Bees

Welcome to Moron's guide to bees! There are much better guides to bee breeding out there. This primer is intended to guide first time apiarists just enough that they can get past the start.

= Finding bees = The best time to find bee hives in the wild is during the twilight periods of dawn/dusk, or at night. Hives put out light, and are easily visible. Some gather surface hives by using a copter jetpack to hover over an area, marking the bee hive locations, and returning during the day.

Rock hives are pretty frequent in stone, and you'll find plenty during vein-searching and clearing.

Some hives are only found deep underground under certain biomes. Search deep rock in magical forest or other biomes for them. (note: add list of hives found underground and which biomes have them) If you happen to run into redstone ore or glowstone, there might be a hive located in the center.

Finding biomes
Tropical hives can be difficult to locate since vanilla jungle biomes aren't included. Use a Natura Compass to examine biomes, and try to select biomes that are tagged as JUNGLE in Biomes o Plenty

https://github.com/Glitchfiend/BiomesOPlenty/blob/BOP-for-1.6/src/main/java/biomesoplenty/core/BOPBiomes.java#L321 https://www.reddit.com/r/biomesoplenty/comments/1ueued/request_list_of_forge_biome_dictionary_tags/

= Checking temperature/humidity = Your local biome's temperature and humidity is reported in the apiary window, top right. If you want to know the temp/humidity in a biome that you are standing in and don't have/don't want to carry a habitat locator, you can use NEI to look up the habitat locator, as it reports your current climate and humidity in it's tooltip.

=Breeding= To create a queen, one princess and one drone have to be inserted into some sort of bee housing. A queen produces species-dependent produce while alive and offspring upon death.

Princesses
When a queen dies, it produces either one or zero princesses:
 * Ignoble princesses will breed fine for a hundred times, after which they have a small chance of producing no princesses. This chance can be reduced with frames (lower genetic decay = better).
 * Pristine princesses always produce one princess.

Pristine princesses are obviously preferred (And all rock princesses are pristine princesses, so definitely harvest all rock hives), but that doesn't mean ignoble princesses are worthless. It only takes about 10 generations to change the species of a princess, and ignoble princesses do not decay until at least 100 generations have passed. This makes them useful for crossbreeding since you can quickly expand the number of princesses you have trying for a mutation.

Drones
When a queen dies it produces an amount of drones equal to it's fertility stat. Most bee species have a fertility of 2.

= Homes for your bees =

Bee Houses
Bee Houses are the tier 0 bee breeding machines. They do not attach to pipes of any kind, they do not allow the use of frames, and they do not allow mutations of the bees inside them.

Apiaries
Apiaries are the tier 1 bee breeding machines. They allow pipes to be connected to collect inputs and output, allowed for automation. Apiaries also for mutations, making them the best block to progress down the bee breeding trees. Apiaries are the first tier to accept frames which modify bee breeding behaviors in various ways.

These are gated behind the carpenter, but if you stumble onto a forestry villager he might trade one over for some vanilla logs.

= Tools for the beekeeper =

Field Kit
This tool allows you to scan bees very early on for the cost of a bit of paper per bee. You don't get quite the level of detail as you would with a beealyzer, but it's enough to breed with. If you're stubborn and want to breed bees in the steam age, enjoy.

= Machines for the beekeeper =

= Getting Started =

Breeding Fodder
The first addition you'll want for your new beekeeper hobby is a stock of drones to breed with. Typically it's good practice to stock up on drones for each new breed you obtain, starting with the Mundane bees.

Bees found in hives within the world will already be pure, so you can set up a loop to autobreed them straight away (Think hopper or conveyor pulling from apiary and pushing back into the apiary with GT pipes)

Converting Princesses
Need some spare princesses to try breeding a new species with? You can convert your extra mundane bees to a new species pretty easily with that stock of drones you've got. Sticking an unwanted princess into an autobreeder with a stack of drones will eventually convert that princess to the same breed as the drones. This can take between 5 and 10 generations, you can tell when it has merged to the drone variant when only stackable drones are produced. Don't be stingy on the drone quantity though, or you will get deviated species mixed in.

Beginning to Breed
All bee combinations are listed in NEI, simply search up the bee you're looking to breed and trace back to he bees you have available.

When targeting a new species, it's a good idea to convert some new princesses to the two parents before starting. if you want to breed some industrious bees, convert 3 or 4 new princesses to diligent and 3 or 4 to unweary. Then place each diligent princess with an unweary drone and each unweary princess with a diligent drone, at first it's probably best to not automate this. Rinse and repeat this process making sure that each resulting princess gets placed with the other style drone. When you begin to see Industrious bees pop up, save those and try to pair them with another industrious. If you're using the field kit scan and look to see if any bees have industrious as their recessive species, this makes it easier to target a full industrious bee.

Once you have an Industrious/Industrious drone and an Industrious/Industrious princess, then move to the autobreeder and try to get a drone stack going. This typically will be done in an autobreeder. Set this up and wait. Look for stacking drones and feed them into the autobreeder to try and stabilize the queen, consider feeding the unstacking drones to the earlier extra unweary and diligent princesses you started with.

= Basic bee genetics = = Advanced bee genetics =

= Notes =
 * Some bees do not allow certain traits. For example, lich queens will never have diurnal, and will only work at night.