From A to Bee by hacatu and Rose

This is a long and in depth guide to forestry bees with as little nonsense as possible. I will attempt to give step by step progression info on various processes including breeding up to the alveary, breeding after the alveary, and "duplicating" bees. I will also offer some numbers for how fast different bee setups will work. This guide was primarily written and researched by hacatu#3606 in the discord, with help from Rosenlied#3858.

Prerequisites
To get started, you will need several things. I recommend being in late LV, but some of the more advanced things require early HV. Each of these will be explored in more detail.

You can use the scooporator mx200 turbo, manasteel scoop, or void scoop; or you can use wand focus: excavation or equal trade to break hives. Quarries such as arcane bores or the ender quarry will also do the trick. Princesses can be either pristine or ignoble. Ignoble princesses will die after you use them for a long time so I don't really like them, but they have their place. You will want many, many pristine princesses. Got a chest full? You'll eventually want more, although you don't need THAT many to get started. Besides exploring normally or buying hives, looking underwater for water hives is a very good way to get a lot of pristine bees if you run out. You can also fly around the end and pick up ender hives, or rocky hives while mining. It's worth noting that while rocky and water hives always give pristine princesses, these species are fertility 1, which may be annoying in some applications. = Bee overview =
 * 1) Get a scoop that won't break.
 * 1) Each hive will give you at least 1 princess and possibly some drones and combs.  You want probably 10-20 pristine princesses before you get started.
 * 2) Get a field kit and beealyzer.  Love yourself: don't use the gregtech scanner.
 * 3) Progress through thaumcraft enough to get a Thaumic Restorer.  This can repair frames (besides GT++), the field kit (which can be used to cheese infinite paper), and many tools.  Another notable use only tangentially related to bees is repairing blood magic flight potions.  This can help find hives more easily, especially ender hives.  The flight potions can be made without any blood magic - just put a chicken trophy in an assembler, which you can in turn get as a reward from the botania soarlander if you don't fancy your luck killing chickens.
 * 4) Get some apiaries from villages, buy from QB, or craft.  You really cannot get enough of these.
 * 5) Get conduits to automate apiaries.  There are other ways, but conduits are my favorite.
 * 6) Get some good frames.  The oblivion frame is ridiculously helpful for breeding, but its crafting recipe is ridiculously harmful to the human psyche.  You can get it from advanced bee loot bags or stronghold chests, and maybe other dungeon chests.  Other than that, chocolate, restraint, soul, and necrotic frames reduce lifespan, and soul and metabolic frames increase mutation chance.  Metabolic and Necrotic frames are basically loot bag only.  Chocolate, restraint, and soul can be crafted without bee breeding, and chocolate can even be bought in the questbook.  GT++ frames CANNOT be repaired by the thaumic repairer, so I do not condone their use.
 * 7) Get Pam's peanuts, a farming station, unbreakable mattock (search the questbook for the "animal farms" quest and complete it to get one for free).  You will also want sprinklers.  Seed oil is needed in massive quantities for the alveary, you will need many hundreds of peanuts.

Hive Bees/Breeding only
There are 461 species of bee in the pack. Some of them cannot be obtained, generally because they have been replaced by a greggified version, and about 21 kinds only come from hives/loot chests/villager trading. These are typically called "hive bees" or "wild bees". You can buy them or their hives in the questbook for coins. The rest of the bees you will have to breed for. Any princess/drone that drops from a hive has a 10% chance to be valiant instead of its default species. Steadfast come from various loot chests, some bee loot bags, or you can buy them in the questbook (but don't). Monastic can be bought from villagers or the questbook (worth it to buy from questbook imo).

Bee behavior
To use bees, put a princess and drone in any bee housing (bee house, apiary, magic apiary, alveary, industrial apiary, or the giant hive multiblock in new versions). They will combine to form a queen, which will work in the housing for some number of bee ticks and then produce offspring. The queen will have the exact same primary and secondary stats as the princess, but when she produces offspring they will also inherit traits from the drone or even have a mutation. This is explained in more detail later.

Doing work
Every bee tick (27.5 seconds), the queen has a chance to produce the various products on her list. If the queen cannot tolerate the current environment (climate, time of day, weather, surrounding flowers, blocks above housing, etc), she will not do anything that bee tick, not even tick down her lifetime. This will be explained in more detail later. The queen also runs her effect continuously. Some effects are helpful, most are annoying or useless. Finally, the queen will pollinate trees and spread flowers, depending on her preferred flower type. In order to make any products in the second row, her "specialty" products, her jubilance condition NEEDS to be met. This means that both the primary and (in the case of a hybrid queen) secondary species must be in their preferred climate, and any other conditions of each species must be met. Remember, the queen's traits are exactly the same as the princess: the drone's traits don't factor in until creating offspring. (Notice that this means some hybrids cannot be jubilant, but you only encounter hybrids while breeding unless you are doing mad science.) Some (irrelevant) species require there to be no entities in range, and some require a particular block under their housing or can only be jubilant in the mega apiary.

Producing offspring
Once the queen's lifespan is over, she will produce 0-1 princesses and 1-4 drones. Pristine always make a princess though, so if you love yourself and don't use ignoble bees you can ignore the first part. If you have a large stack of drones (or even just 7-10 a lot of the time), you can breed them repeatedly with a princess to turn it into a genetic copy of the drones.

Bee Traits
Each bee has a meager 15 traits, very easy to keep track of. Each trait has a primary and secondary value ("allele"). Almost all traits work in the same way, which I will explain in a moment. Preferred temperature and humidity are the exceptions: these depend on the species and cannot be changed. The appearance, including name, and produce are also tied to the species. For every other trait (including species itself), they arise in one of three ways:

See the mutation section for details.
 * 1) For bees you get from hives, chests, villagers, QB, hivecynth, etc, all of their alleles in all of their traits are set to the default value.
 * 2) When you breed a princess with a drone, the offspring bees (princess and all drones) have one allele in each trait randomly taken from each parent.  For example, if you breed Forest-Meadows with Meadows-Meadows, each offspring will be either Forest-Meadows or Meadows-Meadows (or Meadows-Forest since order is random too).
 * 3) Finally, if a mutation happens, one or both of the parents is replaced with a default bee of the mutated species.

Some methods directly modify an existing bee/larva's stats, but (besides the creative only imprinter) these are not from forestry and are explained in their own section, mainly Genetics/Gendustry. If both slots for a trait are the same, we say it is "homogeneous" or "purebred", otherwise, we say it is "heterogeneous" or "hybrid". Heterogeneous traits are bad because identical drones stack but every heterogeneous trait increases the number of possible offspring drones. Heterogeneous traits also mean that dominant/recessive traits affect how the bee will actually behave with respect to that trait, but I won't get into them because you only ever encounter heterogeneous bees in flagrante delicto of breeding. For breeding, Fertility is the most important since additional drones make breeding exponentially easier. Each addtional offspring produced is another chance to get the offspring you want. With a fertility of 1, you have two chances (princess and drone) to get the offspring you want. With a fertility of 4, you have five chances. Another way of looking at this is that with a higher fertility, there is a lower chance that none of the offspring will have some trait you want that is only in one of the parent slots. For example, breeding Meadows-Common with Meadows-Forest has a 1/4 chance of not passing Common down to any offspring if the princess has fertility 1, but only a 1/32 chance if her fertility is 4. Temperature/Humidity tolerance can also be nice for breeding, although you can usually work around them with alveary climate control or by changing biomes. The others largely don't matter for breeding.

Stone Age (and later) Bee Automation
I like to use conduits with self feed enabled to automate apiaries. You can put one apiary on top and two on different sides of a single conduit, and then connect chests to the bottom and final two faces. Use a different conduit color for each apiary+chest pair, and set the chest to lower priority. If you're even less organized than me (unlikely), you can put apiaries on all five conduit sides besides the bottom and put a diamond chest on the bottom, but this has the drawback of mixing up where the drones and princesses go so it only works if you want five apiaries with the same species and already have almost five stacks of drones. Before you have conduits, the best approach is to put a sideways hopper under each apiary and connect a gregtech item pipe to it. Then bring the pipe up one block to connect to the apiary, and up a second block to connect to storage. Make sure that you don't put opaque blocks over the apiary or your bee will slack off; check it does not complain about not being able to see the sky. You should do this for every bee species you make and leave them until you reach the alveary. After that, you should still do it for any species with remotely useful drops or interesting stats. This lets you easily take the drones from any of the output chests of your automated apiaries and create a copy of any of the princesses. You can't automate frames in apiaries unfortunately, but you can in frame housings in alvearies. Before that you can still create a timer or counter to trigger an alarm or stop your apiaries before the frames break if you want to repair them.

