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jupiterswasphouse · 5 months ago

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WASP REVIEW - BEES (MINECRAFT)

[Image ID: An official render of the Minecraft bee /End IDs.]

Alright y'all, it's time for an iconic one. One of the most common of only a small handful of arthropods in the game (ironically given the fact they felt the need to specifically make Bane Of Arthropods a thing), and the least hostile one at that, these blocky bees have deservedly buzzed their way into beloved status amongst Minecraft players over the past five years since their official debut. However, as I'm well aware at this point in this series, popularity does not necessarily mean accuracy, so how do these insectoid cuboids really stack up?

Starting from their appearance, it's obvious is that their bodies are heavily fused, with one solid body segment. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you this, but nevertheless, the body of a bee is notably more segmented than the body structure of the Minecraft bee, having three body segments: The head, the mesosoma (also referred to as the thorax, though these are classified a bit differently), and the metasoma (also referred to as the abdomen, same thing here as with the mesosoma). This is clearly a stylistic choice, so I can't get too mad at it, but it is disappointing, given the fact that Minecraft's spider is more segmented, perhaps even having more body segments than the real thing.

[Image Sources: iNaturalist, Yuriy Danilevsky, and PBS, Nebraska Public Media | Image IDs: A photo of a black and yellow/orange European honey bee feeding from a yellow flower, followed by an illustration of a honey bee (female, worker) showing its body parts as labelled. Mandibles, antennae, eyes, thorax, abdomen, stinger, foreleg, middle leg, forewing, hind wing, and hind leg (with labelled pollen basket) /End IDs.]

That said, there are some other things I take issue with regarding this design apart from just this choice of segmentation. I feel like it's safe to assume this bee is based off of the most common honey bee species, the European honey bee (Apis mellifera), in which case, they honestly feel like they're a bit too wide? This wouldn't be a big deal, except, I feel that if they were a bit longer it would help keep the proportions from feeling kind of... Off- Even if we do simplify a bee down to one continuous body segment, it helps to have some distinctions made between the areas of the body. The way they've done it here almost makes it seem as though the mesosoma is just straight up not there; Like the head goes directly into the mesosoma with no in-between.

Another thing that would help this design to not feel quite as "fused together" would be a slight change in coloration. The Minecraft bee has a yellow head, which goes directly into the stripes of the metasoma a little further down the body. In a lot of real world honey bees, the head and mesosoma are generally darker and more solid in color than the lighter and/or more vibrant stripes of the metasoma (with some exceptions), varying in shade depending on the amount of fur (the length of the setae), from a muted yellow to a dark brown color; Further still, honey bee heads can also be noticeably darker overall than the mesosoma at times. Taking this into consideration, I would make the Minecraft bee long enough proportionally to fit another pixel or two lengthwise—enough to provide slightly more space while also not being too long—making the area representing the mesosoma a slightly darker yellow, and the area representing the head the same color as the brown stripes on the original design.

But enough about the body segmentation! Let's talk about the smaller details for a minute here. The wing count is wrong, with only two wings as opposed to the four of a real bee, and they're lacking in terms of venation. The leg count is right but the proportions are all wrong, and they suffer from the same issue as the body, where they look completely fused together. I completely understand wanting to simplify this aspect of the design, but going from five major segments (Coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia, and tarsus) is kind of ridiculous!

[Image Source: bugguide.net | Image ID: An illustrated diagram showing the legs of three Hymenopterans, the first two being of other wasps, while the last one is of a bee, with each segment labeled. Coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia, and tarsus, with metatarsus on the bee. /End IDs.]

The antennae themselves are alright, if a bit short; I appreciate them having little pixels on the main body where they connect to the head, but yeah, it would've been impossible to give them much detail at all at this resolution. The position of the antennae, however, is what throws things off, as they're placed above the eyes when they should be placed between their eyes. Speaking of! Their compound eyes are FAR too small, they should reach up and around the top of their heads, while the eyes here reach only about the halfway point of the texture; and to add insult to injury here, they don't even have their three ocelli (simple eyes)! Nor do they have any mouthparts to speak of, which is an even more major thing to be missing for a bee!

[Image Source: Arizona State University | Image ID: An illustration of the head of a worker honey bee with mouthparts extended, the whole head labelled as follows; Compound Eye, Ocellus (one of three), Antenna, Labrum, Mandible, Maxilla, Labial Palp, Proboscis, and Glossa /End IDs.]

In the end, there's not really much left to cover in regards to this design just due to the fact it's so simplified, though I will say one last thing about it, for now; Their stingers shouldn't be out like that 24/7. Some of their relatives DO have their ovipositors (same thing, a stinger is an ovipositor that can also inject venom) out on the regular, but not bees.

[Image Source: mchoneybeev | Image ID: An in-game screenshot of two Minecraft bees in a cherry forest /End IDs.]

Ok so, what about their behaviors, then? Well, honestly, I think these are actually some of the more accurate ones I've covered in terms of behaviors in this series. Unlike many previous reviews, Minecraft actually goes through the effort of showing that these insects visit and pollinate flowers; Which, barring the ones that are explicitly aliens or robots, would be the case for every Hymenopteran we've covered in the real world. Now, pollination in Minecraft doesn't have an effect on the flowers themselves, it certainly affects the bees!

After visiting a flower, the bees will return to the hive, supplying the hive with honey, as well as beeswax in the form of honeycombs. While this happens much quicker and in larger quantities per trip in the Minecraft bees for purely mechanical reasons, this is relatively accurate to the honey bees of our world, which produce honey from the sugary nectar of flowers, in turn producing more wax as well as they process various bits of plant matter.

