Minecraft: How To Get Honeycomb

Honeycomb has a variety of uses in Minecraft, though as one might expect, obtaining it can be a little bit dangerous. Players will need to deal with attacking bees as they gather it, but luckily, there are safe ways to go about just that. This item acts primarily as a crafting ingredient, is used in recipes for candles and beehives, and is also used for waxing oxidized copper blocks.

Honeycomb is produced by bees, a passive mob added back in Minecraft 1.14. Bees will not attack the player unless provoked, and when collecting honeycomb, they will be provoked. Their attacks will poison the player if they land, so it’s imperative that players take appropriate steps to prevent this.

How To Get Honeycomb In Minecraft

To nab some honeycomb, players will need to first locate a bee nest. Nests spawn naturally in a multitude of biomes and can be found suspended from mangrove trees, oak trees, and birch trees. The odds that any given tree of these types will have a nest is dependent on the biome:

Based on this table, one might think the meadow is the place to go, but trees are not particularly common in these biomes. They just always have bee nests when they do spawn. Plains biomes are a similar situation, so it’s actually mangrove swamps and flower forests that players will want to target when looking for bee nests.

If a player is having trouble finding one naturally, there is an alternative. Whenever an oak or birch sapling is grown, if it is within five blocks of a flower at the same elevation, there is a 5% chance that it will spawn with a bee nest. These odds are actually quite good, and players can plant numerous flowers and saplings around their home area to hopefully grow some bee nests.

Once one is found, getting its honeycomb is done simply by shearing it — exactly as one would a sheep. This requires the honey level of the nest to be at the maximum (level 5), which can be identified by whether or not honey particles are dripping from the bottom. The texture of the block will also change, with the appearance of honey oozing out of the sides, as in the picture above. If it is not yet full, the player will have to wait a few days for the bees to finish creating honey. When sheared, it will drop three honeycombs, and will anger the bees inside, causing them to attack.

There is a way to prevent them from attacking. If a campfire is placed directly beneath the bee nest (no more than five blocks beneath it), or a regular fire is one block beneath it, the bees will not attack. The smoke from the fire must not be obstructed, as it is the smoke around the nest that prevents the bees from getting upset.