Beealyzer and Information
Similar to crops, bees don't show you most of their information until you scan them. Also similar to crops, there are several ways to do so and the gregtech scanner is the worst one. You should make the field kit, beealyzer, and thaumic restorer. The field kit lets you scan bees at the cost of paper and time. However, while the stack of paper in its gui is real and you can add or remove paper that way, it's simply tied to its durability so you can also just repair it in the thaumic restorer. This is a fun and cool way to cheese paper, since you can just pull paper out of the field kit, repair it, and then pull more paper out. The field kit will fully scan the bee, but only show its active traits. This is similar to the tooltip of a scanned bee, which shows some of its active traits (and also both of its species if it is a hybrid). That's where the beealyzer comes in. You can place a bee in the slot labeled "I" or "II" to see both its primary and secondary traits for everything. You can also use the beealyzer to scan bees at the cost of (regular) honey drops or honeydew. However, if you are doing this pre-alveary, I recommend reviewing the cost of the alveary before considering this. It is instant and doesn't require switching inventories as much, so it's totally fair to just use it. The gregtech scanner is mostly the worst of both worlds, with the added inconvenience of being immobile and not giving you infinite paper. It combines the slow scanning speed and failure to display inactive traits of the field kit with the honey sucking tendencies of the beealyzer. Its sole advantage is that it uses liquid honey instead of (regular) honey drops or honeydew, so it can use other kinds of honey including yellow tinted drops from the saffron bee. See the traits appendix for a list of traits, but for now you mainly care about species and fertility, so you only need to use the beealyzer to check the inactive speed trait, since if the active and inactive species trait differ, the scanned tooltip will show that as a hybrid. = Grinding to the Alveary =

The Absolute Expense of the Alveary
The alveary is a decadently expensive multiblock. The main costs are 216 buckets of honey (108 in 2.2.8), 216 royal jelly, 216 pollen, and 32400 mb seed oil (900 peanuts). Unfortunately for you, hapless victim, apiaries have their production slashed by 10. In 2.2.10, the number of apiary-hours to produce 216 royal jelly is (REMINDER: "." is a decimal point, NOT a thousands separator): - 5.319 hours (faster bees, no frames) - 5.308 hours (faster bees, 8x from frames) - 4.628 hours (fastest bees, no frames) - 4.620 hours (fastest bees, 8x frames) In 2.2.8, the number of apiary-hours is: - 8.829 hours (faster bees, no frames) - 8.820 hours (faster bees, 8x from frames) - 7.710 hours (fastest bees, no frames) - 7.704 hours (fastest bees, 8x from frames) In 2.2.3, the number of apiary-hours is: - 78.572 hours (faster bees, no frames) - 9.822 hours (faster bees, 8x from frames) - 64.706 hours (fastest bees, no frames) - 8.089 hours (fastest bees, 8x from frames) DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THESE NUMBERS! 2.2.8 nerfed bees HARD. It's just the new formula increases production when the multiplier from housing/frames is under 1, and that's always the case in the apiary unless you use GT++ frames. 2.2.10 will fix a bug that caused reduced production when the production chance wasn't 100%, which is why its times are better than 2.2.8. So in 2.2.3 you definitely want to use fastest bees and frames. If you don't repair the frames using the thaumic restorer, you'd go through about 39.7 untreated, 13.2 impregnated, or 4.4 proven. Remember you can buy them in QB. I haven't found a way to automatically insert frames, but there might be a way to do it (eg gt robot arms). If you use proven, they last for 5.5 hours each (720 durability * 27.5 seconds per bee tick), so just check them every couple hours and repair them if they are low. In 2.2.8+ frames barely matter, and using fastest instead of faster doesn't matter as much as in 2.2.3. If you make 8 apiaries, divide the waiting time by 8. You can also world accelerate (WA) apiaries in 2.2.8+, but not 2.2.3. Technically this could be as much as 8x speed at HV, but it takes a tremendous amount of power. That's the waiting time to get royal jelly. Pollen is the same, but honey is even worse since you need 10 honey drops per bucket so you need 2160 honey drops if you're getting it that way. Mercifully, there are a couple other ways to get it.

The wasps also give you beekeeper coins for killing them as a repeatable quest reward, but they might beat you up if you are weak. Majestic bees have a 30% base chance to make dripping combs, worth 0.14 buckets of honey, but Saffron bees have a 75% base chance to make a honey comb worth 0.09 PLUS 25% to make a yellow tinted comb worth 0.28. In 2.2.10, a fastest saffron bee in an 8x apiary will take 10.427 apiary-hours to make all 216 buckets of honey. A fastest majestic bee would take 22.266. In 2.2.8, they take 13.072 apiary-hours and 37.400 apiary-hours. In 2.2.3, these values are 8.910 apiary-hours and 24.760 apiary-hours respectively. So you can already see how production in 2.2.8+ stops being better once it's boosted enough. You will need a little less honey due to combs you got from breeding, breaking hives, and getting the pollen/royal jelly, but still a lot. 3 apiaries for each of imperial, industrial, and saffron will be able to produce you all the resources for an alveary every 3.476 hours on 2.2.10, 4.357 hours on 2.2.8, or 2.97 on 2.2.3. Remember on 2.2.3 you NEED frames. If you follow my advice and use 9 apiaries, you'll need 27 proven frames and to repair them in the thaumic restorer every couple hours. If you don't want to breed saffron, you'll want 3 apiaries for imperial, 3 for industrial, and 9 for majestic. That would take 4.156 hours on 2.2.8+ or 2.752 on 2.2.3. Looks like less time but remember you had to make 67% more apiaries and you could do that with saffron bees too and take even less time. If you're in 2.2.3 and still don't want to breed light blue for fastest, you'll need 21% longer. On the other hand, if you really love bee breeding, you can make a magic apiary which is almost as good as an alveary and very cheap in terms of resources, BUT requires breeding about 3x as many species (not fun at all). Apiaries have a 0.1x production multiplier, alvearies have 1x, and magic apiaries have 0.9x when I boosted and 1.8x when boosted. However, they only have 3 frame slots so the highest you can go is 14.4x without GT++ frames. Don't even think about using slower/slowest, these would be 3 or 6 times slower (on 2.2.3; on 2.2.8+ it's 2 or 2.5x slower).
 * 1) SOME biomes o plenty wasp hives in the nether have honey in them.
 * 1) You get a few combs from breaking hives in world, but not that many.
 * 2) The escritoire can crank out combs as fast as you can play its little memory game, at the cost of a decent number of drones.
 * 3) Finally, tinted honey drops give 2x the honey when melted so you can breed saffron bees.

The Industrious/Imperial March
Only 8 species *must* be bred to get the alveary, but I recommend doing 4 more to have the easiest time.

Common
If you take any two hive species and cross breed them, you have a 15% base chance to get Common. I recommend meadows/forest princess + wintry drone. These are 3 of the easiest bees to find, and will get you started off right with 4x fertility from wintry bees. Meadows and forest both have 3x fertility, making it easier to get there. The only downside is if your princess becomes wintry, you'll have to let it run in a cold biome for at least one lifespan. Since this is your first mutation, I'll go into agonizing detail about it. First, make an escritoire and research the wintry drone until you get a research note for meadows/forest + wintry -> common. Research notes boost the mutation chance by 1.5x, BUT only by 5 percentage points at most AND applied after other mutation boosts. Then, get yourself 3 soul frames. These give a 3.375x mutation boost. You might think that this gives an effective chance per mutation attempt of 55.625%, but you would be wrong, because I haven't told you about the BEEKEEPING MODE yet. I swear, it simply wouldn't be possible for me to make this Calvinball system up. The beekeeping mode is an almost invisible set of global modifiers in forestry. It has five settings, ranging from "EASY" to "INSANE". GTNH has it at "HARD", the middle one. This means that ALL base mutation chances are multiplied by 0.75 BEFORE any other modifiers are applied, and ALL bee lifetimes (in bee ticks) are multiplied by 1.5 BEFORE any other modifiers are applied. Other things can be affected in higher or lower beekeeping modes, but if you decide to change it then you're agreeing to understanding the implications on your own. The upshot of that is that the effective chance per mutation attempt is ~42.968% instead. Mutations are extremely complicated, and I explain them in detail in their own section, but for now I'll go over some cases assuming you followed my advice and used the escritoire and soul frames. There's up to 2 mutation attempts per offspring, 1 per parent. If you're breeding Meadows-Meadows (MM) x Wintry-Wintry (WW) or WWxMM, the possibilities for each offspring are: - CC: ~18.463% (p²) - CW, WC, MC, or CM: ~49.011% (2p(1-p)) - MW or WM: ~32.526% ((1-p)²)

