only produce specialitys if they are in the perfect enviroment. You can either place them in their ideal biome, or use the Alvary's special blocks or Industrial apairy upgrades.

Bee Housing

From Left to Right: Bee House, Apairy, Alveary

For the Bees to gather any produce at all you need to make there someplace to live. Vanilla Forestry provides 3 types of Bee Housing, while Magic Bees and Gendustry provide alternatives, if they are available to you.

• Bee House - The most basic kind of bee house. This is the simplest bee house you can build, just requiring some wood and a honey comb. While it cannot be automated, and provides a very minimal return, it boasts a boost to the pollination rate of nearby trees. The Bee House has a niche use in bee breeding, as bees inside cannot mutate to new speicies, and is thus helpful to stablise speices of bee. (for instance the common, preventing accidental mutation to cultivated).
• Apairy - The standard bee house. A little more complex to make than the Bee House, requiring a carpenter and squeezer, along with wood and seed oil, but you can also snag these from villages, and Beekeeper villagers (they have yellow honey-like robes) can sometimes offer you a trade of wood for apairies. Unlike Bee Houses, they can be automated, and allow for mutation. They have a higher yeild of produce than the bee house. They can also accept Frames, although these cannot be automated.

• Alvery - The top-tier bee house in vanilla forestry. The most basic Alvery is formed of 27 alvery blocks, with 9 wooden slabs of any kind on top. You'll know when it's formed correctly when markings appear in the middle-top block of each side. Each of the exterior blocks, aside from the middle-top block of each side can be replaced with a more advanced alvery block. The Basic Alvery blocks require Pollen Clusters from Industrial Bees, Royal Jelly from Imperial Bees, along with plenty of wood, some honey and seed oil. The advanced blocks also need Electron Tubes made in the Thermionic Fabricator.
  • Alvery Fan - When provided with RF power, cools the Alverys temperature
  • Alvery Heater - Essentially the opposite of the fan, this heats the Alvery instead.
  • Alvery Hyrdoregulator - Give it water, to make the alvery more humid (and slightly colder) or lava to make it less humid (and slightly hotter)
  • Alvery Seive - An interesting upgrade for sure, give it silk mesh as a filter, and any pollen collected by the bees will end up in the seive instead of on another tree, allowing for more controlled tree breeding.
  • Frame Housing (ExB) - Allows you to place a single frame within the alvery. It'll affect the bees inside the same way as in an Apairy.
  • Mutator (ExB) - Certain Mutating items can be placed inside to increase the chances of mutation. Be warned this can also damage the bee

• Magic Apairy (MB) - This is an upgraded Apairy, which needs either a Vis Bee Booster or a Mana Bee Booster underneath it. I have not had practical experience with this, so this is mostly here for completion. The Apairy itself does need some produce from some of Magic Bee's own bee species to make.
• Industrial Apairy (GD) - This is a metallic, powered form of the Apairy. It's base production rate is comparable to an alvery. The main catch is that it does need power, and thus your bees won't work if there is none. It's much simpler to automate and upgrade than the Apairy or Alvery, but these come at the cost of more power. You get 4 slots for upgrades.
  • Production Upgrade - You can increase production of the bees by installing these upgrades into the industrial apairy, up to 8.
  • Automation Upgrade - Offspring produced by the bees are automatically bred again. You can only install one of these.
  • Lifespan Upgrade - Decreases the lifespan of the bee. You may install 4 of these.
  • Biome Simulation Upgrades - The apairy is treated as being in the Biome Simulated by the Upgrade. You may only use one of these.
  • Seal/Light/clear sky Upgrades - The bees inside can still work in the rain, at night or undergound. You may use one of each of these.
  • Pollination Upgrade - Increases the pollination rate of trees
  • Seive Upgrade - Does the same thing as an alvery sieve, without the need for the silk mesh.

Frames

Frames are upgrades for the Apairy that can alter the behavoir of bees. With Frame Housings, you can place them in an Alvary as well. All frames have a durability, that wears down as bees interact with the frame.

