Bees are not only a lively addition to your life in Minecraft but also a source of useful resources like beeswax (also called honeycomb) and here’s how to get it.
To harvest beeswax from the bees you will need to use shears on a full bee nest that also has a campfire underneath. You can then use honeycombs to craft a variety of decorative items and even your own beehive.
Finding and Filling the Bee Nest
To get your hands on honeycomb you will need to first find a bee nest out in the world. The chances of spawning one are quite low unless you are in the Meadow biome. So if you find one make sure to remember where it is. Later you will be able to move the bee nest or craft your own and move the bees there.
Once you found the bee nest you need to let bees do their things and produce honey. You can help them by bringing more flowers (if there aren’t any around) close to the nest. But other than that you just need to wait until the nest is full which takes around 2 minutes (note that bees only work in sunny weather).
When the bee nest is full you will see it on the block itself. The holes will be filled with honey and the hive will be dripping honey from the bottom.
How to Harvest Beeswax (Honeycomb) in Minecraft
Now that the bee nest is full you can either collect honey or harvest honeycomb. You can only do one at a time and will need to wait again for the next harvest.
To get beeswax (honeycomb), you will need a pair of shears and a campfire. Place the campfire under the bee nest and right-click with the shears on the bee nest. This will grant you 3 Honeycombs.
The campfire is needed so that the bees don’t anger when you collect the resources. You can technically harvest beeswax while bees are out and a few blocks away from the nest and they won’t anger. But do that at your own risk.
Beeswax (Honeycomb) Crafting Use
Beeswax (honeycomb) in Minecraft has quite a few uses. With the main of them being the crafting of a beehive. A beehive requires 3 honeycombs and 6 planks to craft and it is a human-made bee nest that you can use to start your own farm.
Another good use of beeswax in Minecraft is waxing any copper blocks you can get to stop oxidizing. It will not revert the withering copper got (you use an axe for that instead) but waxed copper will not oxidize any further. This applies to all sorts of copper blocks including slabs, stairs, etc.
You can also craft candles using a honeycomb and a string. They look nice, light up the place can be colored, stacked on a single block, and even put on a cake.
Finally, you can craft a honeycomb block from 4 honeycombs to decorate your place a little bit. But it’s a purely decorative block. Pair those with a couple of bricks and maybe other decorative blocks to build the house of your dreams.
