Bee

**Bees** are neutral mobs that live in bee nests and bee hives. If provoked, bees attack in a swarm to sting the player and inflict poison.

## Spawning

### Natural generation

Bees spawn in groups around bee nests hanging from trees, found in Plains, Sunflower Plains and Flower Forest biomes. Every tree in these biomes has a 10% chance to have a bee nest during world generation. Bee hives are most commonly found in the Flower Forest biome because of its tree density, as opposed to the few scattered trees found in Plains and Sunflower Plains biomes.

### Growing trees

Bee nests containing three bees have a 10% chance to spawn on trees grown in Plains, Sunflower Plains and Flower Forest biomes.

## Behavior

Bees 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 crops they fly over. When a crop is pollinated, it will advance to another growth stage, similar to using bone meal. A bee can fertilize crops only a few times when they have pollen.

When a bee that has pollen enters and then leaves its bee nest or bee hive, the honey level of the nest/hive is increased by one. Bees will stay in their nest or hive for at least 2400 game ticks (2 minutes) before coming back out.

Bees will follow players holding small flowers.

Bees that enter and then leave their nest/hive keep their data (name, health, etc.)

Bees return to their nest when it rains. They do the same when night falls.

Despite being arthropods in real life, bees are not considered arthropods in *Minecraft* and do not take increased damage against the Bane of Arthropodsenchantment.

### Attacking

Bees will attack and swarm the player as a group when angered, much like wolves and zombie pigmen. The eyes of angered bees turn red. All bees nearby are angered when one individual is attacked, or when a nest is destroyed. Collecting a honeycomb or a honey bottle from a nest or hive will cause the bees from that nest or hive to leave and swarm the player. Placing a campfire below the hive prevents the bees from swarming when comb or honey is harvested. Bees do not attack in Peaceful difficulty.

After attacking and poisoning the player, bees lose their stinger and die within 50–60 seconds. Bees do not attack the player if they have already lost their stinger. Bees can, therefore, attack only once. Bee stingers will stick in the player, much like when the player is hit by an arrow.

If a player holding a flower in either their main or offhand attacks a bee, the bee will not attack the player. The bee's eyes will turn red and it may flip as if to sting the player, but the player will not receive the poison effect or damage. The player may also shear honeycomb or collect honey bottles while holding a flower and not get attacked.

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

## Breeding

If bees are given a flower, they enter love mode and pair off to create baby bees, granting the player a small amount of experience. The parent bees have a cooldown 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%.