The Ultimate Guide to Productive Bees

Welcome to the complete guide to the Productive Bees mod! This tutorial covers everything you need to know to become a master of bee farming in Minecraft. Whether you’re looking to automate honey production, breed custom bees, or harness their unique traits for resource generation, this guide has you covered. This guide is filmed on Minecraft 1.21.1 but applies to most versions of the game.

Getting Started: The Big Book of Bees

The first item you’ll want to craft is the Big Book of Bees, which requires a book and a bee cage. A bee cage is crafted using a honey bottle and dark oak planks (or any type of planks). This essential tool allows you to right-click on bees to capture them and right-click on the ground to release them, making bee transportation incredibly easy.

Vanilla Bee Basics

Before diving into the modded aspects, it’s important to understand how vanilla bees work, as Productive Bees enhances and builds upon this foundation.

Bee Hives and Nests

Bee hives naturally spawn in the wild and can be identified by hovering over them to see their honey content and bee count. You can also craft bee hives in vanilla Minecraft. Bees will automatically treat crafted hives as their home. Use the bee cage to capture wild bees and transport them to your custom hives.

Pollination and Honey Production

Bees require nearby flowers for pollination. During daytime, bees will exit their hives, pollinate flowers, and return to make honey. They will ignore flowers in flower pots. Bees with pollen on their bodies can also pollinate your crops (potatoes, wheat, carrots, beetroot, melons, sweet berry bushes, and pumpkins) naturally, similar to using bone meal.

For crop pollination to work, the bee must fly one to two blocks directly above your crops. Bees can fertilize plants up to 10 times, with attempts made randomly each tick. The pollination process takes approximately two minutes for bees to return and produce honey.

Harvesting Honey

Bees return to their hives at nighttime and when it’s raining. To harvest honey combs, use shears on the hive. To collect honey bottles, use a glass bottle on a full hive. For vanilla hives, you’ll need silk touch to preserve the bees when harvesting, but this isn’t necessary with modded Productive Bees hives.

Breeding Bees

You can breed bees just like any other animal in Minecraft. Simply hold a flower and right-click on two nearby bees to make them breed and produce a baby bee.

Finding More Hives

If you’re looking for more nests of a specific type, use the nest locator. Shift right-click on a block of the same type as the nest you’re seeking (sand for sand hives, grass for meadow hives, etc.) to help locate similar hives.

Advanced Bee Hives

The Productive Bees mod introduces advanced bee hives, which are a significant upgrade over vanilla hives. To craft an advanced bee hive, combine a vanilla bee hive, honeycomb, shears, and a campfire.

Benefits of Advanced Hives

Advanced hives offer several key advantages:

Bees don’t become aggressive when you harvest honey (they’re pre-smoked by the campfire)

You don’t need silk touch to keep bees inside

Automatic passive honey production when glass bottles are placed in the bottle slot

Automatic honeycomb production

If the Bumble Zone mod is installed, you’ll also receive pollen pups

To populate an advanced hive, use a bee cage to capture a bee and release it near the hive. Bees will automatically seek out and home to nearby advanced hives.

Expansion Boxes

Expansion boxes can be crafted using planks and honeycomb. These can be attached horizontally or vertically to advanced hives to increase bee capacity from 3 to 5 bees per box. Multiple expansion boxes can be stacked for even greater capacity.

Processing Honey: The Centrifuge

The centrifuge is one of the most important machines in Productive Bees. It processes honeycomb into wax and liquid honey, which are used for countless recipes and operations.

Standard Centrifuge

Place honeycomb into the centrifuge to convert it into wax and liquid honey. You can output the wax via item pipes and the honey via fluid pipes. Speed upgrades will significantly increase processing speed.

Powered and Heated Centrifuges

The powered centrifuge requires energy (such as from modular machinery or other mods) and operates faster than the standard version. The heated centrifuge also requires energy and can process honey blocks into liquid honey in bulk quantities.

