Honey Block Heroes

I’ve just about had it with bees. Ever since they flew into the Java Snapshot and Bedrock Beta, they think they’re nature’s greatest engineers. The proof? Bees collect pollen from flowers, turn it into honey, and then make hives out of it. Ooh, look at you with your structurally sound homes. Show offs. Just because I live in a pile of granite and rotten flesh, doesn’t mean you’re a better builder than me, bee.

Well, actually, of course it does. But luckily, I found some humans who can outbuild a bee. I’ve gathered some of the finest builders from Minecraft Reddit to showcase their honey block machines. Honey blocks (which are also available to be tested in the Java snapshot and the Bedrock beta) allow players to exceed the previous 12-block push limit of pistons, so you can create contraptions that just weren’t possible before. Look at this!

This flying machine was made by KiemPlanetG, who is at the forefront of this sticky new industrial revolution. “We can essentially bypass the push limit of pistons by alternating between slime blocks and honey blocks, because now we are able to divide the load between multiple pistons,” they explain.  

In simple terms, that means big chunks of blocks can be moved much further than they could before. Let’s see what other machines people can build with this delicious cube!

Conveyer belts

As well as sticking to other blocks, honey blocks also stick to items — this gave HasseHynd the idea of using them to make conveyor belts. “Using any other block, the item would not get grabbed by the belt and would just stay in the same place,” HasseHynd tells me.

They first tested their conveyor belt out by making a factory with conveyor belts that transported items. This is handy if you’re mining and want to send diamonds back to a certain location, like a base with a chest inside where you can store them. Or, I dunno, you could use a conveyor belt to deliver a huge order of detonating TNT to that nearby hive of bees. Not that I would ever do such a thing...

HasseHynd’s second idea was to create a sushi bar with a conveyor belt so you can grab food without having to move from your seat. Brilliant! I might have to steal their idea and open my own sushi restaurant on my Minecraft server. Come for the slickly-transported salmon, leave soon after due to the weird honey aftertaste.

Elevators

The next engineer I’d like to bring forward is S5Z7, who was very excited about the arrival of honey. “I wanted to see everything it could do,” they say. “Have you heard those satisfying squish noises?!” They’re not wrong — the sounds of the honey block are very pleasing.

S527 isn’t just a honey block audiophile. They constructed this lovely honey block elevator.

Let’s take a ride!

Look at how efficient it is! While elevators aren’t new to Minecraft, the ones you can make with honey blocks are very easy to build and lots of fun to ride – though, you will have to put your face and belly into a lot of sticky honey. You get used to it.

No doubt you want to build one for yourself. Who can blame you? Here’s how it works:

Why stop at making elevators for just a single person when you can make a huge one for many people? That’s exactly what Zakimals did after seeing the contraptions Minecrafter’s had made with honey blocks on Reddit and YouTube.

“I already loved building flying machines, especially lifts to go from one floor to another,” Zakimals says, “so I decided I should make a machine by just using existing flying machine designs and combining them to make one big machine.” The result is this industrial-sized elevator.

COMBINE HARVESTER

We all know bees like to harvest flowers and that they do so by sending an army to clean up entire fields. What a waste of time! A combine harvester lets just one person do that much work all by themselves.  

Properly functioning combine harvesters haven’t been possible in Minecraft until recently. That’s due to them being built from a combination of pistons, end rods, and minecarts (check out this video guide to making a combine harvester) – the end rods are used to absolutely tear up farmland as you tried to harvest fields.  

What’s changed since update 1.15, according to 0827Jake, is that end rods “can now break wheat without destroying farmland.” Hurrah! This, along with the knowledge that honey blocks can slide past slime blocks, allowed them to create a new type of combine harvester – “using flying machines to break the crops seemed logical,” they say. Yes, um, very logical (anyone else drawing a blank?). Don’t worry if you don’t understand just watch this video and be amazed.

KiemPlantG has been making some of the biggest and most advanced machines with honey blocks. “The honey block is a real game changer,” they say. “I have received some messages from people who said Mojang finally gave redstone users too much power after they saw what I made with them.”

You can see why people have said that by looking at KiemPlantG’s ‘floor remover’, which opens a gap in the floor at the push of a button, and can be as big as you want it to be.

Anyone else terrified at the idea of a gigantic hole opening up in the floor beneath them? That’s the terrifying power of human engineering! “I used some clever redstone tricks I’ve learned over the past ten years of playing Minecraft to make this work,” KiemPlantG says.

Their latest build applies that same idea to a vertical wall to create a massive doorway. It’s so big you can probably fit at least a million bees through it. Would be a shame if someone locked them all behind this door so I can finally live in silence without all that annoying buzzing...

Have you built something brilliant with honey blocks? Stick it to an email and send it to scoops@minecraft.net so we can prove once and for all that human engineering is superior to the bee! Or if you’re a bee that’s good at Minecraft, send in your build, and I’ll happily apologise to you and your entire species.