Bee

The Bee is a half-block, fuzzy little neutral mob that spends its day flying between flowers, hauling nectar back to its nest, and quietly making your crops grow faster. It is one of the most useful mobs in the game, and also one of the few that will cheerfully die just to make a point.

Leave bees alone and they are the best neighbors you will ever have. Punch one, break their nest, or grab honey without a campfire, and the whole colony comes at you like you just insulted their mother. Every bee that lands a sting loses its stinger and dies about a minute later. They know the deal. They do it anyway.

Bees are your ticket to honey bottles, honeycomb, honey blocks, candles, and beehives. They also pollinate crops on the way home, which makes a hive next to your wheat field one of the cheapest farm upgrades in the game.

Overview / Quick Stats

Appearance

• Model: A chunky, half-block cuboid body with a small stinger at the back, two pairs of translucent wings, three pairs of stubby legs, and two short antennae. Mojang made them half a block because they decided that was the cutest size. Hard to argue.
• Colors: Yellow-and-brown striped body with big dark eyes. The fuzz is painted into the texture, not modeled, so the bee stays perfectly blocky.
• Nectar state: A bee carrying nectar shows yellow pollen specks on its abdomen and drips small nectar particles as it flies.
• Angry state: The eyes turn red. If you see red eyes, the conversation is over.
• Stingless state: After a successful sting, the stinger disappears from the model. In Java, the stinger shows up as a small black dot stuck in the player model instead.
• Baby vs. adult: Babies are half the size with a proportionally larger head-to-body look and higher-pitched buzzing.
• Animations: Constant wing flapping, a gentle bob while hovering, and a flip upside down when it lines up a sting.

Behavior & AI

• Daily routine: Bees leave their nest during the day, find a flower, circle it for more than 20 seconds (400 ticks) to collect nectar, then head home. They spend at least 2 minutes (2,400 ticks) inside the hive before coming back out.
• Rain and night: Bees go home when it rains and at night. This also happens in biomes where rain never falls, like deserts, because the game checks the weather, not the raindrops.
• Nether and End: With no day cycle or weather, bees in the Nether and End work nonstop. Since Java 1.21.9, End bees no longer run home just because it is raining in the Overworld.
• Foraging range: Bees usually stay within about 22 blocks of their hive, though they will go farther to chase a flower or a target.
• Housing: One nest or beehive holds up to 3 bees. Homeless bees wander, generally drifting northwest, until they find an empty hive with space.
• Hive entry: Bees enter a hive from any side but only exit from the front face. That quirk is the entire basis of one-way bee gates.
• Following players: Bees follow any player holding a valid flower. If you stand still, they settle on the ground nearby and stare at you until you move.
• Aggro triggers: Hitting a bee (unless you kill it in one hit), breaking its nest or hive without Silk Touch, or harvesting honey or honeycomb without a campfire below angers every bee nearby.
• Anger duration: A bee that fails to land a hit calms down once its anger timer runs out, randomly 20–39 seconds.
• Water: Bees avoid water. Staying in it for more than 1 second makes them take 1 HP every half second.
• Movement limits: Bees fly up and sideways through scaffolding but not down. They will not fly through doors or open trapdoors on their own, though you can lead them through with a flower.
• Persistence: Bees do not despawn. Their data, including health and name tags, is saved while they sit inside a hive.

Abilities, Attacks & Status Effects

• Sting: A single melee attack. On Normal and Hard it also applies Poison I. The bee flips upside down right before it strikes.
• One and done: A bee that lands a sting loses its stinger, stops attacking, never returns to its hive (even at night), and dies roughly one minute later.
• Swarm response: Hurting one bee angers all bees nearby, and they attack as a group. This includes mobs, so a skeleton’s stray arrow can send a bee after the skeleton or after you.
• Shield interaction: Blocking a sting with a shield does not use up the stinger. The bee keeps trying until it actually connects.
• Pollination: A bee with nectar fertilizes crops it flies over at 1–2 blocks directly above, advancing them one growth stage like bone meal. Each nectar trip can boost up to 10 crops, with about a 5% chance per tick to try. The bee must have a valid home hive for this to work.
• Pollinated crops: Wheat, carrots, potatoes, beetroots, melon stems, pumpkin stems, sweet berry bushes, cave vines, and torchflower crops. Pitcher crops are pollinated in Bedrock only.
• Immunities: Bees take no fall damage and are not hurt by sweet berry bushes.
• Weaknesses: Bees count as arthropods, so Bane of Arthropods deals extra damage to them.