Possibilities on the same line are equally likely, eg, there's about a 15% chance of getting MW and there's also about a 15% chance of getting WM, which add to the line total 32.526%. If the queen has a fertility of 4, this means there will be 5 offspring including the princess and you will have a 99.635% chance to get at least 1 of the resulting 10 species slots to be Common. If the queen only has a fertility of 3, this is "only" 98.880%. What happens if you don't use soul frames? Well obviously you would never do that because I told you to use soul frames, but - with no frames, no note, and 3x fertility, you get a 61.510% chance for at least one mutation. - with no frames, a note, and 4x fertility, you get an 83.023% chance. Then, if you have necrotic frames from loot bags or you haven't made the thaumic restorer (what are you doing if you don't have the thaumic restorer) but do have chocolate frames, you can switch out your soul frames and start trying to get a purebred Common bee with 4x fertility. I generally try to do this as follows: Then chuck those two together in an apiary and throw the rest in a junk chest, to be fed to the escritoire or beegonia. Always breed your princess with the drone that matches the most of these until you get the purebred pair you want. For example, a 4x2 Common-Wintry drone matches two slots, but a 4x4 Common-Meadows drone matches 3. Among drones that match two slots, you can consider one that matches one of each (eg 4x3 Common-Meadows) as better than one that matches both of one (eg 4x4 Meadows-Wintry).
 * 1) if the princess isn't 4x4 (both slots 4 fertility), breed it with your supply of 4x4 drones until it is.
 * 2) keep all bees you get with Common, until you get a purebred princess and a purebred drone.
 * 1) right now, you only care about 4 slots: the two species slots and the two fertility slots.

Cultivated
So, you got common bees? Congratulations. Now you only have 7 left minimum to get the alveary. Cultivated can be bred from Common + any hive species with a base chance of 12%. If you got a research note for wintry + common -> cultivated in the escritoire in the last step then great. Otherwise, put a common drone in the center and do research until you get a note for cultivated. You can either take the first note you get and get that species to 4x4, or you can keep doing the research until you get a note for a species you already have a stock of 4x4s for. With the note and 3 soul frames, you have a 35.375% mutation chance, so you have a 98.729% chance to get at least 1 with purebred parents and a fertility 4 queen.

The Imperial Line
Escritoire Cultivated if you don't already have a research note. Get a note for Noble and Diligent so you can get both in one go. 10% base mutation chance, 30.3125% with 3 soul + note, 97.298% for at least one mutation with purebred fertility 4 parents. 8% base, 25.25% with 3 soul + note, 94.553% 8% base
 * 1) Noble: Common + Cultivated.
 * 1) Majestic: Noble (Escritoire target) + Cultivated.
 * 1) Imperial: Noble (Escritoire target) + Majestic.

The Industrious Line
10% base 8% base 8% base
 * 1) Diligent: Common + Cultivated (Escritoire target).
 * 1) Unweary: Diligent (Escritoire target) + Cultivated.
 * 1) Industrious: Diligent + Unweary (Escritoire target).

Fastest Production Speed and Best Honey Production
10% base 10% base 10% base Light blue bees have fastest production speed. Your chance of getting the production speed trait out of a mutation is exactly the same as your chance of getting the species trait out of a mutation, although they aren't independent. 5% base, 17.656% with 3 soul + note, 85.668%. Saffron will make honey about 3x faster than Majestic. = Making the most of the Alveary = Now that you have the alveary, you can take full advantage of your bees and breeding becomes a lot easier. You can use it to make another alveary much faster, or you can use it to breed new bees. Keep in mind that breeding more bees gets you more loot bags, and advanced bee loot bags are very cheap to enchant and give good frames and more alveary components. Your first goal breeding wise should be the stardust bee. It is the easiest source of the "blinding" production speed trait, which is the fastest available. Without even installing any upgrades, the alveary has a couple advantages and disadvantages over the apiary: Before we get into that, here's an overview of the alveary upgrades. You can place upgrades in the bottom two rows of the alveary, EXCEPT you cannot place them in the center. Additionally, in order to do mutations that need a block below, the bottom central block must be a basic alveary block, but otherwise it can be an upgrade.
 * 1) White: Diligent (Escritoire target) + Wintry.
 * 1) Blue: Forest + Diligent (Escritoire target).
 * 1) Light Blue: White + Blue (Escritoire target).
 * 1) Saffron: Meadows + Valiant (Escritoire target).
 * 1) the alveary doesn't have a built in 0.1x production multiplier, so it is much faster by default and at maximum (but not 10x, see exact production math section for details).
 * 2) it doubles the range of any bee in it (kinda cringe tbh)
 * 3) it's way bigger and waaay more expensive
 * 4) it can't be world accelerated

Basic Upgrades
These are upgrades that only do one thing and are very simple. This is a fine upgrade, but you'll generally prefer breeding for stats in a single block apiary since it consumes less frame durability and can be world accelerated. The alveary stabilizer is good in the very niche situation where you have a bee with very peculiar habitat requirements and you want to breed stats onto it from a bee it has a mutation with. This has literally never happened to me, and I've bred well over 100 species. Does not need power. Feeding it gteu works but will waste power because it goes cookie monster on your entire packet. See that section for more details. Larvae are exact clones of the princess (and thus queen), and not affected by the drone at all. Note that larvae cannot be turned into princesses, only drones, and Gendustry can work with drones, princesses, and even queens directly. Does not need power. You can also put in woven silk to get pollen to manually pollinate trees, but nobody has ever done that. Does not need power. See the ignoble princesses enjoyer section for more info, tldr: add 3-4 frame housings with gentle frames depending on how many electrical stimulators you have and your ignoble bees can literally last for thousands of years. There is hardly any benefit to using ignoble bees over pristine, besides that they are slightly easier to get, so make sure you read that section and understand the pros and cons. Does not need power, but does need royal jelly or aromatic lumps. Considering how it's easier to make ignoble bees borderline immortal than automate doing eugenics to them, aromatic lumps aren't worth even the effort of putting arcane bees in an apiary once you've bred them. Does not need power. If you really goof up you could get a bee that is neither nocturnal nor diurnal but this upgrade lets even such a woebegotten (and let's be real for a second: relatable) specimen become productive. For example, soul sand is a 1.5x boost, enderpearls are a 2x boost, and eyes of ender a 4x boost. It might also accept other things like plutonium and nether stars. There's no reason not to just give it eyes of ender since they are cheap. However, I sometimes fail to get a mutation even with it and a 5x mutation electrical stimulator, so idk lol. Does not need power.
 * 1) Alveary Stabilizer: prevent bees from mutating.
 * 1) Alveary Transmission: give it power via an enderio conduit or capacitor bank.
 * 1) Hatchery: creates larvae for use in the Genetics mod.
 * 1) Alveary Sieve: adding this reduces lag by having the bee not try to pollinate trees in its range.
 * 1) Swarmer: spawns swarm hives around the working area that contain ignoble copies of the original princess you put it.
 * 1) Rain Shield: acts as if the bee is a tolerant flyer and ignores rain.
 * 1) Alveary Lighting: makes the bee able to work regardless of time of day.
 * 1) Mutator: in theory, this little block is supposed to take various catalysts to boost mutation chances.

Climate Control
In the appendix, the exact temperature and humidity thresholds for the different temperature and humidity levels are listed. The alveary has the ability to modify its climate, but beware! It is not sane. You only need 6 of these to go from icy to hot. Unless the biome is < -20, then you could need even more. Needs power. Needs power. With water, it increases humidity 20 percentage points and decreases temperature by 10 percentage points. With lava, it decreases humidity and increases temperature by the same amounts. Water is consumed faster than lava, but both are consumed fairly slowly. These upgrades are fine for changing the climate a few percentage points, and their power (or lava/water) costs are minimal, but they're pretty annoying to craft especially considering that there's no way to automate multiple recipes in one carpenter, so you will definitely want to look into changing biomes with magic at some point. I will explain this in a later section. Remember, bees can be made to tolerate any climate and will make their primary products and perform their effects unhindered, but will only make their specialty products in their preferred environment. Also, you can't use heaters/fans to make a biome hellish/not. You need to change the biome. Blazing electron tubes in an electrical stimulator are supposed to make the temperature hellish, but they actually have a cool and relatively unknown feature where they don't work at all. I will see if I can figure out why and fix this.
 * 1) Alveary Heater: boosts the temperature by 20 percentage points.
 * 1) Alveary Fan: reduces temperature by 20 percentage points.
 * 1) Alveary Hygroregulator: Does not need power, but does consume water or lava.

