Here’s how to tame, breed, and move bees in Minecraft

Taming bees in Minecraft can make the little creatures almost as useful as they are cute. Almost.

Minecraft bees can provide all sorts of useful crafting ingredients including honey bottles, honeycomb, and more. They’re also very cute, making them ideal in-game pets to keep around the base. If you’re interested in gaining some fuzzy friends of your own, here’s how to tame, breed, and relocate bees in Minecraft.

To tame bees in Minecraft, players must first locate a beehive. Hives spawn in a bunch of different biomes, but the easiest way to find them is to look for a meadow. These elevated areas are found on the sides of mountains and were added in the Caves and Cliffs Part Two update. Each meadow is guaranteed to contain at least one beehive with some accompanying bees. In fact, players can break a full beehive to transport a bunch of bees quickly.

After finding a bee, players can tame them and make them breed by directly feeding them flowers. Feed a bee flowers until hearts start to come out of its head. They will then seek out another bee and produce a baby bee, which will quickly grow to maturity. This is completely different from how bees reproduce in real life, but we’ll let the inaccuracy slide in the name of efficiency.

How to move bees around in Minecraft

Individual Minecraft bees can be led around using either flowers or leads, and each method comes with pros and cons.

Once you’ve tamed your new bee colony, it’s time to move them to a designated location. This is necessary to keep them near your home or towards a newly-built Minecraft bee farm. There are two options for relocating tame Minecraft bees. A flower is easier but not as reliable, while leads are consistent but require the item.

Minecraft bees are naturally attracted to flowers, and that includes one held by a player. Simply holding out some Minecraft flowers will attract bees towards the player, though they may get distracted by other flowers or blocked by terrain. Leads allow a player to directly control a bee’s movement. Attaching the lead will let you drag bees down from their mountain home and back to your home base.