Getting Started (Career Bees)

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Introduction

Career Bees is a mod meant to expand on the beekeeping system introduced by Forestry by adding bees with functions beyond producing products. In order to start using Career Bees, two types of bees are needed as well as a basic beekeeping setup which can be read about here. It is recommended to have a good amount of each type of bee before beginning in case of failed mutations.

Also, in order to make every bee in the Career Bees mod, these bees are also eventually needed for further mutations.

Useful Tools

Main articles: Poison Frame and Bee-Bee Gun

Career Bees adds a couple of new items to help with your new bees. The Poison Frame decreases the lifespan of a bee and deploys Poison around the Apiary. The Bee-Bee Gun requires Honey-Comb Ingots which can only be obtained by the Honey-Smelter Bee. It allows you to use the Effects of the Career Bees on specific targets. More information can be found on their main articles.

Poison Frame

Shaped Crafting

Bee-Bee Gun

Shaped Crafting

Automation and Longevity

When utilizing the Effects of all of the different Career Bees, one may want to utilize their Effects permanently. There are a couple of ways to do this.

If you have other mods such as Buildcraft or Extra Utilities 2, you can make an automated setup for your Apiaries.
The Yente Bee acts similar to the Automation Upgrade from Gendustry. However, unlike the Automation Upgrade, it instead focuses on making purebred bees. This means you can leave the Apiary running and not worry about the effect gettings lost.
Both of the above solutions have the problem that you may start filling up on drones. Using an Eternal Frame will make it so the bee won't produce anything, but its Effect will always be available and no drones will be produced.

Animal Mob Farm

The Husbandry Bee breeds animals within its Territory, while the Butcher Bee kills animals within its Territory until there is only a pair left. Making an enclosure with fences and putting two of each type of animal mob inside will produce a large amount of animal resources.

The breeding time of the animal mobs cannot be sped up by giving additional production modifiers to the Husbandry Bee.

Hostile Mob Farm

The Taxcollector Bee collects mob drops from hostile mobs without killing them. This means all you need for a successful farm is one of each type of hostile mob.

The Police Bee can also be used in a mob farm, however it is not as efficient. The bee has an increased chance to drop items collects mob drops from mobs, but the bee also kills those mobs. This means for a successful mob farm you would need a way for mobs to spawn, such as a Monster Spawner or a regular mob farm setup. The Police Bee will generate Police Incident Reports alongside mob drops. Disposing of these is important, as they can quickly clog up the storage of items.
Giving the Taxcollector Bee better Speed and Frames with high production will increase the rate of obtaining items from mobs.
Both the Taxcollector Bee and the Police Bee can get mob drops added by other mods.
The Taxcollector Bee cannot steal from Bosses such as the Wither. The Police Bee can, but in order for it to steal it must kill the boss.

Creeper Farm

While using an N.C.A. Bee is a dangerous choice, it can be used to make a farm for Creeper drops due to its fast spawning rate. Using the Taxcollector Bee is the only method that is able to get mob drops from N.C.A. spawned Creepers.

In order to protect yourself from unintended Creeper spawning, you must build an enclosure big enough to contain the N.C.A. Bee's territory, which is 9x6x9.
The Taxcollector Bee can be placed anywhere near the mob farm to get drops. Giving it a larger Territory through genetic manipulation can make it so the bee does not have to be so close to the mob farm, which could help with getting the items out of the Apiary.
If you give the N.C.A. Bee the Cave Dwelling allele, the mob farm can be placed underground with a roof, which can make the farm less intrusive.

Emerald Farm

Using the two types of farms to your advantage, you could turn some of the resources you get into Emeralds with the Buisness Bee. Simply place a Chest or a different form of storage with all the resources you wish to sell next to an Apiary with a Buisness Bee.

Since the Buisness Bee uses random Villager trades to sell items, finding out which resources you can trade for Emeralds should be the first step.
Placing more than the lower bound of a resource for a Villager trade in the chest may cause it to waste resources. For example, placing 8 Iron Ingots in a chest when the trade only requires 7-9 may cause all 8 Ingots to be traded for an Emerald.
The Junk Seller Bee can be used to buy random items with the Emeralds you get if you just want random items. It works the same as the Buisness Bee.

Explosive Mutation

The Mad Scientist Bee can be difficult to mutate due to its requirement of having an explosion occur within the last 10 seconds of the queen's life.

TNT is usually the best method of triggering this mutation, but the explosion needs to be far enough away from the Apiary so that the explosion does not destroy it. Using blast resistant blocks such as Obsidian is recommended to prevent unintended damage. As long as the explosion is within the bee's Territory, it will count.
Adding two Poison Frames or one Oblivion Frame is enough to make it so the life of the queen only lasts for one cycle, making it easier to time the necessary explosion.
If you have obtained the Assassin Bee and a Bee-Bee Gun, the mutation becomes very easy. Simply place the TNT about 6 blocks away and make sure the Queen made from the Science Bee and the Engineer Bee is still alive. When the explosion occurs, fire the Bee-Bee Gun loaded with the Assassin Bee at the Apiary within the 10 seconds and the mutation will work if done correctly.

Power Generation

The Energy Bee, by default, produces 3 RF/Tick to adjacent blocks to its Apiary. However, this value can be increased to very large amounts using a couple of different methods.

Only bees of the species Energy Bee can use the RF Inducing Effect, similar to all the other Career Bees that have an Effect.
Using the Bee-Bee Gun with your Energy Bee will give you portable power. Since the effect when firing the bee stacks on any block that accepts RF, early on this way of generating power will be the fastest and easiest method.
Genetically modifying a bee with a better Speed like Robotic or Blinding will make the bee produce much more RF/Tick, since the base bee starts with the Slow allele.
Using a Temporal Bee will more than double your energy output. The Accelerate Effect does not stack however, meaning that only one bee is necessary for one Territory of Energy Bees.
Energy Bees can self sustain themselves in an Industrial Apiary, which means you can utilize Production Upgrades to increase energy output.
Using an Alveary for your bee, especially with Alveary Frame Holders, can provide a very large boost to your energy output. Similarly, just adding more Frames to your Apiary can achieve a similar but also smaller effect.

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