How to breed bees in Minecraft

Minecraft bees are adorable little critters that are essential to obtaining honey in-game. They're neutral mobs most of the time, but destroying their hive will result in players swarmed by angry, stinging bees.

Bees most commonly spawn in the plains and sunflower plains biomes, but can also spawn in flower forests, regular forests, wooded hills, birch forests, tall birch forests, birch forest hills, and tall birch hills biomes.

If players spot a hive hidden in a tree, there's most likely a bee nearby or inside the hive.

In this article, we'll walk players through how to breed bees, and even house their own colony of honey-producing workers in Minecraft.

A Guide to Breeding Minecraft Bees

Bees can be bred using any flower in-game (Image via Minecraft)

Minecraft bees are relatively simple to breed. They don't require some hyper-specific, rare item that takes time to craft, or find. All bees need to breed are flowers.

This can be any in-game flower, including those that are two blocks high, and the wither rose. The full list of flowers that are compatible to breed with bees are: Dandelions, Poppies, Blue Orchids, Allumiums, Azure Bluets, Tulips, Oxeye Daisies, Cornflowers, Lily Of The Valleys, Wither Roses, Sunflowers, Lilacs, Rose Bushes, and Peonies.

Simply have a couple of flowers in your hand, and right click the two bees. Bees will become focused on the player when players have flowers in-hand, so they shouldn't be moving around or too hard to right click.

Once two bees have been right-clicked with flowers, they'll enter "love mode," and begin the breeding process. It should only take a couple seconds for a baby bee to be made. If this is the player's first time breeding an animal, they'll also receive the "The Parrots & The Bats," achievement for successfully breeding a pair of mobs.

Baby bees will only take one in-game day to grow and become adult bees. This process can be accelerated through feeding baby bees more flowers. Each time they're fed another one, it reduces their remaining growth time by ten percent.

If the bees, both baby and adult, are already part of a hive it will freeze their breeding cooldowns and growth timers. If rapidly breeding bees is a goal for the player, it would be wise to destroy hives in the surrounding area to prevent this.

Housing Minecraft Bees

Once players have bred the desired amount of bees, it's time to house them. Players can craft a beehive by placing three wooden planks across the top of the crafting space, three honeycombs in the middle, and another three wooden planks on the bottom. The planks can be from any kind of wood, but it won't alter how the beehive looks after it's crafted.

Minecrafters can house bees both in the craftable beehive, and the ones that are generated in the overworld. However, to pick those natural beehives up, players must have a tool enchanted with silk touch.

Hives can only house up to three bees at a time. It's useful to breed bees in multiples of three, so each hive can be full. Bees will go into their hives at night, and when it rains in-game.

Beehives need to be generally unobstructed, as bees can enter through the top, bottom, or sides, but can only exit through the front in Minecraft Java Edition. In Minecraft Bedrock Edition, bees can exit through all directions.

Bees will automatically begin pollinating the area and collecting honey in their respective hive.

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