1.15 - Bees (informational)

Mika
Feb 5, 2020
3 min read

Updated: Feb 7, 2020

So, let’s talk about bees. Bees are a new addition to Minecraft added in the 1.15 update along with other bee associated things like honey bottles and hives. Bees are neutral mobs in Minecraft.

Attacking/dying

When angered their eyes turn red and all nearby bees swarm the player, rolling into them inflicting poison, however you can use a shield to prevent that. They lose their stinger after one hit and can't inflict anymore damage. After a minute the bee eventually dies - like real life when a bee loses its stinger. You can anger bees by:

· Attacking them

· Destroying their hive (which also kicks out all the bees that were in the hive at the time unless you use silk touch)

· Taking their honey or honeycomb (unless you place a campfire underneath their hive/nest)

· Breaking the flower the bee is collecting nectar from

Upon death, adult bees drop around 1-3 XP however killing a baby drops nothing, so you have no excuse to kill them!

Bees in Minecraft are regarded as arthropods in Minecraft (like spiders) meaning they take extra damage to Bane of the Arthropods enchantment which is useful if you are swarmed. Bees also take damage to water

Beehaviour (haha get it?)

Minecraft bees do not fly the same as mobs like the Ender Dragon and Ghasts, instead they hover like bats meaning they are restricted in how high they can fly.

When bees leave their nests to pollinate, they go out on a hunt for flowers. Once they have found a good-looking flower, they hover around it making happy noises (their collecting nectar) until they are full of nectar. Once they’ve filled up on nectar, they head back to their nest and work. When bees are full on nectar they are covered in it and it drips off of them. Nectar drips off of the bee onto crops and plants, pollinating them and making them grow faster. Bees in Minecraft have very similar behavior

to bees in real life.

Housing and Harvesting

In the wild, bees live and work together in bee hives with a max of 3 bees. If there's more than 3 bees in a nest one has to go and search for a new home (HARSH!). Bees will refuse to leave their nest during the rain - which is another similar thing to real life-for 2 mins and during night-time. You can left click with shears on a full bee hive or nest to get honeycomb which you can craft bee hives and honey comb blocks. You can also left click on a full nest or hive with an empty bottle to get a honey bottle which can be drunk as a food stuff (restoring 6 hunger pts). Or you could craft 4 honey bottles by putting 4 empty bottles in a square next to a honey block in a crafting table. With honey bottles you can create honey blocks...

Honeycomb blocks and Honey blocks

This is slightly off topic to bees but still bee related and important. Honeycomb blocks can be crafted by placing 4 honeycomb's next to each other in a square. Honeycomb blocks don't have any functions and are decoration blocks which can come in handy if your making a huge bee hive!

Honey blocks are crafted by placing 4 honey bottles adjacent to each other in a mini square in a crafting table. Honey blocks are often confused as like slime blocks however they have an opposite function. Slime blocks make you leap higher and honey blocks make you jump as high as if you were under a 2-block high ceiling. Though, Honey blocks are similar in the way that they decelerate you when you walk on them. They also reduce fall damage by 80%! Honey blocks also allow you to slide down them without dealing fall damage but not up (their like reverse ladders). When you slide down a honey block for the first time you receive an achievement: sticky situation! Honey blocks are very useful if you want to create as parkour run! Bees can also drink from honey blocks (which looks adorable); bees are drawn to honey blocks regardless of any flowers. Sadly I couldn't find a picture of the adorable sight but you can try it out in Minecraft by placing a bee next to a honey block (or vice versa).