Bee (Minecraft)

## Bee

### Color

Yellow to Orange (Texture)Brown (Stripes)Black (Eyes and Stinger)Light Blue (Pupils)

## Bee (Minecraft)

**Bees** are flying neutral mobs that live in bee nests and beehives. Bees pollinate flowers and, when they do, add honey to their home when they return to it. When full, bee nests or beehives can be harvested with shears for honeycombs or glass bottles for honey bottles. If provoked by being attacked or breaking or harvesting their hive or nest without the correct precautions, bees suicidally attack in a swarm.

## Appearance

They are based on honeybees; they are half a block according to MINECON Live 2019.

## Behavior

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

Bees are considered arthropods and take increased damage from the Bane of Arthropods enchantment. In *Java Edition*, they take damage when touching water, but in *Bedrock Edition* they don't.

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 to find something they can pollinate or to attack someone. Bees can venture further away if necessary.

A bee can fly horizontally and vertically upward through scaffolding but does not fly downward. A bee does not fly through an open trap door or regular door on its own (a bee can be led through a door with a flower) but babies can fly through the gap above a fence gate in a 1×2 doorway.

Despite being flying mobs, bees can destroy turtle eggs when on top of them.

### Pollinating

Bees leave their nest one by one during the day. They fly around their nests, and are attracted to flowers, flowering azaleas, flowering azalea leaves, mangrove propagules, pink petals, cherry leaves, spore blossoms and chorus flowers. Bees can pollinate wither roses and die as a result, as wither roses are harmful to them. Bees completely ignore flowers in flowerpots.

After circling a flower or berry bush for about 30 seconds while making happy buzzing sounds, a bee collects pollen. A bee carrying pollen changes its texture to include pollen spots on its abdomen and drops pollen particles to fertilize plants below the bee.

Bees that have pollen may pollinate wheat crops, potato crops, carrot crops, beetroot crops, melon stems, sweet berry bushes, pumpkin stems, cave vines, and torchflower crops 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, bee must be 1 to 2 blocks directly above the plant and must have a valid home hive. A bee can fertilize plants 10 times each time they have pollen, and whether fertilization is attempted each tick is random (approximately a 1% chance).

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; there is a 1% chance for it to increase by 2. 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 honeys inside before a player can collect honeycombs or honey bottles.

### Housing

A bee coming out of a bee nest.
Bees live together in colonies and take any bee nest or beehive that has enough space as its home. One bee nest/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. They return even when in biomes that don't rain like desert. They stay in their nest or hive for at least 2400 game ticks (2 minutes) before coming back out. The 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; there is a 1% chance it is increased by two. When the honey level of that hive reaches 5, the player can harvest it, which then sets it back to 0.

Because there is neither daylight cycle nor weather in the Nether and the End, bees work without resting in these dimensions. This behavior is distinct from that of the villagers, which follow their daily routine according to the time in the Overworld, regardless of which dimension they are in.

### Attacking

All bees nearby are angered when an individual bee is attacked (unless the bee attacked is killed in one hit‌ (*Java Edition only*]), honey or honeycombs are collected (unless a campfire is placed under the 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 ‌[*Bedrock Edition only*], while those kept within it remain neutral even after the hive is placed again.
The Invisibility effect does not cause stingers in stung players to disappear.
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. Bees attack only once, similar to llamas, and non-aggressive pandas. Bees do not deal any damage 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 stinger less.

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

Bees become neutral if they fail to land a hit on their target within 25 seconds.

In *Java Edition*, a bee's stinger is visible on the player as a small black dot after the bee successfully attacked.

### Honey Blocks

Bees attach themselves to honey blocks, as if they are "eating" the block.

### Breeding

Bees follow players holding any 1- or 2-block tall flowers, flowering azalea, cherry leaves, flowering azalea leaves, mangrove propagule, spore blossom, pink petals, or chorus flower. 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 any of the blocks listed above, 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 (6000 ticks) 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%. However, bees' growth timer and breeding cooldowns are frozen while working in a hive; thus, when rapidly growing a population, it may be desirable to temporarily remove the hives.

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.

## Trivia

* Bees are the only arthropod mob that can exist in Peaceful difficulty and are not necessary to earn the Monster Hunter or Monsters Hunted advancements.
* 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 sunflowers.
* Despite repeated efforts (1.15, 1.16, possibly 1.18) to limit the range bees can move and get lost beyond, they go northwest overall, as did horses long-before. Building an apiary can avoid this.