Food, Taming, Breeding & Growth

• Breeding items: Any 1- or 2-block-tall flower, plus flowering azalea, flowering azalea leaves, mangrove propagule, cherry leaves, pink petals, wildflowers, spore blossom, cactus flower, and chorus flower.
• Bad food: Feeding a bee a wither rose gives it Wither for 2 seconds. Feeding it an open eyeblossom poisons it for 1.25 seconds. Neither will put it in love mode. Closed eyeblossoms are ignored completely.
• Breeding cooldown: 5 minutes (6,000 ticks) for both parents.
• Baby growth: 20 minutes (one in-game day). Each flower you feed a baby cuts the remaining time by 10%.
• Hive timer freeze: Growth timers and breeding cooldowns pause while a bee is inside a hive. If you want to grow a colony fast, pull the hives temporarily.
• Angry breeding: You can still breed angry or stingless bees. They stay angry, and the stingless ones still die on schedule.
• Taming: Bees cannot be tamed, saddled, or ridden.
• Leads: Bees can be leashed, even while angry, and they can still sting on a lead. In Java, leashed bees will not enter hives. A lead attaching another mob to a bee breaks if the bee enters its hive.

Spawning

Interactions with Environment & Other Mobs

• Crops and farms: A hive near your fields turns bees into free, slow-motion bone meal. Villager farms benefit too, since bees do not care who planted the wheat.
• Campfires: A campfire placed up to 5 blocks below a nest or hive calms the bees, so you can harvest honey without starting a war.
• Other mobs: Any mob that damages a bee becomes a target. Skeletons, pillagers, and anything else firing arrows near a hive can start a swarm.
• Wither roses: Bees will collect nectar from wither roses and take the Wither effect, which can kill them. Keep wither roses far away from any apiary.
• Open eyeblossoms: Bees can gather from open eyeblossoms but get poisoned doing it.
• Turtle eggs: Despite flying, bees can trample and break turtle eggs if they settle on top of them.
• Sunflowers: In Java, bees only pollinate the top half of a sunflower.
• Flower pots: Bees completely ignore potted flowers. Decorative only.
• Vehicles: Bees can ride boats and minecarts like most small mobs.

Drops & Loot

Player Uses & Farming

• Honey production: Each time a bee with nectar enters and leaves its hive, the honey level rises by 1 (with a 1% chance of 2). At level 5 the hive is full and ready to harvest.
• What you get: Honey bottles cure Poison and restore 6 hunger. Honeycomb waxes copper, crafts beehives, and makes candles. Four honey bottles craft a honey block.
• Automated honey farm: Put a dispenser holding shears or glass bottles facing the hive, and trigger it when the hive is full. A comparator reading the hive (it outputs the honey level) or an observer watching it handles the timing. Dispenser harvesting does not anger bees.
• Manual farm basics: Place a campfire directly under the hive, within 5 blocks. Surround the setup with flowers inside that 22-block foraging radius. Three bees per hive is the cap, so build more hives instead of cramming in bees.
• Crop booster: Park a hive and a flower patch next to your crop farm. Bees fly over the crops on the way home and pollinate up to 10 plants per trip.
• Moving a colony: Break a nest or hive with a Silk Touch tool and the bees stay inside, calm. Place it back down wherever you want the colony.
• Expected rates: A full hive needs five nectar trips, and each bee spends at least 2 minutes inside per trip, so three bees with flowers close by is the practical speed limit per hive. Rain and night stop production entirely in the Overworld, while Nether and End apiaries run around the clock.
• Edition caveat: Bedrock bees also pollinate pitcher crops, which makes Bedrock hives slightly more useful near a sniffer garden.

Commands & NBT

Basic summon (both editions):

/summon minecraft:bee ~ ~ ~

Summon a baby bee (Java):

/summon minecraft:bee ~ ~ ~ {Age:-24000}

Summon a named bee already carrying nectar (Java):

/summon minecraft:bee ~ ~ ~ {HasNectar:1b,CustomName:"Barry"}

Bedrock summon with a name tag:

/summon bee "Barry" ~ ~ ~

• HasNectar: Boolean. True if the bee is carrying nectar.
• HasStung: Boolean. True if the bee has already used its stinger.
• hive_pos: Int array of 3 integers. Location of the bee’s home hive.
• flower_pos: Int array of 3 integers. Location of the flower the bee is circling.
• CannotEnterHiveTicks: Int. Ticks until the bee may enter a hive again.
• CropsGrownSincePollination: Int. Crops boosted since the last nectar trip (caps at 10).
• TicksSincePollination: Int. Ticks since the last pollination.
• Age: Int. Negative values mean baby; counts up toward adulthood.

Tags, Gamerules & Datapack Hooks

• Java entity tags: #minecraft:arthropod, #minecraft:beehive_inhabitors, #minecraft:fall_damage_immune, #minecraft:sensitive_to_bane_of_arthropods
• Java item tag: #minecraft:bee_food controls which items breed and tempt bees.
• Java block tags: #minecraft:bee_growables (crops bees pollinate), #minecraft:beehives (valid homes)
• Bedrock families: arthropod, bee, mob, pacified
• Loot table: minecraft:entities/bee (Java). It is empty by default, so a datapack can give bees real drops.
• Gamerules: Java 1.21.11 renamed every gamerule to snake_case IDs. minecraft:mob_griefing does not affect bees, but minecraft:forgive_dead_players and minecraft:universal_anger affect their anger. In Bedrock, domobloot controls their XP drop.