Frame Housing
The frame housing gets its own section because it is the best and most versatile upgrade. It does not need power and you can have many of them (technically up to 17). Unlike apiaries, you CAN insert/extract from frame housings. Huzzah! Frames take 5x durability damage in frame housings, which makes GT++ frames even more godawful than they already were, but for other frames you can still repair them. I still need to test if GT++ frames can be repaired with void goo. Frame housings also can bypass the limits on frames. Some frames have a second number in parentheses which is the limit that it can bring a stat to. In the alveary, these limits are not checked (they are checked per frame housing but each frame housing can hold at most one frame). Frames that are good in apiaries will be good in frame housings. See the appendix for detailed info on each frame. Most frame effects can be gotten from the electrical stimulator as well, with 3 main exceptions: Typically not helpful and only affects ignoble bees. See ignoble bee section for details. This is only useful for bees with production under 29% in 2.2.8 or under 4% in 2.2.3. It's also a pretty minimal difference, and the power cost of electrical stimulators is truly negligible. In 2.2.10+, there's an even smaller difference up to 56% base production. See the exact production math section for details.
 * 1) genetic decay can be reduced by gentle frames, but there's no way to reduce it with electrical stimulators.
 * 1) frames can hit exactly 16x production, while stimulators cannot.
 * 1) oblivion frames (and even necrotic frames) are much better at reducing lifespan than stimulators, although depending on how many you want and how unlucky you are with loot bags/strongholds you may wish to use the stimulator.

Electrical Stimulator
Do you want to buff your bees' stats but don't want to automate crafting or repairing frames? Do you want to boost mutations even more? Do you want to eliminate the range of a bee with an annoying effect? Then you may enjoy the electrical stimulator. It takes a very small amount of power. You give it a circuit board with some electron tubes soldered on, and it applies buffs. Unsurprisingly, forestry electron tubes are soldered onto forestry circuit boards using a forestry soldering iron. Boards come in 4 sizes, able to hold 1-4 electron tubes. However, you MUST fill all tubes, so you won't always want the highest tier. Every electron tube has at least one effect, which are multiplicative BUT have a per-board cap. There is no inter-board cap. For example, both diamond and iron boost production, but iron is 1.5x with a 5x cap, and diamond is 2.5x with a 10x cap. So if you have 2 diamond followed by an iron, when the iron's modifier is applied it caps and the board is 5x. If you have 1 iron followed by 2 diamond though, you get 9.375x like you probably expected. Because pristine bees have a chance to become ignoble if you apply a production modifier > 16x, we often care about the highest production multiplier under 16x. You can't hit 16x exactly with electrical stimulators. 15.625x (1 board with 2 diamond and 1 with 1 diamond) is the best you can do without using 5+ stimulators, so you will see me mention 15.625x a lot. Here's a list of electron tubes: Supposed to change the temperature to hellish, but currently does nothing so you need to change biomes instead. Again, the caps are per board so you can easily get around them using multiple stimulators. Also, every single electron tube increases genetic decay 1.5x, but this doesn't affect pristine bees and for ignoble bees it can be mitigated using gentle frames.
 * 1) iron: 1.5x production, 5x cap (4 iron tubes would be 5.0625x otherwise)
 * 2) diamond: 2.5x production, 10x (3 diamond tubes would be 15.625x otherwise)
 * 3) apatite: 1.5x pollination, 5x cap
 * 4) obsidian: 0.8x lifespan, 0.2x cap (you can't put enough tubes on one board for this to matter)
 * 5) lapis: 1.5x lifespan, 5x cap
 * 6) blazing: hi-tech paperweight.
 * 1) gold: 1.5x mutation, 5x cap
 * 2) tin: 0.4x territory, 0.1x cap (3 would be 0.064x otherwise) AND 0.9x production, 0.5x cap (can't matter)
 * 3) bronze: 1.5x territory, 5x cap

Next Steps: Stardust Bees and other Breeding
Now that breeding is much easier, why not try to get stardust bees for blinding production speed? The alveary makes mutations easier because you can change its climate without changing the biome, and you can more easily get a much higher mutation multiplier. Some bees, like the stardust bee, require a specific biome which has a different temperature than either of their parent species prefer. You can breed these without an alveary by first breeding good climate tolerances onto the bee, or you can just use the alveary. There might also be some bee species that require a biome and also a different temperature than that biome has by default, and those would absolutely require the alveary, but I don't remember encountering any such species. Stardust bees should be your next goal. While there are other bees that give blinding production speed, they all require EV+. Stardust bees only require you to reach the end. You can get them in the stone age in theory, but you unlock several tools at HV that make them easier. They need to be bred in the end, on a block of stardust ore, with an arid humidity. However, the end is not arid. So you will either need to change the biome to an arid one, or use alveary hygroregulators with lava in them. Stardust ore is itself somewhat hard to find because it looks very similar to endstone. I recommend looking on the very large end islands like the purple or red ones.
 * 1) Diligent + Industrious -> Clay, 10%, Clay
 * 2) Majestic + Clay -> Tin, 13%, ic2 Tin
 * 3) Majestic + Clay -> Copper, 13%, ic2 Copper
 * 4) Tin + Copper -> Iron, 13%, Iron
 * 5) Iron + Tin -> Zinc, 13%, Zinc
 * 6) Zinc + Ender -> Stardust, 8%, Stardust Ore, End Dimension, Arid Humidity.

Unlike the bees you bred pre-alveary, these have extra requirements to breed them. All of them require a particular block to be placed under the bottom center block of the alveary, and the stardust bee itself has a dimension and humidity requirement. Make sure you chisel the block to the correct version if needed. Typically the different versions have slightly different names, like "Block of Emerald" vs "Emerald Block". If you get a bee that requires "End" flowers, it needs a dragon egg, which can be picked up by shift clicking on it with a sword. If you get a bee that requires "Books" for flowers, it needs bookshelves. Either use 2 electrical stimulators with 4 gold tubes each, or use 1 with 4 and a mutator with eyes of ender. This will boost even the 8% mutation for the Stardust Bee to the max. = Botanical Bees = Magic Bees isn't just about thaumcraft anymore! It now has botania and blood magic integration! (Ok so I lied about the blood magic integration.) There are three notable botania flowers added by magic bees: It's a good way to recycle drones but doesn't make too much mana. The amount it creates is based on how far down in the breeding tree the drone's species is. For example, a wild species drone generates about 186 mana, whereas an infinity drone generates about 1302. Considering a mana pool holds 1000000 mana, that's 768 infinity drones to fill a mana pool, or nearly 2 hours of 3 excess drones a bee tick from a 4x fertility princess whose lifespan has been minimized. It isn't the worst way to make mana, but it's towards the bottom of the pack. However, the other main uses for excess drones are escritoire or dna extractor, so it's great for recycling. -Hiveacynth: creates random ignoble hive bees. Good if you decide to shun conventional wisdom and embrace ignobles. You also can use it in conjunction with the next flower. -Hibeescus: convert ignoble princesses to pristine. It takes 40 minutes and a lot of mana, and it's IV, but it's pretty good especially if you hate exploring. It can be world accelerated, if you have the mana. You can use the alveary swarmer to get good ignobles directly, or just use the hiveacynth and breed them to be good later (easier to automate). = 6 Magic Apiaries: Meme or No Meme = Magic apiaries are like an intermediate step between apiaries and alvearies. They have a base production modifier of 0.9x, but they can be boosted (using mana or centivis) to have a production modifier of 1.8x instead, and/or to have a mutation modifier of 2x and a lifespan modifier of 0.5x. They also only require 5 pieces of pollen/beeswax/whatever instead of like 2.6k so they are 3 orders of magnitude cheaper than alvearies. The drawback is that they require over twice as much breeding to get started, their max production modifier is 14.4x and their maximum mutation modifier with an oblivion frame is only 4.5x, and they don't have climate control. I'm not sure if you can automate frames in magic apiaries. But they can be world accelerated, which is a really big advantage. So if you have enough power to run world accelerators and you don't mind doing more bee breeding, it's an option. Oh, you'll also need an energized node OR mana apiary booster.
 * 1) Beegonia: converts drones to mana.

If you don't have frames, it is not worth boosting it on 2.2.8+, only on 2.2.3. This is because boosted or not, without frames it is below the threshold of 4 where the housing production term in kuba's formula matters at least 1%.

