Bee

Bees are 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.

Bee nests generate in the following biomes with different chances:

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

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

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 (Bee Nest) to find something they can pollinate or attack someone.

Pollinating
Bees leave their nest one by one during the day. They fly around their nests, and are attracted by flowers. After circling a flower or berry bush for about 30 seconds, a bee collects pollen. A bee carrying pollen changes its texture to include pollen spots on its back and drops pollen particles similar to water droplets falling.

Bees that have pollen pollinate wheat, potatoes, carrots, beetroots, melon stems, pumpkin stems and berry bushes 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 beehive that has enough space as its home. One 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. Bees stay in their nest or hive for at least 2400 game tick before coming back out. 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.

Attacking
All bees nearby are angered when an individual is attacked, honey is collected (unless a campfire is placed under a bees 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; lighting any block on fire under a hive or nest also works. Bees do not attack 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.

Honey Blocks
Bees attach themselves to honey blocks, as if they are "eating" the block (possibly exclusive to Java Edition).

Breeding
Bees follow players holding flowers. 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 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%. Thus, bees that are not actively working will take much longer to grow up or be ready to breed compared to other mobs.

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.

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

Trivia

 * Bees are the first flying arthropods. The other arthropods are silverfish, endermites, spiders, and cave spiders.
 * Bees are the only arthropod mob that can exist in peaceful difficulty and are not necessary to earn the Monster Hunter / Monsters Hunted advancements as they are passive.
 * 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 sunflower blocks.
 * In real life, baby bees look nothing like their adult counterpart, but are larvae instead.
 * Bees and creepers are the only mobs that die after attacking the player.
 * When a bee is about to sting, the sting can be blocked if the player has a shield activated.