While the bees in Minecraft are widely perceived as cute, the insects, like their real-life counterparts, are an incredibly important part of the virtual ecosystem. Bees can create useful products, such as honeycombs, which are an integral part of a variety of craftable items. But honeycomb in Minecraft can be a difficult and potentially dangerous resource to collect.
You can even use honey as a decorative Minecraft block, so whether you’re a builder or a survivalist first, you might want to know how to harvest honeycomb in Minecraft and craft these items – without disturbing the Minecraft bees.
How to Get Honeycomb in Minecraft?
Honeycombs can initially be obtained via bee nests , which is the difficult part of the process mentioned earlier. Bee nests are very rare and only appear in a few biomes – namely only those that contain oak and birch trees, such as:
Levels- 5%
Flower forest- 2%
Any other type of forest – 0.2%
To further skew the chances of finding a usable bee nest, it must be at level 5, which essentially means that bees have entered it multiple times.
When a bee nest is ready for harvest, honey particles will drip from the bottom. Certain textures on the block will also be noticeably filled with the golden-yellow liquid.
Minecraft Honeycomb
If a campfire is burning under the hive and a comb is trimmed with scissors at honey stage five, three combs will be produced. In an automated farm, a motorized feeder with scissors inside can be used to remove the combs and this will not upset the bees either.
Honeycomb is used in a variety of crafting recipes and is also needed to grow Minecraft copper blocks, protecting the mineral from oxidation.
Harvesting Honeycombs
When a bee nest reaches the required level, you may be tempted to smash it, as this is the typical method of gaining a block’s specific resource. However, simply breaking open the bee nest will only spawn agitated bees that will immediately attack.
Instead, you need to use scissors to make the bee nest drop three frames. This will still anger the bees and cause them to attack. To avoid this, you need to light a bonfire or set fire to the area below the bee nest to prevent the animals from leaving the bee nest.
Alternatively, one can break the block with an axe that has the Gentleness enchantment, which will keep the block intact when broken. The bees will stay inside, and the corresponding harvest level will be retained, meaning the block can be moved closer to the player’s base. The bees will continue to pollinate the bee nest, meaning one will no longer have to go far to find a bee nest.
Uses for Honeycombs
Honeycomb is one of the most important ingredients for making a beehive. The recipe requires six wooden planks of any kind and three honeycombs. Simply place the honeycombs in the middle row of the workbench surface and place the planks above and below. Beehives behave in the same way as bee nests found in nature. Bees come to the hive at night, when it rains, or after pollinating flowers.
Honeycomb is also a main component of various cosmetic items such as the Waxed Copper Block and the Candle. Honeycomb can also be added to various blocks to give them a new look.