Difficulty & Edition Differences

• Peaceful: Bees still exist and still make honey, but they never attack.
• Easy: 2 damage, no poison.
• Normal: 2 damage plus 10 seconds of Poison I.
• Hard: 3 damage plus 18 seconds of Poison I. A swarm on Hard is how respawn screens happen.
• Hitbox: Java adults are 0.7 × 0.6 blocks; Bedrock adults are 0.55 × 0.5 blocks.
• Pollination: Only Bedrock bees pollinate pitcher crops.
• Stinger visuals: Only Java shows the stinger stuck in the player model.
• Nest generation: Bedrock has slightly different nest chances in Mangrove Swamp, Flower Forest, and forest biomes.
• Sunflower quirk: Java bees only pollinate the top half of sunflowers.

Sounds & Audio

• Passive buzz: entity.bee.loop (Java), mob.bee.loop (Bedrock). Volume and pitch scale with flight speed in Java.
• Angry buzz: entity.bee.loop_aggressive (Java), mob.bee.aggressive (Bedrock). Audible from farther away than the normal buzz, which is the game doing you a favor.
• Pollinating: entity.bee.pollinate (Java), mob.bee.pollinate (Bedrock)
• Sting: entity.bee.sting (Java), mob.bee.sting (Bedrock)
• Hurt: entity.bee.hurt (Java), mob.bee.hurt (Bedrock)
• Death: entity.bee.death (Java), mob.bee.death (Bedrock)
• Babies: All bee sounds play at a higher pitch for babies.

History & Major Changes

• Java 1.15 (19w34a): Bees and baby bees added in Buzzy Bees, along with nests, beehives, honey, and honeycomb.
• Bedrock 1.14.0: Bees added to Bedrock.
• Java 1.15.2: Breaking a nest with Silk Touch no longer angers bees. Bees remember how many crops they pollinated.
• Java 1.16 (20w12a): Random wandering range cut to about 22 blocks from the hive. Firework damage now angers bees.
• Bedrock 1.16.0: Bees no longer fly faster while swarming.
• 1.17: Flowering azalea and flowering azalea leaves count as flowers.
• Java 1.19: Mangrove propagules count as flowers.
• Java 1.20: Cherry leaves, pink petals, and torchflowers count as flowers.
• Java 1.20.2: Spore blossoms and chorus flowers count as flowers.
• Java 1.20.5: Smoother vertical flight. FlowerPos and HivePos NBT became flower_pos and hive_pos int arrays.
• Java 1.21.2: Major pathfinding overhaul. Bees get lost less, stick close to known hives, and try harder to get home.
• Java 1.21.4 / Bedrock 1.21.50: Wither roses give bees Wither, open eyeblossoms give Poison, and closed eyeblossoms are ignored. Leashed bees stop entering hives in Java.
• Java 1.21.5: Wildflowers and cactus flowers added as bee food and attractors.
• Java 1.21.9: End bees no longer hide when it rains in the Overworld.

Notable Bugs & Quirks

• Total Beelocation mismatch: The Java advancement description says a nest or beehive works, but only a bee nest actually triggers it.
• Desert rain: Bees hide from rain in biomes where it never falls, because they check the weather state, not the sky above them.
• Scaffolding one-way street: Bees can go up through scaffolding but never down.
• Invisible player, visible stinger: In Java, stingers stuck in a player still render while the player has Invisibility.
• Potted flowers: Bees ignore them entirely, which surprises everyone who builds a fancy flower-pot apiary.

Advancements/Achievements

• Bee Our Guest (Java advancement / Bedrock achievement): Use a glass bottle on a nest or beehive without angering the bees. Put a campfire under it first. Bedrock awards 15 Gamerscore.
• Total Beelocation (Java advancement / Bedrock achievement): Break a bee nest with 3 bees inside using Silk Touch. Bedrock awards 30 Gamerscore.
• The Parrots and the Bats (Java): Breed any two animals. Bees count.
• Two by Two (Java): Breed every breedable animal. Bees are on the list.
• It Spreads (Java and Bedrock): Killing a bee near a sculk catalyst counts, since bees drop XP.

Spin-offs, Culture & Trivia

• Size: Bees are half a block because Mojang considered that the cutest possible size.
• Real-world accuracy: Real honeybees also die after stinging, since the barbed stinger tears away. Real baby bees are worm-like larvae though, not tiny flying adults.
• Smoke: The campfire trick mirrors how real beekeepers use smoke to keep colonies calm.
• Minecraft Dungeons: The Buzzy Nest artifact summons bees to fight alongside you.
• Community symbol: Bees are widely used in the Minecraft community as a symbol of LGBTQ pride.
• Television: Bees show up in The Muppet Mayhem episode “Virtual Insanity,” during a digital concert held in Minecraft.

See Also

• Bee Nest
• Beehive
• Honey Bottle
• Honeycomb
• Honey Block
• Campfire
• Flower
• Poison
• Silk Touch
• Bane of Arthropods