On 2.2.10, it would take 4.362 hours to get enough honey using a fastest saffron bee in a booster magic apiary with 8x from frames. That's before taking world acceleration into account. This is only 2.4x faster than a normal apiary though, and it's similar on 2.2.8 and 2.2.3. Rational people will point out that you could just use twice as many apiaries instead, and they wouldn't be wrong, but *magic*. Also, to be clear, while using frames in regular apiaries in 2.2.8+ is next to pointless, you definitely do need them in the magic apiary. This is because the nerfed formula basically ignores production multipliers under 4, and the regular apiary caps at 0.8.

The magic apiary is outclassed by the alveary and industrial apiary in pretty much every way besides cost. For bees with high base production chances, it can be an actually good choice for industrial scale production, but if you can't automate frames then what constitutes "high" pretty much excludes every bee you probably care about.

= Genetics: Gendustry lite = The Genetics mod adds a lot of machines, but it mainly has two uses: increasing tolerance with the acclimatizer, and genetically modifying larvae which can be incubated into drones. Both of these can be accomplished other ways and I don't mind breeding for stats, but if you can't stand it then check out the genetics mod.

Acclimatizer
This machine can work on any bee, and doesn't need you to get into the rest of the mod. Depending on the catalyst item you give it, it has a chance per catalyst item of increasing temperature/humidity tolerance up/down/both. The changes to the tolerance are heritable. This is very convenient and easier than breeding once you set up the required machines. Genetics machines have pretty good nei support so check out the acclimatizer there. However, stardust bees already have both 2 tolerance in temperature and humidity, so if you follow my advice you'll already have that soon after the alveary. Both 2 humidity is sufficient to ignore humidity (outside of specialty products obviously), and both 2 temperature will suffice to allow any bee that doesn't prefer hellish to work in normal. So outside of hellish temperature, stardust bees basically do the same thing as the acclimatizer. There are also bees with both 3 tolerances, and even both 5.

Gene Editing
You can also use other machines from Genetics to extract, copy, and insert any genetic traits. Extracting is chance based and you can just copy bees by breeding them anyway, but extracted genes are reusable and does not kill the target. You will first want some incubators. These are needed to create different kinds of bacteria, make enzyme and growth medium, and incubate larvae into drones. Once you have each kind of bacteria, you can instead use an incubator to multiply it, which is cheaper. You don't need to dedicate an incubator to each recipe if you don't want to. You can batch craft bacteria instead. Growth medium can also be made in the gregtech brewery, and the bacteria can be made in the bio vat, although the latter is quite complicated and beyond the scope of this humble tutorial. You will probably want 2 incubators, one to make enzyme, and one to incubate drones and multiply your bacteria supplies if they run low.

The more stats they have that you want the better, since it extracts a random one, but it will still eventually work with only one stat you care about. If you place scanned samples in a chest, the hologlasses will show them as only one stack if they are the same. Once your sample is successfully scanned, you'll be able to select that gene in the gene database for making serum arrays. You can select from any traits you've discovered in the gene database. This will overwrite the traits of larvae. It has durability, I'm not sure if it can be repaired. You can also use the polymerized to make extracted genes work faster in the sequencer, but the thaumic restorer can cheese this. It can't cheese the required polymerization before serum arrays can be used. The hatchery has a 1/2400 chance each game tick to create a larva, so it generates one every 2 minutes on average. These larvae are genetic copies of the princess/queen.
 * 1) get some bees which have the stats you want.
 * 1) for some traits like fertility, you can find wild bees that have them, like wintry.
 * 1) the isolator gets traits off of bees, the genepool converts bees into raw DNA (this kills the bee) which is used by some other machines.
 * 1) these traits/genes can be amplified in the polymerizer (technically optional for this part, AND can be replaced by the thaumic restorer) and then scanned in the sequencer.
 * 1) then use the gene database to create a serum array with the traits you care about.
 * 1) serum arrays need to be polymerized before they can be used.
 * 1) now you need to generate larvae, so use a hatchery in your alveary and you will get larvae.
 * 1) once you take a larva and apply a serum array to it, the serum array will overwrite any traits that were set in it, and any other traits will remain unaltered.


 * 1) now use the incubator to turn the larva into a drone.

You will want many drones so you can repeat this step over and over until the princess has the genes you want, if you want to be able to semi automate it and not have to check the offspring and do selective breeding like you normally would.
 * 1) breed the drone with any princess.

No, you cannot turn larvae directly into princesses. The hive swarmer can do that although they will be Ignoble and Genetics won't be able to edit their genes.

= 8 Gendustry = Gendustry has a gene editing system which is similar to Genetics but with two great improvements: genetic templates don't have durability, and you can edit drones, princesses, and even queens directly. Pro tip: edit queens.

The only disadvantages are that extracting Gendustry gene samples kills the bee you extract from, which is extremely minor since drones are free, and gendustry is very gated. You will need LuV and Naquadah bees to make these machines. Gendustry also provides the mutatron, which can do almost any mutation, ignoring requirements and randomness. Ignoring the randomness is almost completely useless, but there are some niche cases when the ability to ignore other requirements comes in very handy.

However, some bees are blacklisted from the mutatron. Iirc, this is americium, infinity catalyst, infinity, cosmic neutronium, the holiday/Chad bees, and, in 2.2.3, the indium bee. It's especially useful for space bees in a no space playthrough. The DNA extractor is needed to fuel most other machines. The protein liquifier is only used for the genetic replicator. The genetic replicator can make princesses out of just genes and protein+dna, but they will be Ignoble (not very useful imo, use the genetic imprinter). The genetic transposer can make copies of genes, which is useful when you want the same gene in multiple templates, but remember that the templates can be reused indefinitely. The genetic imprinter applies all genes in a template to a bee, which can be a drone, princess, or queen (so just apply it directly to queens). Any gene not in the template will be unchanged. Finally, the genetic sampler is used to extract genes from bees. This KILLS the bee, unlike genetics mod, but otherwise Gendustry is much easier to use since genes are extracted directly as items and you only need one kind of fuel ever (dna). On the mutation side, there are three machines. The mutagen producer simply makes the fuel needed by the mutatron. The mutatron and advanced mutatron both ignore breeding conditions and always produce a purebred mutation, but the advanced mutatron can select which mutation you get in the case where multiple are possible, whereas the regular mutatron will give you a random one. There are some bees blacklisted from both, namely the cosmic neutronium, infinity catalyst, infinity, americium, Chad, and holiday bees. In 2.2.3, the indium bee is also disabled. There may be more disabled in later versions, for instance dragon blood and neutronium. = Exact Production Math for 24 Significant Figure Fiends = So, you've come to learn the forbidden numbers? After 2.2.3, bee production was heavily nerfed due to a new production chance formula that is ... mathematically creative. Additionally, there is a bug until after 2.2.9 which effectively reduces the primary production of any product with a base chance under 100%.

Check out the appendix for a worked example if this sounds like nonsense.

In 2.2.3, the adjusted probability PERCENT (effective percent chance to get a product each bee tick) is min(c*m*s, 100) where c is the base production chance PERCENT, m is the production modifier from the housing, and s is the speed value of the bee (see the appendix on traits for details). The values for m start at 0.1x for bee house/apiary, 0.9x for unboosted magic apiary, 1.8 for boosted magic apiary, or 1 for alveary, iapiary, and mega apiary. This is then multiplied by the modifiers for frames (see appendix on frames), stimulators (see alveary section above), and beekeeping mode (1x unless you changed it). In 2.2.8+, the adjusted probability (percent) is min((1 + t/6)*2*(1 + s)*sqrt(c) + (m/4)^cbrt(c) - 3, 100) where c, m, s are the same and t is 1 in bee houses, apiaries, magic apiaries, and alvearies, 8 in the iapiary, and the energy tier in the mega apiary.

