How to Get Honey in Minecraft Without Angering the Bees
Put a lit campfire under a full bee nest, then use a bottle for honey or shears for honeycomb. How to get honey in Minecraft safely and automate it.
Wait until a bee nest or beehive is full (honey dripping from it), put a lit campfire underneath, then use a glass bottle on it for a honey bottle or shears for three honeycomb. The campfire smoke keeps the bees calm. Without it, every bee nearby attacks you, and each one that stings dies afterward.
Find bees
Bees live in bee nests hanging off the side of oak and birch trees, most often in plains, sunflower plains, flower forests and meadows. Nests also sometimes appear on trees grown from saplings near flowers. Listen for buzzing.
Bees fly out to flowers during the day and come back to the nest. Each time a bee returns after collecting pollen, the nest’s honey level goes up by one. At level 5 it’s full: honey drips from the bottom and the front shows golden honey.
Calm them with a campfire
Place a campfire up to 5 blocks below the nest, with nothing blocking the smoke on the way up. Lit campfires stay lit, so you can leave it in place permanently.
On a natural nest high in a tree, build a small pillar under it and put the campfire on top. A soul campfire works too.
On Java you can put a carpet on top of the campfire to stop it burning you while the smoke still rises. On Bedrock, carpet blocks the calming effect.
Harvest
- Glass bottle gives one honey bottle. Glass bottles are three glass in a V shape.
- Shears give three honeycomb.
Either one resets the nest to empty. Choose based on what you need: bottles are food and honey blocks, honeycomb is for crafting.
Automating it
You don’t have to stand there at all. A dispenser facing the hive, loaded with shears or glass bottles, harvests when it gets a redstone pulse. Add a comparator reading the hive: it outputs a stronger signal as the honey level rises, and at level 5 you can use that signal to fire the dispenser. Hoppers under the dispenser and hive collect the results. Shears in a dispenser lose durability, so keep a few spares in the dispenser.
A campfire is still needed if a player will be nearby, but dispenser harvesting itself doesn’t anger bees.
Bring bees home
The easiest way is to take the whole nest.
- Wait until night, when all the bees are inside.
- Mine the nest with a Silk Touch tool. The bees stay inside and stay calm.
- Place it at your base, near flowers.
Without Silk Touch, breaking the nest releases angry bees and drops nothing. You can also lead bees home by holding a flower; they follow you. Feed two bees flowers to breed them, and craft beehives from 6 planks and 3 honeycomb once you have a few combs.
What honey is for
- Honey bottle: drink it to restore 6 hunger and cure poison. Four bottles make a honey block; one bottle crafts into three sugar.
- Honey block: sticky, slows mobs and players, reduces fall damage, and pistons can move whole contraptions with it. It doesn’t stick to slime blocks, which is useful in flying machines.
- Honeycomb: beehives, candles, honeycomb blocks, and waxing copper so it stops oxidizing.
Common questions
What is the difference between a honey bottle and honeycomb?
A glass bottle collects one honey bottle, which you can drink or craft into honey blocks and sugar. Shears collect three honeycomb, used for beehives, candles and waxing copper. Both empty the hive.
Do bees die after stinging?
Yes. A bee that stings loses its stinger and dies a short while later, so an angry swarm wipes out your bees as well as hurting you. Always calm them with a campfire first.
How do I know a beehive is full?
Honey drips from the front, and the texture shows golden honey oozing out of the openings. That is honey level 5, the only level you can harvest at.
What does drinking honey do?
It restores 6 hunger points and cures poison. Unlike milk, it does not remove any other effects.
Sources & verification
Facts on this page are checked against these references and in-game behavior for the stated edition(s). how we verify.
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