Creating Modded Bees

Honey Treats

Honey treats are the foundation of bee production in Productive Bees. Craft them using honeycomb and a honey bottle. Honey treats serve two purposes:

Used to craft upgrade bases for machine upgrades

Fed to nests to spawn modded bees

Spawning Bees from Nests

Different nest types can spawn different bees when fed honey treats. Examples include:

Dirt nest → ash mining bee

Jungle nest → green carpenter bee

Quartz nest → crystalline bee (requires quartz instead of honey treat)

Obsidian nest → traconic bee (requires dragon’s breath, must be in the End)

To spawn a bee, place a nest, use honey treats on it repeatedly, and watch the repopulation cooldown timer decrease. Once it reaches zero, a bee will spawn. Multiple treats accelerate the process.

Checking Bee Information in JEI

Use Just Enough Items (JEI) to check what bees a nest can produce and what flowers they require for pollination. Press U on a bee to see its pollination requirements.

Breeding and Converting Bees

Bee Breeding Overview

Breeding allows you to create new bee species by combining two existing bees. For example, to breed an iron bee, you need an ash mining bee and a crystalline bee, both bred together with a flower present.

Manual Breeding

You can manually breed bees by feeding them flowers while they’re close to each other. However, this is tedious and can be automated with machines.

Breeding Chamber

The breeding chamber automates bee breeding. To use it:

Craft an upgrade base (used in this machine)

Place two bee cages containing the bees you want to breed into the chamber’s hands

Place a breeding flower (check JEI for requirements) into the center hand slot

Place an empty bee cage on the output side

Power the machine

Install speed upgrades for faster breeding

Note: Breeding may produce different bee types (there can be multiple outcomes). The resulting bee will be a baby bee.

Incubation Chamber

Baby bees must be grown into adults using the incubation chamber. Place your baby bee cage and honey treats into the incubator, power it, and wait for it to mature into an adult bee.

Bee Conversion

Some bees don’t breed but instead convert from other bees. For example, the prosperity bee converts from a crystalline bee when you right-click it with a prosperity block. Check the conversion tab in JEI for specific conversion requirements.

Gene Editing and Trait Extraction

Understanding Bee Traits

Each bee has several traits that affect its performance:

Type: Where the bee lives (hive, solitary, etc.)

Productivity: How much it produces (normal, slow, fast, etc.)

Weather Tolerance: Can it fly in rain?

Activity Pattern: Diurnal (day) or nocturnal (night)

Endurance: How long it lives

Temperament: How aggressive it is

Gene Extraction Methods

Method 1: Difficult Way (Bottling)

Build a trap using glass, pistons, a bottle, and a trapdoor to crush bees and extract their genes. This is tedious and not recommended.

Method 2: Easy Way (Gene Sampler Upgrade)

Install poke-poke gene sampler upgrades in your advanced bee hives. These will slowly extract genes from visiting bees without harming them. Use item pipes and filters to automatically output genes into storage.

Gene Indexer

The gene indexer combines multiple gene samples into a single 100% gene. Place your gene samples into the indexer, apply a redstone signal (lever), and it will combine them. Alternatively, you can manually craft genes together in a crafting table.

Applying Genes to Bees

Once you have a 100% gene sample, craft it into a specialized honey treat (e.g., temper normal 100% honey treat). Use this treat in the incubation chamber when growing a baby bee to permanently insert that gene into the adult bee.

Productive Bees and Utility Machines

Bee Catcher

The bee catcher automatically catches any bees flying near it. Features include:

Catches free-flying bees in a configurable range

Accepts bee cage storage for caught bees

Baby filter upgrade to catch only baby bees

Filter upgrade to catch only specific bees

Range upgrade to increase catching radius

Optional feeding slab or flower on top to attract bees

Feeding Slab

The feeding slab serves as a collection point for bees to feed. It holds up to 3 item stacks. When lumber or quarry bees feed from it, they produce random items. You can add honey to provide bees with regeneration effects.

Honey Generator

The honey generator burns honey (bottles, blocks, or buckets) to produce energy. Accepts two upgrades:

Productivity upgrade: Lowers honey consumption

Speed upgrade: Increases energy production speed

Bottle Art

The bottler processes various honey products. Uses include:

Converting honeycomb + honey bottle into honey treats

Converting honey + empty bottle into honey bottles

Bee Jar

A decorative block that displays a bee inside. Place a bee cage into it to show off your favorite bees.

