While not exactly massive, the next Minecraft patch is shaping up to be pretty sweet, quite literally. You can expect it to add bees, bee nests and hives, the ability to farm and bottle honey, and since we're sticking with the bee theme, a variety of bug fixes as well.

As for the bees themselves, they will be cute and fuzzy neutral mobs. They'll mostly fly around looking for flowers to gather pollen from, after which they will return to deposit it in their home nest. Best of all, while in the process of going back to their nest, they will also help you grow your own crops! So much like real life, the Minecraft bees will be quite useful to have around.

Bee nests will spawn naturally in the flower forests, plains and sunflower plains biomes, though if you don't live in those, worry not as you'll be able to create your very own bee hives. You can also breed more bees through the use of flowers, as well as harvest both honey and honeycombs. In order to make any of this possible without getting stung over and over again, you'll need to calm the bees down with a bit of smoke. A simply campfire placed underneath the nest should do the trick!

As you can see, it's not the biggest nor the most important of updates, but I do appreciate Mojang adding stuff like this into Minecraft. It really helps flesh the world out and make it just a little bit more interesting to explore. Besides, who doesn't love some cute, 'little' bees!

In any case, you can learn more about the bee update, as well as give it a try for yourself, over at the official website. Have fun making bee puns!