How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

If you’re wanting to set up a bee farm in Minecraft, you’re probably wondering how to get honeycomb in Minecraft. This isn’t a craftable item and it can be a little tricky to obtain if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, since honeycomb has multiple purposes in the game, it’s extremely useful to know how to get your hands on it.

Honeycombs were added to Minecraft Bedrock with the 1.14.0 update and to Java with the 1.15 update. With the update came a handful of honey-related items that have since been added to and expanded upon.

Thankfully, learning how to get honeycomb in Minecraft is pretty simple, and the process is easily repeatable. All you’ll need are a few items to get started, but just like in real life, you’ll need to be careful not to make the bees angry.

How to get honeycomb

To get honeycomb in Minecraft, you need will need two things: a pair of shears and a bee nest/beehive. This is the only way to get honeycomb, and it cannot be crafted.

Before you go out hunting for a bee nest, make sure you have a pair of shears ready to go. You can craft these by placing two iron ingots into a crafting table.

Next, you’ll need to hunt down a bee nest. They are located on trees and are found in the meadow biome. These are the grassy biomes filled with flowers and animals.

Before you can get the honeycomb from a bee nest, it needs to be at honey level 5. A nest’s honey level will increase when the bees return with pollen. During the daytime, if it’s not raining, the bees will leave the nest and search for pollen. They’ll return at night or during the rain, and if they have pollen, it’ll increase the honey level by one. Unfortunately, there isn’t an exact amount of time that it takes to get honeycomb, and you can’t speed up the pollination process.

Once the nest is dripping honey, you’ll know it’s ready to be harvested. Simply use your shears on the nest and you’ll get three honeycomb. However, beware, the bees will chase you until they are able to sting you. Once stung, your health will decrease and you’ll be temporarily poisoned.

It’s also worth mentioning that a bee nest will not be destroyed when you get honeycomb from it and you can come back for more once it’s back to honey level 5.

How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

How to get honeycomb without being attacked

If you’d prefer to get honeycomb without being attacked, you can place a campfire underneath the bee nest. The smoke from the fire will calm the bees and keep them from stinging you.

Getting honeycomb with a campfire is an easy way to avoid being attacked and is definitely worth it since they’re easy to build. Just be sure that you place it directly below the bee nest so that the smoke can reach the bees.

How to automatically farm honeycomb

If you want to set up a honeycomb farm, you can use a dispenser with a redstone signal. Simply place your shears in the dispenser so that it’s facing the beehive or bee nest and it will automatically get the honeycomb from the hive once it’s ready.

It’s important to note a few things though. The honeycomb will not go inside the dispenser, so you’ll need to come back and collect it from the ground. Also, the dispenser will not anger the bees, so you don’t need to place a campfire underneath it.

You can also place glass bottles inside the dispenser to make honey bottles. Unlike honeycombs, these will be stored inside the dispenser. honey bottles can be used to cure poison, as a food item, or for crafting sugar and honey blocks.

It’s worth noting, that you can also harvest honey bottles from a bee nest by hand with a glass bottle in the same way that you can harvest honeycomb with a pair of shears.

How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

How to Use Honeycomb

In Minecraft, honeycomb can be used to craft beehives, candles, honeycomb blocks, and waxed copper.

If you want to farm honeycombs, the best thing to do is set up a handful of beehives. The only difference between beehives and bee nests is that the nests are auto-generated and beehives are a craftable item. You can get Honeycomb from each in the same way.

To craft a beehive, you’ll need six planks and three honeycomb. Open your crafting table and place three of any type of plank on the top row, followed by three honeycomb on the middle row, and three more planks on the bottom row. This will give you a beehive, which you can use to start farming honeycombs.

Candles are simply used as a light source and can be crafted at a crafting table with one honeycomb and one string. Place the honeycomb in the middle of the table and a string above it, and you’ll get a candle.

Honeycomb blocks are simply decorative pieces that can add a bit of variety to your house ideas. Simply place four honeycomb in a 2×2 square inside a crafting table and you’ll make a honeycomb block.

