I love bees

When I first talked about bees in Minecraft, I try to look at it from a purely practical point of view. Beekeeping is a decently useful thing to do. However, it is not extremely vital, and there is a lot of setup to be done before you can start. Not to mention the fact that finding bees in the first place is a massive pain.

However, all that won’t change the fact that I love them.

If I am staying at my base, I play extremely passively. I don’t even kill and breed animals. All I do is to just tend to my crops and leisurely fish for days. And on that note, I am extremely grateful that fishing now gives you more than just cod (it was just “Fish” back then). I am essentially playing 3D Stardew Valley with no NPCs.

However, now that bees are here, I have one new thing to do.

Watching the bees fly about, gathering pollen, then drift about the surroundings before flying back into its hive to make honey is mesmerizing. And waiting eagerly for the hive to be filled before gathering its contents in a bottle gives me something to look forward to.

Not to mention, if you have crops nearby, the bees can help fertilize it. For someone who farms enough in Minecraft to supply a whole city with food in one day, this does help me a lot by speeding up my crop growth. If only the bees can build chests for me to stockpile all these extra food, that’ll be great.

Not to mention, for a food source that requires zero maintenance and effort save for harvesting after setup, honey is decently good. The only other food sources that share this trait are melons and sweet berries.

Just to digress for a bit, it’s nice that they all have other utility uses. Honey can be used to craft sugar and bees can fertilize crops. Melon slices can be crafted into Glistering Melon Slices, which is used to brew Potions of Healing. Sweet berry bushes are a viable defense options against hostile mobs. As food sources go, all three are somewhat mediocre, which makes sense game balance-wise since they need no maintenance after setup except for harvesting. But it’s good that they are given other purposes to make it worthwhile.

And lastly, bees are just adorable. Watching them fly about, dance around flowers, help out with farming, then go back to make honey is rather relaxing. For a guy who does nothing but farm and fish for whole hours when playing Minecraft, this is perfect. Just looking at them doing their thing, with glass bottles ready when it’s time to gather honey is pleasant.

When I last played the game years ago, before I resumed late last year, the only thing swimming in the oceans were squids. Horses were the newest mobs to be introduced back then. Now, the ocean is teeming with life, polar bears roam the tundra, and parrots that learned creeper noises gives me heart attacks every time I enter a jungle. But out of all these new mobs, my most favourite one is the bee.

In fact, I dare say bees are my absolute favourite mob in Minecraft, bar none.