Bee Workforce

Raise bees and let them help build your base.

Bee Workforce is a Minecraft Forge 1.20.1 mod that expands vanilla bees into specialized workforce bees. Bees can build, gather honey, fight, mine, landfill, move items, collect dropped items, and bring back small byproducts from their environment.

You can scan an existing structure into a Blueprint, let Construction Bees build it, breed bees in a Selective Breeding Hive, and assign specialized bees to worksite blocks such as Bee Mining Blocks and Bee Landfill Blocks. Large Blueprint Projects can also be stored as Project Cards for larger builds.

Vanilla Bee Nests and Beehives are used as homes for Bee Workforce bees.

Main Features

• Create Bee Workforce bees from vanilla bees
• Scan existing structures and save them as Blueprints
• Let Construction Bees carry materials from Bee Builder Chests and build from Blueprints
• Remove blocks that are in the way of planned construction and return drops to Bee Builder Chests
• Breed two parent bees in a Selective Breeding Hive
• Inherit and vary traits such as HP, movement speed, remaining life, carry capacity, combat stats, and personality
• Use Honey Forager Bees, Construction Bees, Mining Bees, Landfill Bees, Combat Bees, Item Finder Bees, and Item Carrier Bees
• Honey Forager Bees visit flowers and increase the HONEY_LEVEL of their home Bee Nest or Beehive
• Combat Bees can attack nearby hostile mobs as a group
• Item Carrier Bees move items from Bee Shipping Chests to Bee Receiving Chests
• Item Finder Bees collect nearby dropped items and store them in Bee Builder Chests
• Bees can occasionally bring biome-based byproduct items back to Bee Builder Chests
• Bee Mining Blocks and Bee Landfill Blocks define mining and landfilling work areas
• Client-side outlines show worksite target areas
• Large Blueprint Project Cards support larger section-based construction plans
• Blueprint Export / Import devices can write and read Blueprints and large projects as .bwbp files
• Bee-only enchantments include Rain Tolerance, Storm Tolerance, Snow Tolerance, Water Tolerance, Lifetime Conservation, and Bee Silk Touch
• Catch bees with a Bee Catching Net and carry them without losing saved state
• Recovery Ledger support helps protect against technical entity disappearance cases

Basic Flow

1. Find vanilla bees and breed them to grow your colony.
2. Use items such as Forager Honey, Builder Honey, or Combat Honey to obtain your first Bee Workforce bee items.
3. Register bee items to a Bee Nest or Beehive.
4. For construction, create Printed Blueprint Paper with a Blueprint Creator Block and set it in a Bee Construction Block.
5. Put required materials into a Bee Builder Chest.
6. Use the Selective Breeding Hive with two parent bees and honey from adjacent vanilla hives to produce offspring.
7. Place Bee Mining Blocks or Bee Landfill Blocks where you want Mining Bees or Landfill Bees to work.
8. Use a Huge Blueprint Creator Block with an empty Blueprint Project Card when you want to create a Large Blueprint Project.
9. Use Blueprint Export / Import devices when you want to share Blueprint files.
10. Watch the bees work.

Bee Species

Honey Forager Bee

Visits flowers and returns to its home Bee Nest or Beehive to gather honey. This is a useful base species for supporting selective breeding.

Construction Bee

Places blocks from Blueprints and removes blocking blocks when needed.

Mining Bee

Mines a fixed area below a Bee Mining Block. Drops are stored in Bee Builder Chests.

Landfill Bee

Places sand, gravel, or red sand into holes and fluid surfaces around a Bee Landfill Block.

Combat Bee

Detects hostile mobs and attacks together with other Combat Bees from the same hive. Combat stats such as attack, defense, evasion, and critical chance matter.

Item Finder Bee

Collects dropped items around its home and stores them in Bee Builder Chests.

Item Finder Bees are also better at bringing back small byproduct items from the surrounding biome.

Item Carrier Bee

Moves item stacks from Bee Shipping Chests to Bee Receiving Chests.

Selective Breeding

The Selective Breeding Hive produces offspring from two parent bees.

Offspring inherit traits from their parents with small variation. Selection policy, biome, and nearby blocks can affect trait direction and species mutation routes.

The Selective Breeding Hive consumes HONEY_LEVEL from horizontally adjacent vanilla Bee Nests or Beehives as Honey Units. It does not directly generate Honey Bottles or Honeycombs.

Construction and Blueprints

Blueprints save block placement and direction data for a structure.

Normal Blueprints are handled as Printed Blueprint Paper. Large Blueprint Projects are handled as Blueprint Project Cards and reference section data in the Project Store. Large projects are intended for builds that are too large for normal Blueprint items.

Blueprint Export / Import devices can write and read normal Blueprints and Large Blueprint Projects as .bwbp files.

They do not save the following:

• Air
• Fluids such as water and lava
• Items inside chests
• Items inside furnaces or other containers
• Internal data stored by block entities

Because air is not saved, placing a build inside a mountain will not automatically dig out the rooms inside it.

Work Range

Bee Workforce bees work within an area centered on their home Bee Nest or Beehive.

33 × 33 × 33

Bee Builder Chests, Bee Construction Blocks, Bee Mining Blocks, Bee Landfill Blocks, logistics chests, and work targets should be placed within this range.

Bee Lifespan

Bee Workforce bees do not have a time-based lifespan, but each bee has a limited number of remaining actions.

Work, honey gathering attempts, and combat can consume remaining actions. When remaining actions reach zero, the bee disappears.

Configurable Settings

The following common config settings can be changed:

• Maximum size of each Blueprint dimension
  • Default: 16
  • Allowed range: 8 to 64
• Maximum number of blocks stored in one Blueprint
  • Default: 4,096
  • Air and fluids are not counted
• Maximum serialized size of one Blueprint
  • Default: 262,144 bytes
  • Absolute maximum: 1,048,576 bytes
• Whether hostile mobs can target Bee Workforce bees
  • Default: enabled
• Bee lifetime mode
  • Default: NORMAL
  • EASY disables remaining life consumption
• Maximum Large Blueprint Project size
  • Default: 256 x 256 x 128
  • Absolute maximum: 512 x 512 x 128
• Maximum stored blocks in a Large Blueprint Project
  • Default: 262,144
  • Absolute maximum: 1,048,576

The configuration file is beeworkforce-common.toml in the config folder.

Notes

• Bee Workforce is still in development. Species behavior, traits, recipes, and work speed may continue to change.
• Construction Bees, Mining Bees, and Landfill Bees remove and place real blocks in your world.
• Please make a backup before using the mod in an important world for the first time.
• Bee Workforce bees moving through blocks is intended behavior.
• Falling blocks such as sand and gravel may fall after being placed.
• Regular chests are not used as building material storage or logistics chests.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.20.1
• Minecraft Forge
• No dependency on Forestry or other content mods