Can confirm, bees do not spawn with the nest. Tried this in rising and mining worlds in main north.

 

can also confirm. 6 successfully spawned bee nests in rising, and 3 successfully spawned bee nests in mining. no bees spawned.

 

are the bees the only way to get the honey blocks?

 

Collecting the honey from bee nests is the vanilla way of getting honey bottles to then craft honey blocks. On ECC /kit mobs2 gives 4 honey bottles (enough for 1 honey block).

 

The current running theory on the server is that the reason they don't spawn in Rising is because they are technically a hostile mob even though they are only hostile if provoked.

If there was a way to set them as always passive, that would be lovely. At least in rising.

It was pointed out to me that we might not be allowed to have such a thing in the end, but we can have lots of sheep and chicken within reason. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

@andrewkm

Everything works and bees are spawning as intended now in mining, post-mining reset.

 

Yes, correct.

Bees only spawn via oak/birch trees that can either be naturally generated or grown by a player. And yes, as said above, they consistently spawn in such an environment in mining.