[Image ID: An image of a nest made by bees in Minecraft, in the state in which it is full of honey /End IDs.]

We don't actually see these processes happen, however, which I'm sure is partially, fairly enough, because they didn't want to animate it, but it's also because their nest is an enclosed arboreal nest! Bees of the genus Apis primarily prefer to nest in sheltered locations, so the enclosed nature of their nests isn't entirely inaccurate; When they can't find a hollow log or something of the sort, they'll even nest out in the open in the branches of trees. However! These open air nests are exactly that, open! In the instances that they make their hive in the branches of a tree, they will actually make it in a structure that is entirely exposed to the elements, in slabs of honeycomb with no protective outer walls. It's also, perhaps, because of this enclosed shape, and the sheer scaled-up size of the bees in Minecraft (Roughly 0.56 meters if you go by the 1 block = 1 meter measurement) that these nests can only fit a measly three worker bees compared to the upwards of tens of thousands in a real colony of honey bees.

There are actually social bees, though, that produce enclosed nests, made of wax, out in the open, in trees—even producing honey. They're in the same family as the honey bees we know and love, in fact! However, these ones are a part of the genus Trigona, whereas the common European honey bee belongs to the genus Apis.

[Image Sources: iNaturalist, Kahio Tiberio Mazon, ResearchGate, Multiple Authors, and AJC, Tim Thompson | Image IDs: A photo of two black and red bees of the species Trigona spinipes on a yellow flower, followed by an image of a nest in a tree made by the same species, followed again by an arboreal nest made by a bee species within the genes Apis, showing how the honeycomb is shaped into slabs exposed to the air /End IDs.]

Some other things we don't seem to see in Minecraft are the queen and drones of the hive! Perhaps understandably so, as queens don't leave the hive many times throughout their lives, and the drones mainly leave the hive to mate with queen bees, along with the fact that there aren't as many drones and queens in a nest as there are workers! This does also further confirm, on top of the presence of their ovipositors, that all the bees we see in minecraft are females! It would be quite fun to see how they would translate the eyes of a drone into this style, however.

[Image Source: Healthy With Honey | Image ID: A close up set of photos that shows the differences in facial structures between a female, worker bee and a male, drone bee /End IDs.]

Again, on the topic of those ovipositors (I.E., their stingers), how do they attack? Well, thankfully this time there's not anything fantastical about their attack patterns, as they simply sting the player when provoked. Which is another thing! They only attack when provoked; when their hive is attacked, when they're attacked, or when you attempt to harvest from the hive without taking the proper precautions. I feel like this strikes the right balance between being dangerous if messed with and also not being "aggressive", once again unlike many other depictions of Hymenopterans in media in general, as, usually, you get either complete pacifists or murder machines fueled by anger.

Furthermore, when these bees sting you, they take another cue from their real world counterpart and actually lose their stinger! Most bees, ants, and other wasps that are capable of stinging are also capable of doing so more than once; Famously, though, honey bee workers will, more often than not, get their barbed stingers caught in the skin of things like mammals, and lose it. Understandably, Mojang did not depict what actually happens when they lose their stinger, as this leads to the partial disembowelment of the bee, thusly causing it to die.

[Image Source: PBS, Rose-Lynn Fisher | Image ID: An image of a honeybee stinger magnified 650x /End IDs.]

As I mentioned in passing a minute ago, you can, however, absolutely harvest from your hives without aggravating your bees—which doing so could end up potentially killing both you and your bees. With the power of a campfire! And no, of course I'm not suggesting that you burn your bee nest, since, as it turns out, the bees are calmed by smoke! Another well known fact due to the process of beekeeping, as beekeepers usually use smoke to calm bees. I would not necessarily recommend the campfire method, though, as it might be a bit too much in general, and may be a bit too hot for the bees. Even still, relatively cool smoke, applied in just the right amount as to be completely safe for them, will mask alarm pheromones and suppress bees' sense of smell, in turn suppressing their alarm response.

Fittingly, this isn't the only aspect of beekeeping carried over into the Minecraft world, as bees can also be moved from their natural hive into a man-made box hive!

[Image ID: A render of the wooden beehive from Minecraft /End IDs.]

Not much to say here about the structure itself here, as it's made by the player rather than being made in nature. Sadly—and logically due to their equal size—this structure cannot contain any more bees than the natural hive can, however, it still remains useful as the easiest way to move bees from one place to another. That said, I feel it necessary to mention; Due to the fact that, again, we never see a queen, this implies that either these bees have a social structure that is quite different from the real world, or that these bees are leaving their nest without their queen, which would be highly disadvantageous for the colony as a whole, as the queen is the only fertile female! You can even get them to leave individually, which is highly strange behavior for a honey bee. If brought away from the nest, a singular worker bee will typically not attempt to make a new home, and instead try to find a way back to its original home and its queen.

One final thing I want to bring up is that... You can put bees on leads! In fact, this is a major way of bringing the bees from a natural hive to a wooden one. This would be highly impractical in real life, however, it is very cute!

[Image ID: A screenshot of a Minecraft bee on a lead /End ID.]

With everything out of the way, we're left quite a few aspects that are accurate to the real world, but some strange inaccuracies all over the place as well. I find the design to be one of the least accurate among those I can directly compare to the real world, but certain aspects of their behavior, as well as the care put into including certain details, redeem them somewhat. Still, their behavior does contain some inaccuracies as well; So, these blocky bees get my accuracy rating of-

Overall: 4.5 to 5/10

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