4 Reasons to Attract Bees in Minecraft (and how to do it safely)

Bees in Minecraft are essential for collecting pollen and boosting crop growth. They provide important resources, such as honey and wax, which they produce in their nests. However, there are more features, like boosting crop growth and preventing copper oxidation, which bees assist with. In this article, I'll cover four reasons to attract bees to your Minecraft environment and the benefits you'll get from keeping them.

How to prevent bee attacks

Before collecting honey or anything else from a bee's nest or beehive, you'll need to place a campfire under their nest or hive. The smoke from the fire will keep them calm as you collect the items.

1. They produce honey!

The number one helpful item they make is honey! Honey can be collected from a bee's nests or beehives using bottles. This has many uses, including curing poison, healing, and satisfying hunger.

When bees are finished gathering pollen, they will produce honey in their nest, which you'll see dripping out when they are done. To collect the honey, long-press on the bee nest with a glass bottle. Honey makes a great food source in Minecraft, as it can fill up to six hunger points. 

2. Their pollen boosts crop growth.

This works similarly to real life, where bees can help plants produce and stimulate them. In Minecraft, bees also help boost crop growth. 

This happens when they carry pollen from flowers back to their hive. Any crops (such as wheat, carrots, potatoes, and many more) that are between the flowers and the hive will receive pollen as the bees pass by, making them grow much faster. This process is similar to bonemeal. 

Players with large amounts of crops can benefit from bees, as it can be very time-consuming to bonemeal each crop to speed up growth.

3. Wax (honeycomb)

A helpful item that can be obtained from bees is honeycomb, also known as wax. Wax can be used to prevent copper items from oxidising or withering over time. This includes copper blocks, lanterns, the copper golem, and anything else made from copper in Minecraft. You can also use honeycomb to craft candles.

How and when to harvest honeycombs:

When a hive or nest is filled, you'll see honey dripping out. To collect honeycombs (wax),  tap a filled beehive or bee nest with shears.

How to wax copper items

Tap on any copper items or blocks with the honeycomb in your hand. The same can be done for the copper golems and their statues.

How to craft candles

You'll need a string and wax. Place the wax in the crafting table and string on top. Then you can place any dye next to a candle after crafting, to get the colour of your choice.

4. Self-Sustaining Garden

Having enough food is important for healing. When you attract bees, you're creating a self-sustaining garden and farm, where you don't have to manually fertilise the crops. They keep your crops growing quickly, helping you maintain a steady food supply in Minecraft.

How to safely attract bees (step by step)

First, you'll need to craft a beehive, one hive for every three bees. This recipe requires three planks of choice (six in total) at the top and bottom, and three honeycombs in between.

Bee Hive Recipe:

Then, collect extra flowers of your choice, which you'll need to place around the beehive. Remember to place some around your garden, so that the bees have to fly over the crops.

Bees naturally spawn in plains biomes, birch forests and flower fields. They'll spawn in groups of three, near their nest. 

Their nest will only spawn on birch or oak trees. It is easy to spot with its yellow and brown strips, with two holes in the front.

To attract the bees, hold any flower of your choice in your hand to lure them over to your garden. So they'll follow you.

Once you have flowers near the beehive, remove the flowers from your hand, and they will enter the hive after collecting pollen from nearby flowers. 

Note well: Bees ignore flowers in pots, so place most flowers in the ground.

When it's time to collect the honey or honeycomb, you'll see the honey dripping from the beehive. Place a campfire under the hive to calm the bees, then collect the item of your choice.

If you have a debug screen or an info mod, the items (honey and/or honeycomb) are ready to be harvested at honey level 5. When you crouch using WAILA by r4isen1920,  you can view the honey level.

How to breed bees

Once you have two or more bees, you can breed them using any flowers. Baby bees take almost one Minecraft day (20 minutes) to grow up. Their growth is usually sped up as they collect pollen and slows down when they enter the hive. To speed up baby bees' growth, feed them any flower of your choice.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, it's a great idea to attract bees to your farm or garden! In addition to producing useful byproducts, they also help with aesthetics, as grass, wild flowers, and other plants will grow in the area. Creating a beautiful environment in your Minecraft world.