Buzzy Bees Update – Minecraft Survival Guide

Mojang has released the stable version of 1.15 which brings with it a whole host of great new things for us to play with and explore. One of the main features of this update is Buzzy Bees! Yes, you heard me, we can now find bees in Minecraft, along with their nests and some delicious honey.

Keep reading to become a hive of information, if you learn this stuff, you will be the bee’s knees.

Where to find bees in Minecraft

You can find bees in the following three biomes:

• Plains
• Sunflower Plains
• Flower Forest

All of these biomes can naturally spawn bees during world generation, along with having a 5% chance of spawning beehives on birch or oak trees. So if you really want to find those pesky little bees then head to a plains biome and take a look around the nearby trees.

Where to find bees in Minecraft

Where do bees live in Minecraft

Ok, so you’ve found yourself some bees, and now you need somewhere for them to live, well you have two options. Luckily one of those options you can craft yourself.

You can have anywhere from 2 to 3 bees entering each nest/hive. If a bee does not have a home, then it will wander around looking for one, sad face. Bees will also return home during the night and when it is raining.

A couple of interesting facts about the bees and their homes:

• Bees stay at home for 2400 game ticks (2 minutes) before leaving
• Bees retain all of their data when entering a nest/hive, for example, a name
• Hives/nests can be broken with any tool or fist, but it’s the quickest with an axe
• When you break a beehive/nest any bees inside will be released
• If you use Silk Touch, then the bees will remain inside the nest/hive and retain all of their data.

Warning: Bee (sorry) careful when you destroy a nest/hive as the bees will attack you when they leave the nest/hive, or they are nearby.

If a bee enters a nest/hive while it is carrying pollen, it will increase the honey level of that nest/hive by 1. Once the honey level reaches 5, you will be able to see a visual change and then be ready to harvest the honey.

How to craft a Beehive

Now you know how useful a beehive is, it’s time to craft one! The recipe is super simple; all you need is Planks + honeycomb.

How to craft a bee hive in Minecraft

Using Redstone with Honey Blocks & Bees

With the introduction of Bees and more specifically Honey Blocks, we can do some pretty fantastic Redstone machines and contraptions. Honey Blocks, in particular, do not stick to slime and can stick to each other and other blocks.

I’m just going to cover the more basic Redstone things that appear to have been overlooked.

Beehives and Bee nests have a comparator output, equal to the strength of the current honey level.

How do bees work?

Bees don’t technically fly, but they move similarly to bats in that they just hover a few blocks above the ground. Bees are also considered Arthropods, so they take additional damage from Bane of Arthropods.

You can attach a bee to a lead, but they can still become aggressive towards you and attack. Bee’s can also be attached to a lead, even when they are angry, but be warned they will always sting you.

If a bee stings you, eventually it will die, sad times.

How does pollination work for bees in Minecraft

To begin pollination bee’s need to circle flowers. Bees will leave their nests 1 by 1 during the day and then find their way to nearby flowers. They then circle the flowers to collect pollen, once a bee has collected enough, you will see the black part of their bottom have visible white particles on it and falling from it.

Bees help farms to grow

When bees have pollen on them, they have a chance to pollinate nearby crops, and each bee can do this for up to 10 times before needing to re-pollinate. When a bee pollinates a nearby plant, it will advance one stage of growth.

Bees can pollinate the following crops:

• Wheat
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Beetroots
• Melon
• Pumpkin
• Sweet berry bushes

How to harvest honey

As mentioned before, once a beehive/nest reaches level 5 honey, it can be collected by a player. You will be able to see honey particles dripping from underneath the hive/nest when it is ready.

There are two ways to harvest honey:

1. Using a pair of shears, you can collect 3 honeycombs from the hive/nest.
2. Or using empty bottles you can collect honey inside a bottle to make a honey bottle.

Be careful when harvesting though as the bees will become angered unless there is a campfire underneath the hive/nest and is not obstructed by another block. You can also place the campfire directly underneath the nest/hive.

Harvest honey and honeycomb

The bees are angry!

Bees can attack and stronger than you might expect, due to their numbers. If you attack a bee, then all nearby bees will retaliate towards you. If you hit or walk on the nest/hive, then the bees will NOT become angered. You need to break the block to anger the bees.

Angry bees will swarm the player, and their eyes will become red to show you that they are mad. They will stop being aggressive to a player after a while, and their eyes will return to normal.

After a bee attacks, they poison the player and die after about 1 minute of game time, so sad, poor bees.

If another player, mob has angered a bee and you approach it, they will also attack you regardless if you made them angry or not. They will always attack whoever angered them first.

How to breed Bees in Minecraft

If you hold a flower, then a bee will follow you, this is useful to lure them back to your home. If you stop when trying to attract a bee, the bees will stop and rest on the ground looking at you.

To breed a bee, you need two of them. Just as you would a sheep or cow, you can feed the bees a flower, then they will enter love mode with hearts above their head. Then a baby bee will appear out of nowhere, along with some XP, sweet!

Interesting facts about breeding bees:

• There is a 5-minute cooldown before they can breed again
• Babies become adults in 20 minutes which is one full Minecraft day.
• You can reduce the amount of time it takes for an adult to become a baby by feeding them additional flowers, each flower reduces the time by 10%

How to breed bees in Minecraft

What can you craft with honey?

The two main items you can get from the update is bottles of honey and honeycomb. With honeycomb, you can create a honeycomb block which looks cool.

With 4 honey bottles, you can craft a honey block, the honey block is a massive addition to the game as it has a lot of exciting new properties.

How to craft a honeyblock

The other thing you can make with a honey bottle is sugar, just place it into your crafting space and voila sugar!

If you drink honey, it will give you 3 hunger and 2.4 saturation, which is pretty good if you can create a lot of honey in a bee farm. Drinking honey also removes poison. One exciting fact is that you can drink honey on a full hunger bar, and it lasts 25% longer than other food types.

The Honey Block

As mentioned above, you can craft the honey block with 4 bottles of honey.

The honey block is considered a transparent block which means it cannot carry a Redstone signal.

When you move the honey block with a piston, it will carry any dropped items on top of it, with it. Another cool thing with moving honey blocks using a piston is that if you push the dropped items with a honey block, they stay where they are, they don’t get launched a short distance as a slime block does.

Similar to slime blocks, honey blocks can push/pull other blocks attached to it (along as the piston can move the total number of blocks connected). Although it does not move glazed terracotta or slime blocks. Any blocks adjacent to the honey blocks will also be moved.

Like slime, honey blocks can not move immobile objects like obsidian. This will also prevent all blocks from moving if the immobile block is blocking additional blocks.

All of the pushing and pulling is still limited by the maximum 12 blocks a piston can move.

Honey Blocks affect movement

Any entity walking on top of the honey block is slowed down and can not jump (jump reduction of 1 + 1/4 to 3/16 = 85%), unless on the very edge of the honey block.

The slow effect even passes through the following objects, which is pretty cool:

• Carpet
• Bottom half slabs
• Daylight detectors
• Trapdoors

If you slide down the side of a honey block tower, you will descend slowly and not take any fall damage. If you fall onto the Honey Block, you will receive a reduction of 80% to the fall damage you would receive.

Secrets of the Honey Block!

Here are a couple of things you might not know about the Honey Block

• You can’t place pressure plates or ladders onto Honey blocks
• The slow effect also works with all trap doors
• Can regularly jump from the very edge of the block
• Bees attack their primary target until it dies, then attack any nearby player/mob