• Untreated Frame - The most basic frame, made solely of sticks and string. It increases the speed of production of bees. It has a low durability.
• Impregnated Frame - The highest craftable frame without other mods, it has the same effect as the Untreated Frame, but lasts longer as it has a higher durability. It also acts as the base frame for many of the extra bee Frames.
• Proven Frames - Villagers can trade these frames for emeralds in batches of 6. These have the same effect as the other frames in vanilla forestry, but has the highest durabilty.
• Chocolate Frames (ExB) - This frame gives a slight production boost, and a slight reduction in lifespan
• Magic Frame (MB) - This is another craftable alternative to the basic Forestry frames. It is most similar to the Impregnate Frame. It's also the base frame for all other frames in magic bees.
• Necrotic Frame (MB) - This frame decreases the lifespan of the bee, meaning bees will cycle quicker.
• Metabolic Frame (MB)/ Soul Frame (ExB) - These frames both increases the chance for a mutation in bees.
• Resiliant Frame (MB) - This frame is exceptionally durable, and has the same effect as the Forestry frames.
• Oblivion Frame (MB) - You will only need one of these in your apairy, as one ensures a bee dies off as quickly as it can after starting work. The downside is that you need Dragon Eggs to make it, although they can also be found as dungeon loot. There is a bee that can assist in the production of said eggs. Pairing this with two Metabolic or Soul Frames gives the fastest turnaround and highest mutation chance possible in an apairy.

Breeding Bees

So you have Bees and a place for them to live, now why not see if you can improve what they give you? Before starting to cross-breed bees, it is recommended to gather some honey drops and a beealyser (even if you are going for the gendustry mutatron.) Once you have both of these, place honey drops in the top slot of the beealyser, and a bee underneath. You'll be given genetic information about the bee. Blue traits are Recessive and Red ones are domiant. In most cases, the trait that affects the bee are the active ones, on the left. The only exception to this is if the active trait is Blue (recessive) and the inactive trait is Red (dominant), in which case the dominant trait will override the Recessive one, even though it's in the inactive trait. This mostly comes into purifying traits (especailly feritilty) via crossbreeding. If you just mutating, the species traits are all you need worry about, aside from the temperature and humidity information you can find by moving the identified bee onto the III section. The first bee you will likely make is the Common bee, which is made by breeding any two hive bees together, for example a Meadows Princess and a Forest Drone. Be sure to analyse any cross-bred bees you make. You will want to try and get a pure-bred (i.e. Common-Common, princess and drone) going before continuing. After which you can bred your new common bees with another Hive bee to get Cultivated bees. Cultivated bees are good bee to keep running for a while, as they are the base of many lines of bees. The extra drones will come in helpful, they additionally have the Fast worker trait, meaning they work a little faster than most other bees, making them ideal to hang onto for extracting or cross-breeding of this trait . NEI can additionally provide a full list of bee mutations. Some bees additionally require specific biomes or blocks under the apiary or alvary in order to mutate at all. Many of the Metal and Gem bees in magic bees require a block of the said metal or bee underneath the apiary to have a chance to mutate. A few bees can only be found around certain times of the year.

Force-Mutating Bees (GD)

"That sounds like a lot of work for small nuggets of metal!" You may cry when you see how deep most of the useful bees are breeding wise, and that most of them only produce nuggets of what you need. Fear not, as Gendustry has a way to speed up this process. The mutatron uses a fair bit of power, genetic Labware, a princess and a drone, in order to force a mutation to a new species. The advanced version lets you pick which one to mutate to in the case of mulitple possible mutations. This also bypasses most of the restrictions that come with normal mutation. This can help speed up the breeding process, but some prefer the more manual method of breeding. The mutatron also needs mutagen made using the Mutagen producer. This takes Redstone, glowstone or uranium and power to make mutagen. The most efficent item to use are Uranium Blocks, followed by blocks of restone or uranium. The mutagen producer uses the same amount of power to process 1 redstone dust as a uranium block, so it's best to give it the biggest possible thing. Note that Ignoble bees put through the mutatron can turn into genetic waste. If you into trees, this thing can also force-mutate them if you have a sapling and pollen.