Lastly, honeycombs can be used to make a waxed block of copper, which will prevent it from oxidizing. In the middle row of your crafting table, simply place a block of copper and then a honeycomb and you’ll make an oxidized version of it. You can do this with copper blocks, slabs, and stairs.

Now that you know how to get honeycomb in Minecraft, you can set up a nice little farm and start crafting all sorts of fun items in your Minecraft survival server.

Minecraft Honeycomb is an item found within bee nests and beehives. Once harvested, it can be used in a number of recipes to create new items, or even to wax copper blocks and prevent them from oxidizing.

Here’s how to get honeycomb in Minecraft, where to find it, and how to use it once you’ve gathered it.

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How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

To get Honeycomb in Minecraft, use shears on a full bee nest or beehive. Bee nests spawn naturally in the overworld, whereas beehives must be crafted manually. If you don’t already have beehives set up, you’ll need to find a bee nest in the wild. There are a number of biomes where this is possible, each with varying chances of a bee nest spawning:

Biome Chance
Meadow 100% chance
Plains/Sunflower Plains 5% chance
Flower Forest3% chance
Forest/Birch Forest 0.2% chance

Clearly, your best bet is to find a Meadow. When you find a bee nest, regardless of biome, it’ll be up high on the side of a tree, just below the leaves.

How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

Obviously if you are playing in Minecraft Creative you can grab Honeycomb from your menu whenever you want, but the main question is how to get Honeycomb in Minecraft Survival? Well, you need to know that there are various states that a bee nest can be in. Naturally generated bee nests typically contain 3-4 bees. These bees fly around the vicinity of the hive and search for flowers. Once they find flowers, they float around them and eventually return to the nest, now covered in pollen.

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How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

Each time they enter the nest covered in pollen, the nest begins to create Honeycomb. Whenever the bee exits the nest to search for pollen again, the honey level inside increases by 1, all the way up to 5. When the honey level reaches 5, you’ll notice a visual difference on the nest itself. The holes of the nest will turn yellowish-orange, and it will begin dripping honey particles below.

How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

This means the bee nest is full, and ready to be harvested. You can either collect Honey from the bee nest using a Glass Bottle, or obtain Honeycomb using a pair of Shears. Note that you can’t do both - after harvesting either Honey or Honeycomb, the nest will be empty.

Now what happens if you spawn in a world where you just can't seem to find a Bee Nest? Unfortunately, you are fresh out of luck as the only way to get Honeycomb in Minecraft is by harvesting it from a Nest. The only consolation to offer is that Meadows and Plains, the two most likely biomes for Bee Nests to spawn, are far more commonly generated (and therefore discoverable) for you, so keep searching and you'll likely stumble upon one sooner rather than later!

After using Shears on the full bee nest, 3 Honeycomb will drop to the ground and the Bees within the nest will become hostile, flying towards you and dealing damage if within range to sting you. To prevent this, place a Campfire within 5 blocks, or directly beneath the nest, and the smoke from the fire will keep the Bees calm.

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How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

Now you have the Honeycomb, you can use it to craft a Beehive where you can lure Bees to create Honey and Honeycomb wherever you wish. At a crafting bench, place 3 wooden planks horizontally across the top and bottom rows, and 3 Honeycomb across the middle row. If you're wondering how to get Honeycomb without a Beehive, you'll simply have to rely on the naturally spawning Nests in the world. Beehives aren't difficult to craft, but if you don't want one near your build for one reason or another, simply memorize where the nearest Bee Nest is.

You can also use Honeycomb to craft Candles by placing String above it on the crafting screen or place 4 Honeycomb in a square configuration to make Honeycomb Blocks. You can coat it on Copper building materials to stop them from oxidizing.

How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

Most people will likely be playing through Java, but for those of you playing on Bedrock Edition, have no fear! You can use the exact same methods of harvesting and using Honeycomb regardless of what version of Minecraft you are playing. This is particularly relevant as from Update 1.19 you automatically own both Java and Bedrock versions of the game, even if you only bought one prior.

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How to mine honeycomb in minecraft

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How to mine honeycomb in minecraft