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
Bees spawn in bee nests hanging from oak and birch trees found in, and  biomes. Every tree in these biomes has a 5% chance to have a bee nest only during world generation. Bee nests are most commonly found in the Flower Forest biome because of its tree density, as opposed to the few scattered trees found in the other biomes,such as plains.

Drops
Both baby and adult bees drop no items and drop very little experience upon death, regardless of the cause.

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

Bees are considered arthropods and take increased damage against the Bane of Arthropods enchantment.

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

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 for a while, a bee can collect pollen. A bee carrying pollen changes its texture to include pollen spots on its back and emits pollen particles.

Bees that have pollen have a chance to pollinate wheat, potatoes, carrots, beetroots, melon, pumpkin, and sweet berry bushes they fly over. When a crop is pollinated, it advances to another growth stage, similar to using bone meal. In order to pollinate a crop, the particles that drop must touch the crop. A bee can only fertilize crops 10 times each time they have pollen, and there is a small wait time between pollinating each crop.

Bee 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 return to their nest when it rains and 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 hive that contains bees will release all the bees. If a beehive containing bees is harvested using a tool enchanted with Silk Touch, the bees will be kept (along with their respective data) in the hive and when placed, they can exit it again. Note that if a nest is destroyed all bees outside their nests will also attack the player.

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 one individual is attacked, or when 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; these bees will be angered. If the beehive is destroyed with a Silk Touch tool, bees outside the hive will become angry, while those kept within it will be 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 from 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/nest also works. Bees do not attack in Peaceful difficulty.

After attacking and poisoning the player, bees lose their stinger. Bees cannot attack the player if they have already lost their stinger. Bees that have attacked a player or other mob and thus lost their stinger will die in approximately one minute. This is in parallel to real world bees who also die to defend their hive. Bees can, therefore, attack once, and only once.

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

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 a small amount of experience. The parent bees have a cool-down of about 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%.

The flower can be any of the 1- or 2-block flowers. The wither rose, which is ordinarily harmful, has no harmful effect when used like this.

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

Trivia

 * Bees are the first flying arthropods and first flying neutral mobs introduced to Minecraft. The other arthropods are silverfish, endermites, spiders and cave spiders.
 * Bees are the only arthropod mob that do not count as mobs necessary to earning the Monster Hunter / Monsters Hunted advancements.
 * Creepers and bees are the only mobs that can attack no more than once.
 * Bees attack in a swarm, similar to zombie pigmen attacking in a horde.
 * Bees were made to be half a block in size since Mojang considered this size to be the cutest.
 * Bees will only ever pollinate the top half of sunflower blocks.
 * If a bee attacks and the player blocks the attack with a shield, the bee will continually attack the player until it hits them, which means that bees can technically attack more than once, but can only hit once.
 * $$, bees fly faster when swarming a player or a mob.
 * Bees take damage when coming in contact with water, this is the main reason why Mojang said they try to avoid water.