Minecraft Bees Guide: Finding, Breeding, Honey and Stings

Bees are one of the friendliest additions Minecraft ever got, right up until the moment they are not. Left alone, they drift between flowers, quietly speed up your crops and fill their nest with honey. Provoked, the whole colony turns red-eyed and comes for you. Understanding how they live makes the difference between a productive little apiary and a very short fight.

Where bees spawn

Wild bees come with bee nests, which generate hanging from trees in a handful of grassy biomes. Meadows are the standout: a meadow nest is guaranteed company, since bees always spawn there. Plains, sunflower plains, flower forests, forests and birch forests can also grow nests, but at under a five percent chance per tree, so you may search a while. You can create your own odds by planting oak or birch saplings within two blocks of a flower; each sapling that grows then has a small chance of coming with a nest of its own.

Nests, beehives and moving in

A nest or beehive houses a maximum of three bees. Bees head home at night, when it rains, and after collecting pollen, staying inside for a couple of minutes before emerging again. They rarely wander more than about twenty blocks from home. The craftable beehive, made from six planks and three honeycombs, works exactly like a natural nest and is how you build an apiary where you actually want one. To move an occupied nest, mine it with a Silk Touch tool, otherwise it breaks and the residents come out angry. Bees released near an empty hive with flowers around will usually adopt it.

Breeding and pollination

Any two-block-high flower, and most small flowers besides, puts bees in the mood to breed. Feed one to each of two adults and a baby bee appears; babies take about twenty minutes to grow up, and feeding them flowers speeds that along. The quieter benefit is pollination. A bee that has gathered pollen drips it as it flies home, and crops it passes over, including wheat, carrots, potatoes, beetroot, pumpkins, melons and berry bushes, get a growth boost similar to a dusting of bone meal. A hive beside your fields is genuinely useful, not just decorative.

Honey, honeycomb and the calm way to take them

When a nest's honey level reaches five, honey drips from it and the entrance looks visibly fuller. Use a glass bottle on it for a honey bottle, or shears for three honeycombs, the ingredient behind candles, honeycomb blocks and waxing copper. Harvesting angers every bee inside unless you place a lit campfire beneath the nest first; the smoke sedates them so they stay put while you work. That one trick is the difference between a harvest and a swarm.

The sting

Hit a bee, break its home, or take honey without smoke, and every nearby bee turns hostile. A sting does modest damage but adds roughly ten seconds of poison, and a group sting is a real threat to an under-geared player. The bee pays for it too: having lost its stinger, it dies within about a minute. Killing bees is a poor trade all round, since an adult drops nothing but a little experience. Keep a flower in your off-hand area, work under smoke, and bees will stay what they should be: the hardest-working neighbours on your farm.