I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but as honeycomb is going to be playing a major role in the 1.17 update, I figured I'd bring it up. The Entity Activation range for some reason seriously messes with bee AI. It's quite common for them to stop moving (like they're supposed to) but then never start up again once you get in range. So essentially they'll just get stuck, even if you're pretty close to them. Often you have to nudge them around to wake them up. As far as honey/honeycomb farms go, they seem to do better when they're right next to the hive, but they still tend to get stuck still for long periods of time. If you let them free roam however, they'll just fly off somewhere, stop moving and basically stay there until you go nudge them. It'd be nice to get bee EAR adjusted or something to let them do what they need to do, or have them "wake up" like villagers do on occasion to collect pollen and return to the hive. If you need I can try to get some footage of this behavior, but it's not too hard to spot. Thanks, Ry
The best way to handle this is to put the hives in a building. Before I did that the bees would get stuck in the corners of the res trying to get to the flowers in the middle of the road.
I watched the bees on my res yesterday and noticed they do take breaks but after roughly 10 - 20 seconds do start wandering again. I stood still while watching that. If I moved closer they all started moving again as I got into range.
Hmm... I will say they tend to behave better if they're in a small enclosed space, but when I still had a bee farm on my res, I'd walk right up to the glass and they'd sit there for like 15-30 seconds not doing anything before suddenly seeming to remember that they're supposed to be making honey. Then when I was further, not even out of range, they would just sit there. This prolly needs some more observation.
Bees also have a thing for corners. If the blocks just meet at a corner, bees prefer to inspect the possible escape route more than work. Filling in full blocks on the corners (think L ) will make it less interesting. Dome roof is beautiful and bees will glitch out or just stay staring at the possible escape spot. Fill it in, they go back to work. => Square or rectangle building and roof is simplest, sorry it needs functional over beauty. Also the flowers need to be next to the hives. They will still try to go look if not in a building. Don't use honey blocks to create your hive building - just trust me : they attempt to eat the honey then wiggle through the block. Stacked hives are okay, bees don't care.
This was a thing in vanilla 1.15 and was patched in 1.16, so technically if it's still happening on EMC it's a bug, so that's important to know if it's currently happening. I personally haven't noticed this bug in particular. Just the bees basically shutting down if you aren't breathing down their necks.
Something I noticed too is the baby bees can pass through glass panes. I had to switch to glass block for windows.
