5 things players might not know about Honeycombs in Minecraft

On December 10, 2019, Minecraft’s 1.15 update, titled 'Buzzy Bees', was released. It added a whole lot of bee and honey themed items to the game. These included the bee mob itself, along with bee nests, beehives, honey, honey blocks, and more.

These new additions enabled the rafting of bottled honey in the game and an additional mob that could serve as both an enemy and a tamed animal companion.

Note: This article is subjective and solely reflects the writer's opinion.

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Honeycombs: 5 facts players might not know about the Minecraft item

5) Light a fire

A campfire in Minecraft (Image via Minecraft)

Honeycombs are collected from bee nests as drops. However, when this action is carried out, the nest’s resident bees tend to come out and unleash their fury upon the player with the use of their stings and poison.

While many players are aware of this and do not approach bee nests because of this fact, players might not know that a simple trick can render a nest’s bees neutral when collecting honeycombs from them.

All players need is a source of fire, the most common and safe example of which is a campfire. If a player places a campfire beneath a bee nest, the bees inside will not get angered or hostile, and will not attack the player when and if the player tries to take honey from their nest.

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4) Oxidation prevention

Waxing is a process that was introduced in Minecraft’s 1.17, the Caves and Cliffs, update. The process is unique to copper blocks and cut copper blocks. Using waxing, players can prevent copper blocks from oxidizing. This is done by taking a honeycomb and pressing the use key on a copper or cut copper block while the honeycomb is in the player’s hand. This will convert that copper block into its waxed variant, which will prevent it from getting oxidized as time passes.

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3) Use dispensers

When a bee nest is full of honey, it normally changes its animation to quite a detailed one that shows particles/drops of honey falling to the ground from the nest. When this happens, players are free to use shears on the nest, which will drop three pieces of the honeycomb item.

However, if a campfire is not used in this instance, the bees inside will get hostile towards the player, as mentioned above. However, players can use dispensers to carry out the process for them.

A dispenser can be attached to a bee nest with shears inside it. After that, a redstone circuit will be needed in order to make the dispenser work. Using the dispenser will then harvest the honeycombs from the bee nest, which, in turn, will drop the usual three honeycombs.

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2) Reminder: Candles!

Candles in Minecraft (Image via Minecraft)

Candles, like copper, were also added with the Minecraft 1.17 update. While they serve as a great light source and come in many different colors, it is possible that many players may forget about them when choosing crafting light sources.

Torches are still one of the easiest and cheapest light sources to make in the game, and a ton of builders just acquire candles from creative mode anyway. However, when crafted, candles serve as a great component for decoration and minimalism in build.

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1) Alternate collection methods

While a redstone farm that grinds and collects honeycombs for the player is a great piece of machinery to build, some simpler ways also exist in the game. These can act as placeholders or temporary measures until the player decides to move on to a redstone farm.

This method comes in the form of hopper minecarts or farmland on top of a hopper. Since both minecarts and farmland are not full-sized blocks, they can be placed above a hopper and under a bee nest to collect the dropped content of a bee nest, which are honeycombs.