Honey bottles are a top-tier food (6 hunger) and honeycomb makes honeycomb blocks (used in waxed copper and candles). A single hive + a few flowers is all you need for a steady supply.
Getting bees
- Find bee nests in flower forests and plains (white flowers help).
- Breed them with flowers: two bees fed a flower produce a baby.
- Move bees by breaking a nest with Silk Touch and placing it where you want — or breed near a planted flower patch.
The simple manual farm
- Build an apiary: place 3–6 hives in a row, surrounded by flowers.
- When a hive reaches honey level 5 (pollen visible dripping), collect:
- Honey bottles: use a glass bottle (empty) on the hive → honey bottle. Bee’s don’t anger when you don’t harvest the honeycomb.
- Honeycomb: use shears → 3 honeycomb. Bees get angry (smoke the hive first with a campfire underneath to calm them).
- Campfire under each hive lets you harvest without angering the bees.
Fully automatic harvest
- Put a dispenser with shears above each hive, a hopper collecting below into a chest.
- An observer on the hive detects when it’s full and fires the dispenser → shears → honeycomb drops into the hopper.
- Add a glass-bottle auto-harvest version for honey by piping empty bottles into the dispenser.
What to do with the output
- Honey bottles restore 6 hunger and cure poison — great emergency food and a potion ingredient.
- Honeycomb → honeycomb blocks → waxed copper (stops oxidation) and candles (decorative light).
- Crafting honeycomb with candles gives the classic honeycomb block; bees still love flowers nearby for new hives.
Quick tips
- Smoke the hive (campfire underneath) before harvesting honeycomb — otherwise bees attack.
- Shears in a dispenser work automatically; the observer + dispenser pattern is the same one used in many redstone farms.
- Keep at least 2 hives so breeding doesn’t stall; bees only work during the day and return pollen to the hive.