Minecraft Beehives: How To Make An Automated Honey Farm

All good Minecraft players know it’s better to work smarter than to work harder. From using dispensers for handing out cooked food to creating full-blown computers using Redstone, players have made all sorts of farms – automated and otherwise – to help them achieve their in-game goals. Here’s how to make an automatic honey farm with Minecraft beehives.

Like their real-world counterparts, bees in Minecraft collect pollen from flowers and deposit it within their hives. Over time, that pollen is turned to honey. Eventually, the hive fills with enough honey that it can be harvested. Once full, using a bottle on the hive will grant honey bottles, while using shears will grant honeycombs. From there, honey can be used to craft various products or act as a cure for poison. Honey is quite handy, and bees rank highly on the list of most useful Minecraft mobs because of it.

The first step in creating a Minecraft honey farm is to gather bees. Bee nests, which are the naturally occurring versions of beehives, typically spawn on oak or birch trees near flowers. Once players have found a nest, there are a few ways to go about starting up a honey farm.

Honey Farm Ideas With Minecraft’s Beehives

The easiest option is to leave the nest where it is and simply gather the honey from it as it fills. This can be a good choice, provided the nest is not in an inconvenient spot. If players wish to move the honey farm someplace else, they can either attempt to lure the bees into a constructed hive or move the nest itself. Moving a Minecraft bee nest is only possible using tools with the Silk Touch enchantment, as using any other tool will destroy the nest. Luring the bees to constructed hive requires players to, of course, build a bee hive, which can be made using honeycomb and wood. Players can then use flowers to guide the bees into it.

In either case, players will need to be aware that bees are protective of their honey. They will attack anyone who attempts to take it, and a successful sting results in the player being poisoned and the bee dying. To avoid this, players can use the smoke from a Minecraft campfire to calm the bees. Simply placing a fire underneath the hive or nest will work.

Automating this process will require a bit of effort and some understanding of more complex blocks. Players will want to familiarize themselves with how hoppers work in Minecraft, in addition to collecting a little bit of Redstone. Once done, they can set about constructing an automated honey farm. Reddit user PickleBuzz posted their design for a fairly simple version that uses an observer block, a hopper, a note block, and a chest.

User Jax-Light had a different take that relies on more complex Redstone calculations to achieve automation. The Redstone comparator will make a record of every time a bee leaves the hive, which lets it detect when the hive is full. Once five bees have come and gone, the hive is full.

Regardless of automated honey farm design, it’s important to keep in mind that Minecraft‘s bees will need to have access to flowers in order to produce honey. Planting a beautiful garden will ensure a steady supply of honey.

Source: PickleBuzz/Reddit, Jax-Light/Reddit