In Minecraft, you can’t Harvest Beehives or Bee Nests without the Bees inside attacking you. As soon as you use a pair of Shears or Glass Bottle on a Hive, you’ll be attacked by a swarm of Bees, they have no loyalty to you.
Luckily, there is a way to prevent this. Below you can read our guide for stopping Bee attacks in Minecraft. For more guides and best-of content, make sure to check out our dedicated area here!
How to Stop Bees Attacking
Currently, there is only one way to prevent Bees attacking you when harvesting their Hive in Minecraft. And that is by placing a Campfire directly underneath a Hive. It’s assumed that the smoke knocks them out, and stops them being aggressive.

The only way this works is if the Campfire is directly underneath the Hive position wise. However, there can be a gap of 5 blocks at most between the Hive and Campfire without any obstructions. Once you’ve done this, you can harvest the hive using either Shears or Glass Bottles.
How to Craft a Campfire
Crafting a Campfire needs to be done on a Crafting Table, as it uses 7 out of the available 9 slots. You will also require 3 Logs (any kind), 3 Sticks and a piece of Coal or Charcoal.

Arrange all the items in the same pattern as the screenshot above. Which is place the 3 Logs on the bottom row of the Crafting Table, the Coal in the middle slot and wrap 3 Sticks around this in a triangular shape. Then you can take your Campfire.
What Can You Harvest from Bee Hives
There are two different items that you can harvest from Bee Hives in Minecraft. These are Honeycomb, and Honey Bottles. Both these items have different uses.
Bottles of Honey are primarily a food item. They restore a lot when it comes to hunger values. They are also used in the creation of Honey Blocks, which are similar to Slime Blocks in how they affect movement. You can obtain Honey Bottles by using empty glass bottles on a Hive.
Honeycombs are a little different. They are harvested by using Shears on a Hive, and you’ll retrieve 3 each time. With 3 Honeycomb and 6 Wood Planks, you can craft a new Bee Hive. Whilst combining 4 of them in a Crafting Table will give a Honeycomb Block, which is purely decorative.