Beehold! An Introduction:

Bees are a mob type added to Minecraft game servers in December 2019. Met with critical acclaim
as part of a whole themed update around them, called the ‘Buzzy Bees’ update as fans loved these cute fuzzy yellow and black creatures. These came alongside Bee nests, Beehives and multiple honey themed items. Everything was themed after the new mob! But how do they work?

Where might they bee?

To find these critters, you mainly want to look for bee nest blocks that they live in! Up to 3 bees can live in a bee nest at once. Your best bet is to look in the Meadow biome! They always spawn there with a 100% chance of finding them, so when you see a meadow that’s where to go! However, anywhere else is unlikely with every other biome they can spawn in having very low chances.

Plains, Mangrove Swamp and Sunflower Plains having approximately 5% spawn rate in both Java and Bedrock. Flower Forest have approximately 2.5%. Forest, Birch Forest and Old Growth Birch Forest have approximately 0.3% spawn (not recommended unless you want to inflict that upon yourself). Interestingly, in Java they can spawn in Cherry Grove with a 5% chance. So  anywhere besides Meadow for a natural spawn is very low chances

Bee it Friend or Foe?

Bees are a Neutral mob type. Meaning they will only attack when provoked by the player. If they are provoked, they can only attack once due to attacking with their stinger and losing it after, then dying one minute later. In normal difficulty this attack deals one full heart of damage whilst inflicting poison on the player for 10 seconds (for a total of 3 and half hearts poison damage).

But as mentioned, they only attack you if provoked. They only drop 1-3 XP orbs when killed and therefore not worth fighting. You can befriend and adopt them, which is much more useful than killing them in the long run as harvesting and breeding can be very helpful. You can also have a 5% chance of spawning a bee nest through an Oak, Birch, Mangrove or Cherry tree sapling

 

Beeing green!

One of the main features bees bring with them is pollinating. When they leave their nest during the day, they fly nearby and are allured to any nearby flowers with the exception of flower pots. They can also pollinate wither roses and sadly die as a result from that. Once pollen has been collected, it uses it to fertilise the plants beneath them on their journey.

Any bee with pollen can pollinate a multitude of things, including a majority of crops alongside berry bushes and cave vines. Once fertilised by pollen, these plantations advance a growth stage to help speed the process up. Upon nightfall, the bees fly back to their home to then make honey within the bee nest. You can collect when the honey amount reaches 5 for either honeycombs or honey bottles.

Bees follow a cycle depending on the environment around them. Day time they go out to pollinate and work, Night or rain is when they return back to their bee nest for safety. Sounds familiar right? That’s because it’s almost exactly like a Villager's cycle in any respective village. However, one difference is the Nether and the End, as Bees continue working non stop in these dimensions whilst villagers don’t. This is due to the difference being villagers. They use an internal clock no matter where they are whilst bees are extremely environment dependent. So when there’s no day or night? They don’t know when to stop!

Modding & Beauty

When it comes to mods, Bees got a lot even early on! The most gameplay changing kind is the Productive Bees mod and the Resourceful Bees mod by LobsterJonn and epic_oreo. Productive Bees focuses on the variety and activities of bees. This ranges from 200 bee variations with the ability to add your own within the mod yourself! For bees that serve loads of functions for different resource types and actions. Resourceful Bees on the other hand focus more on allowing a base for customisation and resources for pollinating. They both have similarities with different approaches, so if you wish to get more out of bees, check them out!

Then there’s item & mobs packs that are added to the honey/bee theme like Bees! By pixelgeist666 or Queen Bee by CerbonXD. The former adds a bee themed grenade and gun with bee allies alongside a wasp mob type, whilst the latter adds a mini boss with a Queen Bee alongside a stinger, stinger sword and antenna item.

The last category to discuss is cosmetic. Mainly the large amount of Pride flag mods for our fuzzy friend! After the trans community and trans supportive fans took to using the bee as a trans icon in 2020, with the mod of the trans flag on the bee. This caused a fascinating spiral of the entire LGBTQ+ community modding the bees with every possible pride flag possible. Striped bees worked perfectly as a template. It was all fun and games with this super popular cosmetic mod called: LGBeeT Pride by Hexe Chroma

Bumblemancy

Finally, there's one mod that brings everything together. Bumblemancy is a large mod pack by burning_sulphur which brings in a whole magical quest about the bees including multiple mods within it including the aforementioned Productive Bees. It paces itself slowly to introduce each mod related thing to the player with a huge quest path with so much to do in every side of magic and bee related that brings almost 100 mods together to make a beelightful experience.

In Conclusion: bees

Bees are a cute and delightful edition to Minecraft, with a lot to them and even more from community support. They are an addition that even just aesthetically add so much to Minecraft and do a good job at their work, just like our real life counterparts.

Fly high our fuzzy pollinators!