Going forwards, we will assume that we are using blinding production speed bees in a non gregtech housing. Thus, t will be 1 and s will be 2. This lets us simplify the 2.2.8+ formula to min(7*sqrt(c) + (m/4)^cbrt(c) - 3, 100). This is only the first half of the story though. Now let's look at how the adjusted probability percent is used. Before 2.2.10, every bee tick, products are calculated in three steps: For purebred bees, the secondary species is the same as the primary species. If you thought "that sounds weird", you'd be totally correct. This is due to a bug from base forestry, but I've discussed it with Runakai and submitted a pull request. So if you like bees, REALLY thank Runakai. 100% adjusts to 100% in 2.2.3. In 2.2.8 it will as long as you use a decent production multiplier, but could be lower (with blinding production speed you need 8.5x or more). For purebred bees, the primary and secondary species are the same. In 2.2.10, the products will be calculated the same way except the second step is fixed to instead be: For every possible primary product of the secondary species of the queen, divide its base chance by 2 and then calculate the adjusted probability based on that. Then generate a product with that probability. In the mega apiary, adjusted probabilities are treated differently and don't cap at 100%, so you can get huge multipliers. So what are the best multipliers to use? When is production guaranteed to cap out? For now, assume ALL bees are blinding production speed. In 2.2.3, any multiplier of 12.5x or higher will boost any base chance of 4% or higher to 100%, which is the cap (remember, the bug that will be fixed in 2.2.10 prevents the second roll, unless the base chance is 100%). If the base chance is 3% or lower, going over 12.5x has marginal benefits, but you are capped at 16x unless you want to deal with ignobles, so you can't boost any 3% or lower products to 100% unless using ignobles. 50x will boost even 1% products to 100%, see Ignoble Bee section for more info. In 2.2.8, 15.625x will boost any base chance of 29% or higher to 100%. So there is no advantage to higher multipliers at all unless you are dealing with less likely products. In 2.2.8, 16x will boost any base chance of 28% or higher to 100%. If using ignoble bees, you can go all the way up to 384x to make even 1% products guaranteed. In 2.2.10, the math will be the same for specialty products. However, 200% yield is actually possible for non-guaranteed products. The cutoff for 15.625x is 58% or higher. For 16x, it's 56% or higher. Any primary product with a lower base chance than that can't be guaranteed without becoming an Ignoble Bee enjoyer. To max out a 1% base chance primary product, you would need 1291.6x production, because the value of c that gets handed to kuba's special formula is 0.5%. That's only 4 electrical stimulators with 2 diamond tubes each, which is still manageable, see next section for details. = Ignoble Bee Enjoyer Manifesto = Pristine Bees are great. As long as you treat them right and don't crank up the production multiplier of their habitat over 16, they live forever and you don't have to worry about them. However, it can be such a hassle to explore the world, trade with villagers, or buy hives in the QB. And all those ignoble bees ... they're just sitting in your chests doing nothing. Surely you can use them for something? Well, you shouldn't, but you can. Ignoble bees offer two advantages over pristine: they are easier to get renewably, since you can use the alveary swarmer, hivecynth, or just extra hive princesses; and they can handle over 16x production multiplier. As stated many times though, since production is capped at 100%, this has pretty limited utility. You would almost certainly be better off just making more alvearies or whatever. Also, ignoble bees have a 2% times genetic decay chance to die each lifespan. You can mitigate this by giving them a longer lifespan, using lifespan multipliers, and using gentle frames. Pristine Bees that exceed the 16x production multiplier have a 1.56% chance of becoming ignoble each bee tick at (16+ε)x, up to 100% at 100.5x. So there's two ways to enjoy ignoble bees: just absolutely skyrocket the production multiplier to literally a morbillion, or shrink ray the genetic decay rate to a subnormal number. To the first point, remember that production is capped at 100%. So assuming blinding production speed, in 2.2.3 there is no point in going over 50x production, and in 2.2.8 no point in going over 384x. In 2.2.10 this cap is effectively 200% because a bug was fixed (see previous section for details), so 1291.6x is necessary if you want 1% chance primary outputs to cap production (ie if you want their second roll at half chance, 0.5%, to also reach the cap of 100%). These are doable with 3, 3, and 4 electrical stimulators respectively. Now for the second point, the good people over at forestry decided to use floats for their random number generation. The average programmer believes that Random.nextFloat returns a real number uniformly distributed between 0 and 1. However, this is not the case. Instead, it generates a random integer uniformly distributed between 0 and 2²⁴-1 (both inclusive) and then divides it by 2²⁴. This means if you have 3 gentle frames, there is only a 1/2²⁴ chance of an ignoble princess dying instead of producing another generation. If you could put 22 gentle frames, due to limits of floating point numbers, the chance of ignoble bees dying would actually become 0, but unfortunately you can only fit 17 at most. Because of how Random.nextFloat works, there's absolutely no point using more than 3 gentle frames unless you can get to 22 (or are using stimulators/frames that increase genetic decay), this is merely a fun curiosity. The expected number of lifetimes an ignoble princess will last after stacking enough gentle frames to bring her genetic decay under 1/2²⁴ is, obviously, 2²⁴. So if she is Eon, she should last 8772 real life years on average before decaying. Depending on how long you intend to play for, you may wish to add lapis electron tubes or lifespan increasing frames to make this longer, but if you do, remember to add enough gentle frames to keep 0.02 times genetic decay under 1/2²⁴. The max production multiplier a single alveary block can give is 10x (1 iron and 2 diamond or "more"), from a maxed electrical stim. However, 6.25x (2 diamond) is better because it only gives 2.25x genetic decay instead of 3.375x. 3 electrical stimulators with 2 diamond tubes and 1 with 1 will send even 1% products to 100% in 2.2.8. 2 with 2 diamond and 1 with 1 iron is enough in 2.2.3. In 2.2.10, 4 stimulators with double diamond tubes will be needed. All of these require going up to 4 gentle frames. Remember though, the production of a single bee can ONLY exceed 1 of a product each bee tick if it's a guaranteed primary product, or any primary product starting in 2.2.10. The mega apiary ignores this restriction. The industrial apiary can take acceleration upgrades, and apiaries/magic apiaries can be world accelerated, but outside of that there's no way around this. In 2.2.8, for a product with a base production ≥29%, it is guaranteed every bee tick in a 15.625x alveary. For a base production ≥28%, it is guaranteed in a 16x alveary. In other words, ignoble bees have no advantage besides being easier to get unless you care about a product with a base chance under 28%, and even then, you're probably better off building more alvearies or iapiaries for them, rather than orchestrating a monstrous setup with ignoble bees. 1% products in a 15.625x alveary have a 7.90625% production chance in 2.2.8 and effectively 12.805% in 2.2.10. In 2.2.3, obviously any product with a base production ≥4% is guaranteed every bee tick even in a 15.625x alveary. So in that version, boosting over 16x and consequentially ignoble bees are only useful at all for 1%-3% products. Normally, the cost of using ignoble princesses is that you need to automate giving them the correct traits, whether by repeatedly breeding them with a stack of drones or using Gendustry. However, using my cool gentle frame trick, you can just automate gentle frames instead. So you basically have 5 options for using ignoble bees: This is goofy, don't do this. This is even more goofy because now you need to use a breeder alveary, absolutely don't do this. This is the option for ultra wealthy thaumcraft haters who've reached LuV. Now we're getting somewhere, this way we only need to set up the princesses once. This is the best way because it requires much less thaumcraft automation than the previous way. = Exact Mutation Math for Non-Conmutative Nerds = So, how EXACTLY does mutation work? Well, you could read `Bee.java:create offspring`, or you could heed my wisdom. Let A and B be the primary and secondary species of the original princess, and C and D be the primary and secondary species of the original drone. For each offspring (princess and drones) generated, it will use the original princess as the first parent and the original drone as the second. There is a 50% chance that it will TRY to replace the original princess (first parent) with a mutation between A and D, and 50% that it will TRY to replace it with a mutation between B and C. The same thing occurs for the original drone (second parent). Notice that this is probably not what the devs intended, because it isn't possible to get a mutation between A and C or B and D. But that's what they wrote. When trying to do a mutation between say A and D, it tries all the possible mutations in order. So if there are no possible mutations for A+D, this always fails and that parent isn't replaced. On the other hand, if there are multiple possible mutations, it's possible for a previous one to be picked and the one we care about not to be reached, and possible for it to be reached, fail, and then have a later mutation succeed. Mutations with missing requirements are effectively skipped. Then, for each heritable trait, it pulls either the primary or secondary from each parent, in a random order, ie the first parent's trait could end up in the second slot. Let X0, X1, and X2 be the possible mutations between A and D, and Y0, Y1, and Y2 be the possible mutations between B and C, in order. I'm assuming the code uses a consistent ordering among all mutations. Such an ordering obviously exists, but it's definitely possible the code doesn't use one. This doesn't really matter since I only know of four cases where a pair of species has two possible mutations: the initial split in the imperial/industrious line, the initial split in the magic bees starting line, the initial split in the valuable bee line, and crumbling vs transmuting. None of these even have 3+ possible mutations, only 2. Regardless, you can think of X0, X2, Y0, and Y2 not as single species but as collections of 0+ species, to account for all these cases. Then let p0, p1, p2, q0, q1, and q2 be the probabilities of getting the corresponding mutations, conditioned on not getting any previous mutation, ie their adjusted base probabilities. When eg X0 is an empty collection, p0 will be 0 to match. Finally, we will denote the complement of a probability p as p' rather than (1-p) as the following formula is quite overzealous already. All possible offspring genotypes ignoring order can then be found using the formula ¼(m² + ½mn(A + B + C + D) + ¼n²(A + B)(C + D)) where m = p0X0 + p0'p1X1 + p0'p1'p2X2 + q0Y0 + q0'q1Y1 + q0'q1'q2Y2 and n = p0'p1'p2' + q0'q1'q2'. By expanding this expression and finding the coefficient for, say, AX1, we find the probability of getting an offspring with genotype AX1 or X1A. Let's go through what happens when we apply this to the typical breeding scenario where B=A and D=C. Then by definition Yi=Xi and qi=pi and the formula simplifies to ¼(m² + mn(A + C) + n²AC) with m = 2(p0X0 + p0'p1X1 + p0'p1'p2X2) and n = 2p0'p1'p2'. Now let's say we want to know the probability of getting at least one X1 species. Then we would have to add the coefficients of AX1, CX1, X1X1, X0X1, and X2X1, so let's find those. Notice that the expression is split into three parts: m², which contains all genotypes with 2 mutations mn(A + C), which contains all genotypes with 1 mutation n²AC, which contains the unique genotype AC with no mutations [AX1] = [CX1] = p0'p1'p2'p0'p1 [X0X1] = 2p0p0'p1 [X1X1] = (p0'p1)² [X2X1] = 2p0'p1'p2p0'p1 In the case when there's only 1 possible mutation, p0=p2=0, so p0'=p2'=1, and we get [AX1] = [CX1] = p1'p1 [X1X1] = p1² [X0X1] = [X2X1] = 0. That agrees with the result we got for Meadows-Meadows x Wintry-Wintry earlier. Now let's find tables for all 14 non uniform pairs of bees with species from A and B with one mutation C with probability p. AAxBB and BBxAA: AB+BA: (1-p)² AC+BC+CA+CB: 2p(1-p) CC: p² Probability of at least one C: 2p-p² AAxAB, AAxBA, ABxAA, and BAxAA: CC: ¼p² CA+AC: ¾p(1-½p) CB+BC: ¼p(1-½p) AA: ¼(2-2p+½p²) AB+BA: ¼(2-2p+½p²) Probability of at least one C: p-¼p² BBxBA, BBxAB, BAxBB, and ABxBB are obviously the same as the previous table but with A and B swapped (if cross breeding weren't label agnostic it would be nonsensical). ABxAB and BAxBA: CC: p² CA+CB+AC+BC: 2p(1-p) AA+BB+AB+BA: (1-p)² Probability of at least one C: 2p-p² ABxBA and BAxAB (cursed hybrids); AA+BB+AB+BA: 1 Probability of at least one C: 0 (No mutations due to likely dev oversight.) (The uniform pairs AAxAA and BBxBB aren't interesting. In the case when A+A has a mutation, the chances can be recovered by setting B=A in the AAxBB table.)
 * 1) For every possible primary product for the primary species of the queen, calculate its adjusted probability and then generate one with that probability.
 * 1) For every possible primary product of the secondary species of the queen THAT HAS A BASE CHANCE OF 100%, calculate its adjusted probability and then generate one with that probability.
 * 1) If both the primary and secondary species are jubilant, for every possible specialty product of the primary species, calculate its adjusted probability and then generate one with that probability.
 * 1) Generate ignoble bees and set their genes through repeated breeding with drones from a pristine princess in an apiary/alveary.
 * 1) Generate ignoble bees and set their genes through repeated breeding with drones from a Genetics incubator.
 * 1) Generate ignoble princesses, mate them with random drones, then set their genes with Gendustry.
 * 1) Autocraft gentle frames and export them into your alvearies, thus making your ignoble bees effectively pristine.
 * 1) Craft a few more gentle frames than you need and automate pulling them from frame housings for a quick touch up in the thaumic restorer before replacing them.