Perfecting your bees (GD)

Gendustry provides a mekanism for extracting traits off bees, and transplanting them onto other bees. You can even make Ignoble Bees with any set of traits you like. First, you'll need more Genetic Labware, some Blank Gene samples, a few Genetic Templates, a genetic Imprinter and a Genetic Sampler. Place your drones, Genetic Labware and the gene samples in the Sampler. After some time, and power, it'll make a Gene Sample from one of the genes at random from the provided bee. It should be noted you can smelt these to return them to being empty again, should you need to recycle them. Once you got a set of gene samples you can add them to a genetic Template, which can be used in the genetic Imprinter to implant the genes onto any bee.

If you'd rather make your own bee, you'll additionally need a protein liquifier, a DNA Extractor, and a Genetic Replicator. You'll also need to specify every gene in the template (i.e. a full 13/13 template). The protein liquifier takes most kinds of meat and makes protein, the DNA Extractor takes any kind of bee, forestry sapling or butterfly (although it's best to give it drones) and makes Liquid DNA. The genetic replicator takes both of these fluids and a full genetic template (and genetic labware) to make an ignoble queen of the exact specifications given by the template. Like the Samples, you can smelt templates to clear them.

Example breeding run

The bee targeted in this example is the Demonic Bee, which produces glowstone dust, and can indirectly make lava via phosphor. It's assumed that there a plentiful supply of Pristine princesses and drones of each of the hive species used, and that no bees have been bred before. I'd also highly recommend getting an apairist's suit when handling nether bees, as they all have either the Agressive effect (damages nearby entities) or the Fiery effect (setting them alight) both of which are negated by the suit.

Stage 1: Common Bees

The first bee to make is a Common Bee. Placing a Forest Princess and a Meadows Drone in an apairy, and letting them die off. After anaylsing the offspring bees, we get a Common-Forest Princess, a Forest-Meadows Drone and a Pure Common Drone. In an attempt to purify the common species we then place the Common-Forest Princess with the Pure Common Drone. Again, after anaylsing, we get a pure Common Princess a Pure common Drone (common line established) and a Common-Cultivated Drone. While we do want Culitvated bees in the next stage, the hybrid will only be a hinderance. We run the Common bees in an automated apairy in order to get a few excess Common Drones.

Stage 2: Cultivated Bees

Once we have a run of Common Bees running with a fair stock of common Drones, we can breed a common drone with a Meadows Princess. We can repeat the process we used with the Commons to get Cultivated. After the first breeding we get a Common-Meadows Princess, a pure Cultivated Drone and a Meadows-Common Drone. With these results You can either cross breed the two hybrids (although this has a reduced chance of mutation) or get a fresh Common Drone and Hive Princess. For higher chances of getting the Culitvated, we choose the latter. We get fairly lucky this time, and get a Pure Culitvated Princess, a Cultivated-Common Drone and a Meadows-Common Drone. We the run the pure cultivated bees together and get plenty of Cultivated Drones. (You will want to get plenty of Cultivated drones, as they are the base for many species of bee.

Stage 3: Nether Bees

For the rest of these steps you will need access to the nether. The good news is this mutation has a 60% chance of happening. You will need either a Modest or a Tropical Princess, I'd suggest the former, as it doesn't poison you, along with a Cultivated Drone. You can reverse these if you have a way for the Cultivateds to actually tolerate the nether. Sinister bees do like the nether, and are one of the few bees that won't work in a normal/normal biome naturally. As usual, when you get a species, run it for a while to get a bunch of drones.

The modest princess will want a cactus as a flower, the Tropical princess will want Ferns or Vines. The Nether bees will all want Nether wart as a flower.

Fiendish Bees are a cross-breed between Sinister and one of Tropical, Modest or Cultivated. This species will also need to be bred in the nether.

The final step is to crossbreed your Sinister and Fiendish Bees to make Demonic Bees. Like the Sinister and Fiendish bees, this must be done in the nether.