Gene Indexer

Used to combine multiple gene samples into a single high-percentage gene. Requires a redstone signal and time to process.

Specialized and Professional Bees

Solitary Bees

Solitary bees can spawn from naturally occurring nests found in the world. Examples include:

Ash mining bee

Blue banded bee

You can check JEI for recipes to craft solitary nests that spawn these bees.

Professional Bees

Certain bee species have special abilities:

Farmer Bee: Harvests nearby crops and leaves produce on the ground (4-block radius, upgradeable with range upgrades)

Rancher Bee: Shears and milks nearby animals

Lumber Bee: Nibbles on nearby wood and collects it in its hive

Quarry Bee: Collects stone chips in its hive, craftable into stone variants

Dye Bee: Produces dye based on the flower it has pollinated

Horde Bee & Cubic Bee: Specialized utility bees with unique functions

Wild Bees

Special bees with unique requirements:

Draconic Bee: Lives in the End, doesn’t require pollination items

Ghostly Bee: Pollinates nearby soul sand

Glowing Bee: Found in specific environments

Magmatic, Slimy & Sugar Bag Bee: Various utility functions

Check the mod guide for detailed information on each specialty bee type.

Additional Bee Equipment

Bee Helmet

Craft a bee helmet using a diamond helmet and a bee nest (requires silk touch to obtain a vanilla nest, or simply craft one if you have Bumble Zone installed). When worn, bees will follow you, defend you from hostile mobs, and won’t become angry at you.

Hive Dripping

Bee hives naturally drip honey. To prevent this mess, place a sponge underneath the hive to absorb the dripping.

Machine Upgrades

Productive Bees offers numerous upgrades to enhance machine performance. All upgrades are crafted using an upgrade base.

Productivity Upgrades

Available in three tiers (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Omega), each tier increases production output:

Alpha: 100% production increase (crafted with basic materials)

Beta: 150% increase (requires nether stars)

Gamma: Higher increase (requires echo shards)

Omega: Maximum increase (requires unobtainium or equivalent, varies by modpack)

Multiple productivity upgrades can be installed in one machine for cumulative benefits.

Speed Upgrades

Speed upgrades dramatically increase machine processing speed. Up to 4 can be installed in most machines. The higher-tier speed upgrade (crafted with nether stars in some modpacks) is nearly instantaneous.

Range Upgrades

Increase the effective range of machines like the bee catcher and advanced bee hive, allowing them to affect bees and flowers from greater distances.

Filter Upgrade

Allows you to specify which bee species are caught by catchers or processed by machines.

Simulator Upgrade

Dramatically improves server and single-player performance by simulating bee behavior rather than having bees physically exit the hive. Bees will still pollinate flowers and produce honey as normal, but the pathfinding AI burden is eliminated. Ensure the required pollination flowers are still placed in front of the hive.

Baby Upgrade

When installed in a hive or catcher, the baby upgrade gives a chance to spawn a new baby bee each time honey is delivered. Multiple upgrades increase the spawn chance. Note: This doesn’t work with bees that cannot self-breed.

Adult Filter Upgrade

When installed in a bee catcher, only adult bees will be caught. Can also be installed in advanced hives.

Poke-Poke Gene Sampler Upgrade

Slowly extracts gene samples from bees visiting the hive without harming them. Multiple upgrades can be installed for greater gene output. Use with item pipes and filters to automate gene collection.

Anti-Teleportation Upgrade

Prevents bees in this hive from teleporting, which some bee species are capable of doing.

Upgrade Block

Changes machine output from honeycomb items to honeycomb blocks. This is an expensive upgrade requiring wax blocks, traconic chunks, and other rare materials.

Pollen Upgrade

Some pollen collected by bees will be sifted and deposited into the hive when this upgrade is installed.

Conclusion

You now have a comprehensive understanding of the Productive Bees mod! From capturing vanilla bees to breeding custom species, automating honey production, and genetically engineering bees with specific traits, this mod offers endless possibilities for resource generation and automation. Remember to use JEI frequently to check bee requirements, breeding recipes, and upgrade applications. Whether you’re building a small honey farm or a massive automated production facility, Productive Bees provides the tools to create efficient, productive bee operations.

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