= Appendix: Bee Production Examples =

Suppose we have a bee with a product "bananas" that has a base chance of 5%. How many bananas per hour would we get with some different setups? We will assume the bee has blinding production speed and we are working in 2.2.8.

Alveary: 15.625x Electron Tubes
We start with the general formula min((1 + t/6)*2*(1 + s)*sqrt(c) + (m/4)^cbrt(c) - 3, 100)

Since we are not in a gregtech housing, t is 1. For blinding, s is 2. We said the base chance c for bananas was 5. For the standard 1 board with 2 diamond tubes and 1 with 1 alveary setup, m is 15.625.

So we get min((1 + 1/6)*2*(1 + 2)*sqrt(5) + (15.625/4)^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(7*sqrt(5) + 3.90625^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(22.93..., 100) 22.93...

This is the percent chance of generating a banana each bee tick. Since we are in 2.2.8 and bananas do not have a base chance of 100%, there is no second roll. Thus, each bee tick, we get 0.2293 bananas. The alveary cannot be world accelerated. Therefore, the number of bananas we expect to get in 1 hour is 0.2293... bananas/bee tick * 1 bee tick/27.5 seconds * 60 seconds/1 minute * 60 minutes/1 hour 30.01... bananas/hour.

Alveary: 16x Frames
min((1 + 1/6)*2*(1 + 2)*sqrt(5) + (16/4)^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(7*sqrt(5) + 4^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(23.35..., 100) 23.35...

30.57... bananas/hour = 0.2335/27.5*3600 As you can see, the increase from 15.625x to 16x is quite small.

Alveary: Ignoble, capped production
Now let's look at how much we'd have to boost the production to get to the 100% cap, and see how many more bananas we could squeeze out of ignoble bees.

First, we have to find the production multiplier needed to cap production. To do this, we start by setting the production formula equal to 100, and then solve for m: min((1 + 1/6)*2*(1 + 2)*sqrt(5) + (m/4)^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) == 100 min(12.65... + (m/4)^1.7099..., 100) == 100 12.65... + (m/4)^1.7099... >= 100 (m/4)^1.7099 >= 87.35... m/4 >= 13.66... m >= 54.62...

We can get a high enough m either by using 6 2x frames, giving a multiplier of 64x, or by using 1 electrical stimulator with 2 diamond tubes and 1 with 1 iron then 2 diamond, giving a multiplier of 58.59375x. In the first case, we need 9 frame housings (6 for 2x frames and 3 for gentle frames). In the second case, we need 4 frame housings (for gentle frames) and 2 electrical stimulators.

In both cases, we reach the production cap, so our bees will make a banana every bee tick, and we will get 130.90... bananas/hour.

Thus, by using ignoble bees, we make the setup much more complicated because we need to automate or auto repair gentle frames, but we need 4.28x fewer alvearies. Is this worth it? It's up to you. It could be worth it simply because you think it sounds fun. Notice that 130 products/hour is always what we'll get when correctly enjoying ignoble bees, unless the primary production bug has been fixed in your version in which case you get twice as many. Alvearies cannot be world accelerated so this production rate is final.

Magic Apiary: HV WA and Booster, no frames
That's right, I still haven't tested if frames can be automated in the magic apiary.

The magic apiary has a base m value of 1.8x when boosted, so we will first find the production chance each bee tick and then discuss world acceleration. min((1 + 1/6)*2*(1 + 2)*sqrt(5) + (1.8/4)^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(7*sqrt(5) + 0.45^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(12.90..., 100) 12.90...

0.1290... bananas/bee tick * 1 bee tick/27.5 seconds * 8x (HV world accelerator) * 3600 seconds/hour 135.09... bananas/hour

Notice though that if you can't/don't automate frames, then this is basically the same as an unboosted (but still world accelerated) magic apiary, or even a regular apiary, which reach an adjusted probability percent of 12.73... and 12.65..., respectively.

In other words, using the magic apiary over a regular apiary is only worth it if you give it frames.

Remember, a WA can apply to 5 apiaries/magic apiaries at the same time, so it effectively costs one fifth as much to WA each one.

Magic Apiary: HV WA and Booster, 8x Frames
Now, m is 1.8x times 8x min((1 + 1/6)*2*(1 + 2)*sqrt(5) + (14.4/4)^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(7*sqrt(5) + 3.6^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(21.59..., 100)

226.11... bananas/hour = 0.2159.../27.5*8*3600

Mmm, banana.

Industrial Apiary: 8x production upgrades, 8x speed upgrades
For the industrial apiary, t is 8 instead of 1, so the first term in kuba's formula literally doubles to start: min((1 + 8/6)*2*(1 + 2)*sqrt(5) + (8/4)^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(14*sqrt(5) + 2^cbrt(5) - 3, 100) min(31.57..., 100) 31.59...

