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.
Spawning
Natural generation
Naturally generated bee nests generate with 3 bees in them.
In Java Edition, bee nests generate in the following biomes with different chances:
| Biome | Chance[note 1] |
|---|---|
| Plains Sunflower plains |
5% |
| Flower forest | 2% |
| Forest Wooded hills Birch forest Tall birch forest Birch forest hills Tall birch hills |
0.2% |
- ↑ The chance for each naturally-generated oak or birch tree to have a bee nest.
In Bedrock Edition, bee nests generate hanging from naturally-generated oak and birch trees found in plains, sunflower plains and flower forest biomes. A tree in these biomes has a 5% chance to have a bee nest.
Bee nests are most commonly found in the flower forest biome because of its high tree density.
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 1-2 bees in it.
Drops
Upon death, adult bees drop 1–3 experience orbs when killed by a player or tamed wolf.
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 against the Bane of Arthropods enchantment.[1] They also take damage when touching water.
Bees can be attached to a lead, even when angered. They can 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 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 sweet berry bushes they fly over. When one of these plants gets pollinated, it advances to another growth stage, similar to using bone meal. In order 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 small wait time between pollinating each plant.
Housing
A bee coming out of a bee nest.
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 and when it is night. Bees stay in their nest or hive for at least 2400 game ticks (2 minutes) before coming back out. Bees that come out keep their data (health, name, etc).
Breaking a nest or hive[verify] 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 respective 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 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, and these bees are angry. If the beehive is destroyed with a Silk Touch tool, bees outside the hive become angry [Bedrock Edition only], 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 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 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, and cannot attack further after it has lost its stinger. After losing its stinger, the bee dies in approximately one minute. This duration is not hardcoded into the game, so the death of bees 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.
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 cool down of 5 minutes before they can breed again. Babies take 20 minutes (1 in-game day) to grow up. The growth of baby bees can be accelerated using flowers; each use reduces the remaining time by 10%. It should be noted, however, that both the breeding cooldown timer and the growing-up timer do not count down while bees are in a hive; thus, actively working bees may take much longer to grow up or be ready to breed compared to other mobs.
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.
Sounds
| Sound | Subtitles | Source | Description | Resource location | Translation key | Volume | Pitch | Attenuation distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
Advancements
| Icon | Advancement | In-game description | Parent | Actual requirements (if different) | Resource location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | Bee Our Guest | Use a Campfire to collect Honey from a Beehive using a Glass Bottle without aggravating the Bees | Husbandry | Use a glass bottle on a beehive or bee nest while not angering the bees inside. | husbandry/safely_harvest_honey
|
![]() | The Parrots and the Bats | Breed two animals together | Husbandry | Breed a pair of any of these 25 mobs:
| husbandry/breed_an_animal
|
![]() | Total Beelocation | Move a Bee Nest, with 3 Bees inside, using Silk Touch | Husbandry | — | husbandry/silk_touch_nest
|
![]() | Two by Two | Breed all the animals! | The Parrots and the Bats | Breed a pair of each of these 24 mobs:
| husbandry/bred_all_animals
|
Data values
Entity data
Bees have entity data associated with them that contains various properties of the mob.
- Entity data
- Additional fields for mobs that can become angry
- Additional fields for mobs that can breed
- Tags common to all entities
- Tags common to all mobs
- CannotEnterHiveTicks: Time left in ticks until the bee can enter a beehive. Used when the bee is angered and released from the hive by a player, but the hive is smoked by a campfire.
- CropsGrownSincePollination: How many crops the bee has grown since its last pollination. Used to limit number of crops it can grow.
- FlowerPos: Coordinates of the flower the bee is circling.
- X: X coordinate.
- Y: Y coordinate.
- Z: Z coordinate.
- HasNectar: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the bee is carrying pollen.
- HasStung: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the bee has stung a mob or player.
- HivePos: Coordinates of the bee's hive.
- X: X coordinate.
- Y: Y coordinate.
- Z: Z coordinate.
- TicksSincePollination: Number of ticks passed since the bee's last pollination.
History
| Java Edition | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.15 | 19w34a | ||||
| 19w35a | Bees now try to avoid water. | ||||
| Bee nests now spawn less frequently making bees more rare. | |||||
| Breeding bees now counts towards the "Two by Two" advancement. | |||||
| 19w36a | Bees are now affected by the Bane of Arthropods enchantment. | ||||
| Bees are now able to pollinate on lilac, rose bush and peony flowers. | |||||
The textures of bees have now been tweaked. The gradation part for picking up the color has been removed and the translucent pixels are now fully transparent[2]. | |||||
| "bee_angry_nectar" now has same pollen pattern as "bee_nectar", which has changed the textures from | |||||
| Bees no longer stop flying after reaching the player they are following. | |||||
| 19w41a | Bees now "eat" honey blocks. | ||||
| 19w46a | Bees now exit beehives only from the front. | ||||
| 1.15.2 | pre1 | Bees no longer anger when a nearby nest/hive is destroyed using a Silk Touch tool. | |||
| Bees now remember how many crops they have pollinated. | |||||
| Bees no longer stay in the hive/nest forever after riding a minecart or boat. | |||||
| Bedrock Edition | |||||
| 1.14.0 | beta 1.14.0.1 | ||||
Issues
Issues relating to "Bee" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.
Gallery
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 can exist in peaceful difficulty and are not necessary to earn the Monster Hunter / Monsters Hunted advancements.
- Bees were made to be half a block in size because Mojang considered this size to be the cutest.[4]
- Bees pollinate the top half of sunflower blocks.
- In Bedrock Edition, bees fly faster when swarming a player or a mob.
- In real life, baby bees look nothing like their adult counterpart but are larvae instead.
- Despite inflicting poison on the player, real-life bees are venomous, not poisonous.
References
- ↑ "Minecraft 19w36a" – Minecraft.net, July 3, 2019
- ↑ MC-159560
- ↑ MC-159743
- ↑ "MINECON Live 2019" – Minecraft on YouTube, September 28, 2019












