Have you ever encountered a few bees hovering around some flowers? Have you ever thought about building your own bee farm? In this guide, we will run you through all the steps and teach you how to make a sustainable bee farm for all your crafting needs.
It’s undoubtedly a pain to farm for materials that you often use in crafting. Even more so for rarer resources such as diamonds. This familiar predicament has led players to take matters into their own hands and build sustainable farms such as breeding cows for leather and wool from sheep. As bees are great sources of honey, it is best to build your own bee farm to easily get access to honey whenever you want.
Although bee farming isn’t just your typical run-of-the-mill passive mob farm, the sweet resource you get by the end of this will be all worth it. There are a lot of ways to optimize and build your own automatic bee farm using Redstone contraptions, but this guide will show you the simple way to relocate bees and build a basic bee farm.
Where Can You Find Bees?
In the overworld, 3 bees will naturally spawn along with a bee nest, which is a block that houses bees and is commonly attached to an oak or birch tree.
| BIOME (% chance per tree) | JAVA | BEDROCK |
| 1. Plains Biome | 5% | 5% |
| 2. Sunflower Plains Biome | 5% | 5% |
| 3. Flower Forest Biome | 2% | 3% |
| 4. Forest Biome | 0.2% | 0.035% |
| 5. Wooded Hills Biome | 0.2% | 0.035% |
| 6. Birch Forest Biome | 0.2% | 0.035% |
| 7. Tall Birch Forest Biome | 0.2% | 0.035% |
| 8. Birch Forest Hills Biome | 0.2% | 0.035% |
| 9. Tall Birch Hills Biome | 0.2% | 0.035% |
Getting Started
The first step in building a bee farm near your base is to look for bees. Unless you’re in creative mode, your initial source of bees will always be from a naturally spawned bee nest in the overworld. During world generation, there is a small percentage of how many bee nests can spawn per tree. So looking for bee nests in specific biomes will make your search a little bit easier. But before going on your adventure in search of the bees, you must bring some items in order to successfully create your own bee farm once you get back.
- Shears: Using shears on a honey-filled bee nest will harvest 3 honeycombs. Honeycombs are crafting ingredients used to create beehives.
- Lead: Using a lead on a bee will leash that particular bee to you so you may bring it back to your base.
- Silk Touch Tool: A tool (axe or pickaxe) equipped with a silk touch enchantment will allow you to break the bee nest without destroying it. You can use the tool to bring the naturally spawned bee nest back to your base.
- Campfire: Placing a campfire 2 blocks below a bee nest will allow you to harvest the honey without angering the bees residing inside it.
- Flowers: Bees are attracted to flowers. You can use flowers to lure the bees to follow you back or have them breed more bees.
Relocating Bees
There are a few options in order to bring back some bees to your base. You may freely choose which option would best suit you and what available equipment you brought along with you.
Flowers
Flowers attract bees. With this knowledge, you can hold flowers in your hand to trick them into following you back to your base. Remember not to run too fast or the bees may lose focus and head in another direction.
Lead
Leads are used to leash passive or neutral mobs. You can use leads to attach a leash as many bees as you can to bring home.
Silk Touch Tool
Once the sun sets and the bees enter the bee nest, you can use a silk touch tool to chop down the bee nest. This will allow you to bring back the bee nest to your base along with the bees inside it.
Housing Bees
One thing you need to make sure of before bringing them back is to secure them a place to live. Like villagers, bees function typically the same way. They work during the day and come home to rest once the sun goes down. Likewise, they will need a place to call home, or else they might wander off in search of one.
Bee Nests
As naturally spawned bee nests are rare, it would be worth your while bringing one home using a silk touch-equipped tool. Silk touch is an enchantment that allows a player to retrieve an entire item/block intact without breaking or destroying it in the process. Without the silk touch enchantment, you will destroy the bee nest – angering the bees in the process.
Beehives
A beehive is a crafted version of a bee nest. This means that you can create as many beehives and house as many bees as you want. Before you can craft a beehive, you will need to harvest some honeycombs. Honeycomb can be harvested from honey-filled bee nests and beehives using shears. Use a shear on a bee nest that’s dripping with honey to collect 3 honeycombs. Be careful as this action may possibly anger the bees!
To craft a beehive, you will need 3 honeycombs and 6 planks. Using a crafting table, place 3 planks in a horizontal position on the top row, followed by 3 honeycombs in the same pattern, and place the remaining 3 planks at the bottom row.
Building Your Bee Farm
Beehives function the same way bee nests as well as the bees that live in them do. As such, it is important to know how to correctly place a beehive on your new farm and how you’ll be able to harvest honey from them. Bees are neutral mobs which means that although they are naturally passive, they may possibly attack the player if they perform an action that angers them such as harvesting honey.
This is where the campfire comes in. In order to collect honey without angering the bees, you will need to place the beehives in the right position above a campfire. When you place a campfire 2 blocks below the beehive, the smoke from the campfire will calm the bees allowing you to freely take honey from them. Keep in mind that placing a beehive 1 block above a campfire might set it on fire, so be careful!
Harvesting that sweet, sweet honey
Now that you have a campfire set up below your beehives, you can harvest from them safely. There are two products that you can harvest from a beehive: honeycomb and honey bottle.
- Using shears on a beehive will produce 3 honeycombs. Honeycomb is a crafting ingredient to make more beehives, honeycomb blocks, candles, and more.
- Using a glass bottle on a beehive will produce a honey bottle. Honey bottles are used to remove the effects of poison without removing any of your current buffs. They can also be used to craft honey blocks which are sticky blocks made of honey that slows movement and prevent fall damage.
Expanding Your Bee Farm
Now that you have your basic farm setup, it’s time to expand your bee farm. In order to expand your farm, you will need more bees. And more bees means more beehives. Keep in mind that beehives can only house 3 bees at a time. So it’s best to craft a lot of beehives if you plan to create a large bee farm.
The next step is to breed bees. Like other passive mobs in Minecraft, bees will also breed when fed with their favorite object: flowers. You will need to give 2 adult bees any kind of flower for them to produce a baby bee.
To optimize bee farming, you can help the bees out by placing flowers near their beehive. This will allow them to pollinate more efficiently making honey production faster.
Now that you know the basics of honey farming, it’s time to put those skills to use and build your own sustainable bee farm for all your crafting needs!
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