Productive Bees

Getting started

Find a vanilla bee nest for honey bottles and honeycombs. A honey bottle and planks make four Bee Cages: right-click a bee to catch it, right-click the ground to let it go. Keep a few on you, because interesting bees turn up anywhere.

An Advanced Beehive is planks, honeycombs and a beehive. It needs no campfire to harvest, it can be picked up with its bees inside without Silk Touch, and its window shows which bees are in it and what they've made. An Expansion Box on top or beside it raises the hive from three bees to five and lets it take upgrades.

Letting a bee go on a flower sets that as its flower; letting it go on a hive while sneaking makes that its home. If you're tired of waiting, hit the hive with a stick and the bees come out, losing what they were making.

Nests and wild bees

Besides vanilla bees, solitary bees live alone in nests hidden in different biomes. Break a nest and you keep it with its bee inside, no Silk Touch needed; craft a nest with itself to empty it. An empty nest given a Honey Treat attracts a new bee after a while.

The Nest Locator finds nests: sneak and use it on a nest, or on the block that kind of nest is made of, then use it again to point at the nearest one. Many nests can also be crafted from their block and a sword: a Sand Nest from sand and a wooden sword, a Stone Nest from stone and an iron sword, an Obsidian Nest from obsidian and a diamond sword.

Wild bees come from special places: Crystalline Bees from Quartz Nests in the Nether, Draconic Bees, rarely, from the obsidian pillars on the End's main island. Draconic Bees also live in a Dragon Egg Hive, which is where their draconic combs are easy to harvest; in an advanced hive they make no dragon breath.

Breeding

Two bees of the right types, each fed its breeding item, make a third. The book lists every pair. Two examples: an Iron Bee comes from a Crystalline Bee and an Ashy Mining Bee, and a Diamond Bee from an Ender Bee and a Lapis Bee.

The Breeding Chamber breeds safely and on its own: give it the two parents in cages, their breeding items, power and empty cages for the young. Honey Treats calm angry bees and make babies grow up faster, and the BaBee Incubator grows caged babies with treats.

Combs and the centrifuge

Bees living in advanced hives bring back combs of their resource. A Centrifuge spins a comb into its resource, Wax and honey; it holds ten buckets of honey and fills any tank placed next to it.

Centrifuge

Iron and a grindstone. Needs no power.

Powered Centrifuge

Powered Centrifuge: faster, on power. In ATM10 it takes a Mekanism Basic Control Circuit.

Heated Centrifuge

Heated Centrifuge: made with an Inactive Dragon Egg. It runs too hot to leave wax.

The Bottler fills bottles with honey, piped in or straight from a centrifuge beside it, and the Honey Generator burns honey for power. Combs also press into comb blocks for storage.

Worker bees

Quarry Bee

Nibbles nearby stone, sand and gravel into Stone Chips, which craft back into the block.

Lumber Bee

Nibbles nearby wood into Wood Chips.

Farmer Bee

Harvests crops within four blocks of its hive and leaves them on the ground.

Rancher Bee

Milks cows, sheep and llamas into milky combs, and shears sheep.

Collector and Hoarder Bees

Pick up items lying around and take them to the hive. With a Farmer Bee, that is a whole farm.

A Feeding Slab holds three blocks for bees to feed from, so a Lumber or Quarry Bee there makes chips of a random one of them. Honey poured on it gives the bees regeneration.

Genetics

Productivity

Normal, medium, high or very high: how many combs a bee brings back per trip.

Weather

None, rain or any. A bee left on a lead outside in bad weather can get used to it, if it survives.

Behaviour

Diurnal works by day, nocturnal by night, metaturnal all the time. A bee on a lead through the other half of the day can change.

Endurance

Weak to strong: its health, and whether it keeps its stinger.

Temper

Passive to hostile. Plenty of honey treats calm it down.

To move a trait from one bee to another, bottle a bee in the Bottler with a piston and a lever, spin the bottle in a centrifuge for its Gene Samples, and put a gene on a Honey Treat. Fed to a bee, the treat has a chance to pass the trait on, better the purer the gene. Combine two of the same gene to raise its purity, or let the Gene Indexer do it with a redstone signal.

The Incubator also turns a bee type gene into a spawn egg for that bee.

Upgrades

Upgrades go in an expanded hive or a machine, all made on an upgrade base. Productivity brings back more combs per trip and stacks. Speed shortens a bee's time in the hive, and speeds up a centrifuge or incubator. A Filter lets only chosen bees in. Range widens the area of Farmer and Collector Bees by a block each, from four. BaBee lets the bees in a hive breed on their own, and other upgrades stop bees teleporting, take gene samples from visitors, or make whole comb blocks.

The Simulator upgrade keeps the bees inside and simulates their flower trips. Put their flower, or a Feeding Slab, at the foot of the hive below its front. On a shared server it's the kindest thing you can do: every bee flying around is an entity the server has to think for.

In ATM10 the Productivity Upgrade IV takes four Productivity III upgrades, two Hearts of the Sea, two unobtainium nuggets and an upgrade base.

A Catcher loaded with cages catches any bee flying over it, and takes the BaBee, Filter and Range upgrades.

What ATM10 adds

• A Radioactive Bee fed a Polonium Pellet has a small chance to become a Wasted Radioactive Bee.
• Four Ars Nouveau bees, one for each elemental essence: fire, water, earth and air.
• A Stellarite Bee, made in a Forbidden Arcanus Hephaestus Forge ritual.
• Experience combs centrifuge into Just Dire Things' XP fluid.
• Niter counts as saltpetre, so a niter bee feeds every saltpetre recipe.

Questions