Bee

Bees are flying neutral mobs that live in bee nests and beehives. If provoked, bees attack in a swarm to "sting" the player and inflict poison.

Natural generation
Naturally generated bee nests generate with 3 bees in them.

Naturally-generated birch or oak trees have equal chances to generate with a bee nest, depending on the biome:

Saplings
Oak and birch trees grown from saplings that are within 2 blocks of any flower have a 5% chance to grow with a bee nest having 1–3 bees in it.

Drops
Upon death, adult bees drop orbs when killed by a player or a tamed wolf.

Upon breeding successfully, is dropped.

Like other baby animals, killing a baby bee yields no experience.

Behavior
Bees do not fly (like ghasts or the ender dragon), but instead hover a few blocks above the ground similar to bats and parrots.

Bees are considered arthropods and take increased damage from the Bane of Arthropods enchantment. They also take damage when touching water.

Bees can be attached to a lead, even when angered. They can still attack while attached.

Bees usually venture up to 22 blocks from their beehive to find something they can pollinate or to attack someone. Bees can venture further away if necessary.

A bee can fly horizontally and vertically upward through scaffolding but does not fly downward. A bee does not fly through an open trap door or regular door on its own (a bee can be led through a door with a flower) but babies can fly through the gap above a fence gate in a 1×2 doorway.

Pollinating
A bee nest must spawn within two blocks horizontally or vertically from any flowers for the bees inside to leave the nest.

Bees leave their nest one by one during the day. They fly around their nests, and are attracted to flowers, sweet berry bushes, flowering azalea, flowering azalea leaves and mangrove propagules. Bees completely ignore flowers in flower pots.

After circling a flower or berry bush for about 30 seconds while making happy buzzing sounds, a bee collects pollen. A bee carrying pollen changes its texture to include pollen spots on its back, and drops pollen particles to fertilize plants within three blocks of the bee.

Bees that have pollen pollinate wheat, potatoes, carrots, beetroots, melon stems, pumpkin stems, berry bushes, and cave vines they fly over. When one of these plants gets pollinated, it advances to another growth stage, similar to using bone meal. To pollinate a plant, the particles that drop must touch it directly. A bee can fertilize plants 10 times each time they have pollen, and there is a short wait time between pollinating each plant.

Afterward, the bee flies back into its hive/nest and makes honey. It takes about 2 minutes for the bee to do this. That increases the amount of honey in a hive/nest by 1. When the amount reaches 5, honey can be seen dripping from the bottom and front of the hive/nest. A hive/nest must have 5 honey inside before a player can collect honeycombs or honey bottles.

Housing


Bees live together in colonies and take any bee nest or beehive that has enough space as its home. One bee nest/beehive can house up to 3 bees. Homeless bees wander around, searching for empty beehives. Bees can enter a beehive from any side, but exit only from the front. One-way bee-gates can be made in this way.

Bees return to their nest when it rains or when it is night. They return even when in biomes that don't rain like desert. They stay in their nest or hive for at least 2400 game tick before coming back out. The bees that come out keep their data (health, name, etc.).

Breaking a nest or hive that contains bees releases all the bees. If a bee nest containing bees is harvested using a tool enchanted with Silk Touch, the bees inside are kept, with their corresponding data, in the hive, and they can exit the hive again when it is placed.

When a bee that has pollen enters and then leaves its nest or hive, the honey level of the nest/hive is increased by one. When the honey level of that hive reaches 5, the player can harvest it, which then sets it back to 0.

Because there is neither daylight cycle nor weather in the Nether and the End, bees work without resting in these dimensions. This behavior is distinct from that of the villagers, which follow their daily routine according to the time in the Overworld, regardless of which dimension they are in.

Attacking
All bees nearby are angered when an individual bee is attacked (unless the bee attacked is killed in one hit), honey or honeycombs are collected (unless a campfire is placed under the nest), or a beehive is destroyed. Hitting or walking on a nest does not anger bees; it must be destroyed to anger them. When destroyed, a beehive releases any bees that it contained, and these bees are angry. If the beehive is destroyed with a Silk Touch tool, bees outside the hive become angry, while those kept within it remain neutral even after the hive is placed again. Bees attack and swarm the player as a group when angered, and the eyes of angered bees turn red. Collecting a honeycomb or a honey bottle from a nest or hive causes the bees that are currently in that nest or hive to leave and swarm the player unless a campfire is placed below the hive. Bees attack only once, similar to llamas, and non-aggressive pandas. Bees do not deal any damage in Peaceful difficulty.

If the player deflects a bee's attack with a shield, the bee continues attacking until it succeeds in hitting the player.

When a bee's attack on a player succeeds, the player is poisoned. A bee loses its stinger after a successful attack, cannot attack further, and dies approximately one minute later. This can be delayed with potions (Regeneration/Resistance/Absorption) that have a 255 potency.

It is possible to (quickly) breed at least one angered bee with another, even if it or they had stung and lost the stinger. However, they remain angered and still die later due to being stingerless.

Bees also swarm and attack other mobs when damaged, for example, if a skeleton accidentally shoots a bee.

Bees become neutral if they fail to land a hit on their target within 25 seconds.

Honey Blocks
Bees attach themselves to honey blocks, as if they are "eating" the block.

Breeding
Bees follow players holding flowers, flowering azalea, flowering azalea leaves and mangrove propagule. If the player is standing still and being followed by bees, the bees go toward the player, face the player, and rest on the ground. They do this until the player moves.

If bees are given a flower, they enter love mode and pair up to create baby bees, granting the player 1-7 experience. The parent bees have a cooldown of 5 minutes (6000 ticks) before they can breed again. Babies take 20 minute to grow up. The growth of baby bees can be accelerated using flowers; each use reduces the remaining time by 10%. However, bees' growth timer and breeding cooldowns are frozen while working in a hive; thus, when rapidly growing a population, it may be desirable to temporarily remove the hives.

Any of the 1- or 2-block flowers can be used for breeding, including the wither rose, even though it usually harms bees that touch it.

Sounds


Bees use the Friendly Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.



ID




Entity data
Bees have entity data associated with them that contains various properties.




 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.
 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Trivia

 * Bees are the only arthropod mob that can exist in Peaceful difficulty and are not necessary to earn the Monster Hunter or Monsters Hunted advancements.
 * Bees were made to be half a block in size because Mojang considered this size to be the cutest.
 * Bees pollinate the top half of sunflowers.
 * Despite repeated efforts (1.15, 1.16, possibly 1.18) to limit the range bees can move and get lost beyond, they go northwest overall, as did horses long-before. Building an apiary can avoid this.