Everything you need to know about Minecraft Bees

Bees are neutral mobs that fly in Minecraft. They are small, yellow and very stripy. While bees can usually be very placid, simply flying around and doing their own thing, it's a good idea not to provoke them.

Minecraft bees can also be very helpful when you are running around in your survival world as there is a lot they can help you with. So let's jump right into it.

Where do bees spawn?

Bees in Minecraft will most commonly spawn in natural bee nests in biomes that have Oak or Birch trees. A bee nest will also generate with 3 bees inside it- but don’t worry, we’ve got you covered on breeding bees too.

Assuming you didn’t spawn into one of these biomes, bees do have some preferred areas they like to buzz around in. These are:

• Sunflower plains
• Flower forests and plains
• Regular plains

Moving towards sunnier biomes with more flowers in them will increase your chances to find bees and bee nests too. Sunflower plains are a favourite for bees so keep your eyes peeled if you’re around one.

How can you tame a bee?

To tame a bee and make it your new best friend, you are going to need a bee and a flower of your choice (this is where a flower forest comes in handy with all the flowers you can find here).

Here is what you need to do to tame your newfound bee:

1. Pick a flower, any flower
2. Equip the flower in your hand
3. When the bee approaches,right click it with the flower
4. Hearts will appear and you will now have a bee best friend forever!

What is a bee nest?

All bees need a place to relax and unwind after a long day of making honey, this is where you need a bee nest. A bee nest is where your bee friends will take shelter during the night or when it rains.

Most bee nests can house up to 3 bees so plan accordingly if you are going to keep more than 4 bees around. Homeless bees will buzz around until they find an empty hive to occupy. Bees leave their nests again after about 2 minutes.

Can you make a bee nest or a beehive?

If you want to make a bee nest and you’re not in creative mode, you cannot craft a bee nest. However you can craft a beehive for your bee army. Bee nests occur naturally and the only way to give yourself one is to use your creative world inventory.

Crafting a beehive is easy enough, all you need is six planks of wood, three honeycombs and our crafting recipe guide.

What can bees do for you?

Having bees around is a good idea in your Minecraft world. They collect pollen, harvest honey and give you experience points. And each of these make life in Minecraft much sweeter.

Pollination

Bees in Minecraft collect pollen. This is something you can see with real bees too. They collect pollen from sweet berry bushes, flowering azalea and any nearby flowers.

Once the bees have collected enough pollen, you will see pollen ‘spots’ on their back. They drop pollen particles that fertilize your farm. Pollen acts like bonemeal, advancing the plant to the next stage of growth. Bees can pollinate a plant up to 10 times before needing more pollen.

Honey

You can’t find a bee without honey in Minecraft! And honey can be used for a couple of different things too. The ‘Bee our Guest’ achievement pops up when you collect honey in an empty glass bottle to make honey bottles.

Honey is made in the bee nest and you can collect honey in a usable bottle. The most common usage of a honey bottle is to make a honey block, sugar, cure poison effects or you can consume it if you’d like.

Honey Blocks

A honey block can be crafted from 4 honey bottles and these sticky blocks can be used with pistons to move blocks-and anything else attached to them.

You can use honey blocks to slow things down, stop an entity from jumping and can reduce fall damage by 80% if you land on it. Also if you place a honey block near a bee nest, the bees nearby will fly over, land on the block and stick their faces into it. Bees eat and enjoy consuming the blocks of honey, ignoring any flowers in the area.

XP Points

A bee will not drop anything when killed except for experience points, so there really is no point going on a rampage near a hive. An adult bee will drop 1-3 XP points when killed by a player or tamed wolf, there are no drops from a baby bee.

However, you are more likely to get more XP points from breeding bees. Successful breeding will give you 1-7 XP points each time.

Honey Farming

Honey farming is one of the most important things you need when you farm bees in your bee farm. This is the process of collecting honeycomb and honey from bee nests and hives. Honey farming is a straightforward process but here are some pointers to help you get started.

• Use shears on a bee nest to collect honeycomb: you can use this to craft honey blocks and new hives
• When a pollinated bee enters a hive, it raises the honey level to 1 when it exits
• When you see dripping honey from a nest, it has reached a honey level of 5 and can be collected by right clicking on the hive with an empty bottle
• Place flowers near a bee nest to increase bee productivity
• Place a campfire underneath bee nests before you harvest honey or honey comb to avoid angry bees

How to breed bees

You can breed bees in Minecraft to get the next best thing: baby bees! To obtain one of these, and grow your bee hive, you are going to need a few things: a pair of adult bees, some flowers and bee nests with enough housing space. This is what you do:

1. Locate a pair of adult bees
2. Making sure you have more than 2 flowers in your inventory, right click on one bee with a flower
3. Right click the next bee until you see hearts to indicate ‘love mode’
4. Once you’ve got the bees into love mode, a baby bee will appear.

Bees have a cooldown of 5 minutes before they can breed more baby bees. You can speed up a baby bee’s growth by right clicking on it with flowers.

If you are going for accelerated bee growth, remove the bee nests to prevent the bees from going inside.

Travelling with your bees

If you need to pack up and hit the road with your Minecraft bees, here is what you can do.

Transporting the bee nest

Do not break a bee nest. If you do, you are going to find more than one angry bee. But having a tool enchanted with Silk Touch, you will be fine. Silk Touch allows you to carefully pick up the hive-bees included-and transport it with you.

Using a lead

You can use a lead on Minecraft bees like any other mob. Hold the lead in your hand and right click the bee to leash it. It's like having a little balloon that follows you around, makes your plants grow and gives you honey!

Using flowers

You can lure bees around with flowers or a berry bush: nearby bees will follow. We do not recommend this over long distances as the bee can lose interest if you get too far or go out of its line of sight. Ideal for shorter trips across the land.

Are bees hostile?

Minecraft bees are passive unless provoked. If you attack a bee, all the bees in the area will swarm angrily so get ready to run.

Angered bees have red eyes and even if you deflect their attacks with a shield they will persist. A bee’s stinger will also deal poison damage to players and once a bee loses its stinger it will die a minute later.

If a mob attacks a bee, any nearby bee will create a swarm and attack in unison. The bottom line is, if you’re nice to Minecraft bees, they will be nice to you.

Bonus bee facts

• Other nearby bees will not be angered if you a kill a bee with one hit
• In Java edition, bees take damage from touching water
• Berry bushes only attract bees in the Java Edition
• Bees are half a block in size-this was decided to be the cutest size