Not only is this the best adjusted probability we've seen so far barring ignoble bee memes, that was with a production modifier of only 8x, and we also get a speed upgrade of 8x on top of this: 330.69... bananas/hour = 0.3159.../27.5*8*3600

The downside of course is that the industrial apiary is expensive and guzzles power, especially if you want to spam them. But you know what they say, you gotta have money to make money

Mega Apiary
Yes.

= Appendix: Traits = Secondary species does affect this too, see later for details Don't worry about this. Lifespan modifiers affect this, ie number of bee ticks not duration of bee tick, so once you have the technology you can make your bees only live 1 bee tick. Name (number of bee ticks): Shortest (10), Shorter (20), Short (30), Shortened (35), Normal (40), Elongated (45), Long (50), Longer (60), Longest (70), Eon (600). Pre alveary stimulator/oblivion frame, you technically want this shorter, but it's not worth the effort. For bees that you have producing things, longer is technically better since the time to reinsert the princess and form a new queen is not quite zero, but again it doesn't matter. Remember that the lifespan in bee ticks is multiplied by the beekeeping mode modifier, 1.5x. Slowest (0.3), Slower (0.6), Slow (0.8), Normal (1), Fast (1.2), Faster (1.4), Fastest (1.7), Blinding (2). Two notes on this: while these work exactly how you would think, by multiplying base probability in gtnh 2.2.3, kuba made up some really goofy formula for 2.2.8 that is more complicated than that (oh and a huge nerf). Also, runakai might eventually add robotic (2.5) and accelerated (4), which would be great because higher production can't lead to genetic damage. This is bad and a source of lag, but you can ignore this stat. Alveary sieves completely stop pollination. Only some flower types do pollination. - Sea: water - Books: bookshelves - Dead Bushes: dead bushes - Fruit: forestry/extratrees fruit trees - Leaves: leaves - Mystical: Botania mystical flowers (grows) - Redstone: redstone torch - Rocks: cobblestone, stone, stone bricks - Saplings: forestry/extratrees saplings - Reeds: sugarcane (grows taller) - Lily Pads: lilly pads - Wood: wood - Cacti: cacti (grows taller) - End: dragon egg - Gourds: pumpkin and melon - Jungle: vines and ferns - Mushroom: red/brown mushroom - Nether: netherwart - Snow: none (but the bee will make snow) - Flowers: vanilla flowers (spreads) - Wheat: wheat - Node: tc node - Thaumic Flowers: cinderpearl/shimmerleaf (spreads) I had a dream where this went up to 16 once, but that's not real and can't hurt you. - Average (9x6x9) - Large (11x8x11) - Largest (15x13x15) Notice that some frames modify this. The alveary also doubles it. The area bees pollinate forestry/extratrees trees and spread flowers if applicable is exactly 3x larger. So you generally want this to be "Average" to reduce lag, but it isn't a big deal. If you have a bee with a harmful effect that you have to use and you want to mitigate it (ie radioactive bee line), use an alveary with a couple electrical simulators with tin tubes. Icy (t≤0), Cold (0<t≤35), Normal (35<t≤85), Warm (85<t≤100), Hot (100<t), and Hellish (only if the biome is a nether biome or the bee housing has an upgrade that makes it hellish). Tolerances are counted in number of levels, eg Icy up to Hellish is 5 levels. On the other hand, alveary upgrades (and iapiary upgrades) modify the climate by a number of percentage points, so you could need a whole lot to change the climate a lot. Arid (h<30), Normal (30≤h≤85), and Damp (85<h). Yes, 30 really is considered Normal and not Arid, this is forestry being inconsistent, not me making a mistake. = Appendix: Frames = There are two types of frames: GT++ frames, which CANNOT be repaired and as such are to be avoided, and forestry/extratrees/magicbees frames which can be repaired. Most of the magic bees frames are way too expensive to make even one of and so are effectively loot only. You can buy these for bee coins, huzzah! Three will give 3.375x mutation rate and 0.5x lifespan. Impregnated can be bought from QB (probably don't though), and Proven can be bought from villagers or crafted. Since these are production oriented rather than breeding oriented, you can breed imperial for royal jelly, then buy tropical for silky propolis (remember you can get it faster in the escritoire), and then craft them fairly cheaply. See the ignoble bee enjoyer manifesto section for more info. Require aer, hydra, or thaumiumshards bee. However, they don't decrease lifespan and are much more expensive than soul frames, so those are generally better imo. If you are a big world accelerator enjoyer you may disagree. Require ignis bee. If you get three of these from loot bags before having an alveary then they are good for high mutation rate bees. They are also good for breeding for stats. With 3 of these, you hit 0.027x lifespan, but remember this is 0.0405x after the beekeeping mode modifier is applied. That will still make most bees finish their lifespan in under a minute. A single one reduces the lifespan of even eon bees to a single bee tick, making breeding for mutations or stats both so much less painful. However, it's also much more expensive than even the other already expensive magic bees frames. Not only would you need aqua bees, you also need a dragon egg (draconic bee HIGHLY recommended, thaumiumdust bee suggested) AND mutable bees. Getting it from a stronghold or advanced bee loot bag is highly recommended. Finally, the GT++ frames: Also, if you were wealthy enough to consider using two at once to boost the mutation rate even more, you would almost certainly be rewarded with your princess becoming ignoble. With three it literally would be guaranteed. It's basically worth 6 proven frames when you take its durability and production into account, but it's almost always a lot more than 6x as expensive, making it usually a poor choice. If you have an effect that you really want to boost the range of though then I guess you could actually use this. Check out apatite tubes in the electrical stimulator to boost pollination instead of range, if you really want to go down that road.
 * 1) Species: determines preferred temperature and humidity, plus what items the bee can produce.
 * 1) Lifespan: shortest-eon; how many bee ticks (27.5 seconds) the bee lives for.
 * 1) Production: boosts chance of products (see production analysis for more detail)
 * 1) Pollination: Slowest-Maximum; how fast the bee pollinates forestry trees.
 * 1) Flower Type: What kind of flower the bee needs in range to work
 * 1) Fertility: 1-4; number of drones produced as offspring.
 * 1) Territory: area bee will look for flowers and pollinate/do its effect
 * 1) Effect: what it do
 * 1) Climate/Tolerance: there are 5 climates in increasing order of temperature:
 * 1) Humidity/Tolerance: there are 3 humidities in increasing order:
 * 1) Diurnal: Can the bee work during the day
 * 1) Nocturnal: Can the bee work at night
 * 1) Tolerant Flyer: Can the bee work while it is raining
 * 1) Cave Dwelling: Can solid blocks be placed over the bee's housing.
 * 1) Chocolate: 0.75x lifespan, 1.5x production, 3 of these will give 0.422x lifespan and 3.375x production.
 * 1) Restraint: a worse version of chocolate frames, they nerf production instead of buffing it and more importantly cap at 0.5x lifespan when you have 3.
 * 1) Soul: 1.5x mutation, 0.75x lifespan, these are the best frames for breeding that you can reasonably craft.
 * 1) Healing: truly antithetical to the concept of being good
 * 1) Nova: creative only
 * 1) Untreated, Impregnated, and Proven: the default forestry frames which all give 2x production (8x for 3) and vary only in durability.
 * 1) Magic: literally worse than the impregnated frame it's crafted from, only useful if you're down atrocious and want to craft another magic bees frame.
 * 1) Resiliant: just breed an ordered, lich, or thaumium shards bee and then you can finally craft this way more expensive version of the proven frame that lasts 6.11 hours instead of 5.5.
 * 1) Gentle: this one does have a niche, provided your brain is sufficiently enormous.
 * 1) Metabolic: give 1.8x mutation rate (with no cap), so with 3 you get 5.832x mutation.
 * 1) Necrotic: give 0.3x lifespan, but require chaotic or thaumiumshards bees to actually craft.
 * 1) Temporal: garbage
 * 1) Oblivion: this is the best frame.
 * 1) Accelerated: worse version of soul frame
 * 1) Mutagenic: it has amazing stats, but it only has 3 durability and can't be repaired, plus it costs plutonium.
 * 1) Working: if you're drowning in nether stars this one is worth considering.
 * 1) Decaying: astoundingly useless.
 * 1) Slowing: astoundingly useless.
 * 1) Stabilizing: astoundingly useless.
 * 1) Arborist: astoundingly useless.  Even for its stated purpose of forestry tree breeding, it isn't that useful because it only increases lifespan and range, but you want pollination increased for tree breeding, and there's no frame for that.