Bee (Forestry)

Bee
Name	Bee
Source Mod	Forestry
ID Name	Unknown
Type	Item
Stackable	Identical Drones Only, (64)

Bees are a mechanic added by the Forestry mod and expanded by add-on mods such as Extra Bees and Magic Bees. Bees are obtained by breaking Beehives with a Scoop. Two types of Bees are dropped by Beehives, Princesses (Female) and Drones (Male). Placing one of each in a housing block, such as the Bee House, will result in them breeding together. The Princess then becomes a Queen, and the Drone dies. The Queen will then begin to generate various products, depending on its species, before she eventually dies. A productive Queen will cause the housing she is in to generate particle effects that visually represent the "Worker Bees" that she creates. This is purely a cosmetic effect, but is useful in indicating when a Queen's "workers" have stopped working, or if the Queen has died. After the Queen dies, it will leave behind a new Princess and a number of Drones, which may be used to create a new Queen and restart the process.

Housing Conditions

Various conditions must be met in order for a Queen to be productive. The first is the presence of a "flower". For most Bees, any vanilla flower will work, but some will require a specific flower, or something that isn't even a flower or plant at all. Having multiple flowers does not change Bee productivity, and multiple hives can all use the same flower without any issue, as long as it is close enough to the housing the Queen is in.

The second is the time of day. Most Bees will only work during the day, some will work during the night, and a few will work continuously.

The third is the biome the Queen is in. Queens have a preferred Temperature and Humidity that they work in, as well as a tolerance to how far they will work outside of this preferred environment. Some Bees have a tolerance of 0 and will never work outside of a specific climate. When working in a preferred environment, Bees become "Jubilant" and will be able to generate special products. Jubilant does not affect anything else involving Bees, and may in fact do nothing, as many Species do not have special products that they can generate in the first place.

The remaining two conditions are that the housing does not have any blocks over it that block the sunlight, and that it is not raining, though some Bees can work these conditions not being met.

Types of Bees

Forestry contains over 30 species of bees, while Extra Bees add more than 100 additional types, each with their own potential produce. Of these, 12 types are "mundane" or wild bees, available by breaking Beehives found naturally in the world. Bee species can be crossbred to improve traits and even create new species; see Bee Breeding for more information. A complete list of bees is available under Bee Species.

Every species can exist as one of four different forms:

Larvae - juvenile male bee from a Hatchery and modifiable with Genetics
Drone - basic male bee, collected from Beehives or bred by the player
Princess - basic female bee, collected from Beehives or bred by the player
Queen - mated female bee, ready to work in a Bee House, Apiary or other housing and produce resources

Uses

While mundane bees produce items of minimal value, many of the more advanced species provide alternate ways of obtaining non-renewable or difficult to acquire resources. Forestry's Backpack upgrades require bee keeping to obtain Woven Silk. Bees are required to get Honey Drops, Beeswax, Silk Wisps, Royal Jelly and Propolis, amongst other items. Honey can be used to increase production for Biomass, Phosphor yields renewable Lava. Their main products are various Combs, which need to be Centrifuged to gain the actual items. There are bees to produce almost every type of resource in FTB modpacks.

Bugs

In older versions of Forestry, the check for rain is done by determining if rain is hitting the top of the housing. Additionally, housings do not recognize blocks that do not obstruct the flow of light as an obstruction to the sky. This means that by placing a fence, glass block, or other similar blocks directly over the housing, Bees can be "tricked" into working during rainfall.

Video

External Links

UPDATE: Results of in-depth experiments on production speed, frames and genetic defects for bees in MC 1.5.2 Modpacks (might differ from Wiki entries)