Minecraft: How to automatically harvest honey

Honey is a very useful resource in Minecraft. You can use it as a food source. You can also craft sugar and honey combs using honey. By the way, if you consume a bottle of honey, you can also cure the poison effect.

To get your hands on more honey quicker, you can automate the honey harvest process. Here’s how you can do that.

How can I automatically harvest honey in Minecraft?

Step 1: Gather bees

You need bees to produce honey. The first step is to gather bees. You can find bee nests on birch or oak trees. If there are flowers near oak or birch trees, you can bet there are also bees around.

Step 2: Start up a honey farm

After you found a bee nest, you can start up your honey farm. You can move the nest to the area where you want to build your honey farm or lure the bees to a constructed hive.

To build a bee hive, you need honeycomb and wood. You can plant a garden to lure the bees to the new hive.

To move a bee nest, you need the Silk Touch enchantment. If you use any other tools, you won’t get anywhere and you’ll destroy the nest. Don’t forget to use a Minecraft campfire to calm the bees while moving the nest. Otherwise, they might attack you. You’ll get poisoned and the bees that attacked you will die.

Alternatively, you can also leave the nest where you found it and return to it from time to time to collect honey.

Step 3: Use complex blocks to automate honey harvesting

You need complex blocks to automate the honey harvesting process. You need hoppers, observer blocks, note blocks and a chest. You also need to collect Redstone to get the job done.

You can use Redstone calculations to automate honey harvesting. More specifically, the Redstone comparator records when a bee leaves the hive. This means that it can detect when the hive is full. That happens when five bees have come and gone.

Steps to build an automated honey farm in Minecraft

1. First, place the chest.
2. Then place the hopper and ensure it’s pointing into the chest.
3. Place the bee hive on the hopper.
4. Make sure the dispenser points at the hive.
5. Place a note block.
6. Add a piece of Redstone on the note block.
7. Then place the observer block next to the note block.
8. Place a random full block on top of the observer block.

Image credit: PickleBuzz

Basically, the key element is the observer block. It detects when the hive is full, and then send a signal to the dispenser. The disperser is full of either empty bottles (to collect honey) or shears (to collect honeycomb).

⇒ Learn more: Minecraft: How many blocks is max height?

Step 4: Ensure bees have access to flowers

Most importantly, make sure your bees have permanent access to flowers to produce honey. You can plant a garden near the bee hive to ensure a steady supply of pollen which your bees can then use to produce honey.

Alternative architecture

You can use add either shears or bottles in the dispenser. But keep in mind that you need to set the disperser to trigger only when the bee hive is full. Otherwise, it will discharge 4 bottles for every honey bottle it gets. You can use a comparator to get the job done.

Did you manage to build your own automated honey farm? Let me know in the comments below.

References: