Bees in the wild keep leaving their hives after a while. Even with pollen on them, they keep flying away from their nest and with no bees anywhere near me, I have empty bee hives around my world. To watch them leave, make a flat world in creative, place a beehive, and spawn bees and flowers. Eventually they'll leave the nests forever as they wander through the void of land. This bug works in creative and in survival as I saw them leave their hives both in a flat world and in my survival only world.
Linked issues
is duplicated by 3
relates to 2
Comments 7
They have a strong tendency to wander northwest (if they don't find a flower or forget where their nest is located) which often results in losing bees when flowers are just out of reach in the southern direction.
I've noticed this bug as well. Some bees (even in enclosed areas, like bee farms) will never enter their hive, or take an extremely long time to enter their hive.
This happens when they are carrying pollen, or just when it becomes night time and they try to enter their hive.
All hives in my testing had 3 bees each, there is no possible way all hives in my testing situation were full. The bees simple did not enter the hives.
In my game, they will fly up to the nest as though they are going to enter, hover there for a few seconds, then start circling the nest like they couldn't figure out how to go in. Sometimes they will do this all night. It reminds me of when I walk into a room, stop, can't remember why I went in that room, then just walk away. It's kind of annoying. Other times it works and they go in normally but it's very hit or miss. The bees don't have to operate like clockwork but some consistency with the mechanics would really be nice here.
The northwest bias issue mentioned in a comment above is tracked at MCPE-41092.
I could not reproduce this behavior. For me, a bee with pollen would always enter a nest or hive if it could find one that wasn't full (3 bees inside already).
When it can't find a nest with room for it, a bee will start searching for another one. If that search takes it too far from where the nests are located, it will probably not find its way back. Eventually it will enter an unloaded chunk and become suspended until a player gets close enough to load the chunk again.