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Anyway, the bees.

As many probably know, bees were part of the 1.15 update. It wasn't until the 1.15.2 update that they added the ability to grow birch or oak trees and have a chance of getting a hive to spawn as well. Since much of the area around my original base is explored, we'd have to travel a long ways to find bees naturally generated, so this was a welcome addition to the game. But even though every post in this thread so far is from 1.15.2, I haven't taken the time to actively try to get bees until now. But here they are.

In this first nest, there were 3 bees. For some reason, quickly after they started flying around, one flew off never to be seen again. I don't know why. But I was glad to have at least two so I could breed some more.

I dug a single block hole, put a campfire in it, and placed a carpet over it so the bees wouldn't fly into the fire.

Then I built some more hives, and bred some bees.

If you look closely, you can see all 5 of my bees flying around in this picture.

And here's a wider shot with all the hives and most of the bees visible.

Here's the front view, looking back the opposite way

And I liked the night view as well

And here's a couple of other angles, first from the side

Well, front/side anyway

And from the back

Now for some inside shots. The first floor... you remember the nether portal in front of the old house, down below? Well, I never moved it, I just incorporated it into the newer, bigger house.

From the opposite direction, looking up towards the second floor. Conveniently, the steps going up also contain the stairway going down to the iron mine, underneath what you see here.

Here's looking out of the same room, but at night and at the sorter room and raid fortress through the windows.

Back in the room with the nether portal, looking out the other way towards the tower containing the spiral staircase

Now on the 2nd floor, looking down the stairway containing the path to the iron farm, and out the front windows towards the raid fortress

I plan to make a room just for brewing potions here.

Same angle, but backed up a bit and looking down the mine shaft

There's a porch on the front accessible from the 2nd floor, here's a night view looking at the raid fortress

Looking back the other way, there's a circular room with a view of the ocean. I plan to make this look like a dining area.

From closer to the window, you can see the bridge to the fishing island. It looks cool at night.

Below this, there's another circular room that I haven't decided what to do with it. It is sort of level 1.5.

As you go up the spiral staircase in the tower, you enter into the attic area

As you can see, I have a bunch of armor stands and barrels with armor in them here.

Another view of the armor stands looking towards the front.

Above the circular room, in the attic is the enchanting room

Lots of storage here as well.

You probably remember the old house from earlier posts, not very big, very square, and boring--just enough to start from. Well, I built around it.

Another angle

And then I got rid of it. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to remove. The mineshaft and shaft going to the iron farm, how I wanted to work around those. Eventually, I got it done. Here's the outside views after adding much of the 2nd level and starting on the roof.

And a little bit more...

While working on the house, I saw a couple of pillager patrols go by. Eventually, we got to do our first raid with the new raid fortress. I didn't take many shots of that, but I can report that the raid fortress worked very well for the raids. The biggest problem was trying to hit the raiders from the top while they tended to run around an awful lot. However, many of them just ran straight into the lava when I turned it on so that simplified things a lot. The witches were the biggest problem because they tended to stay back a ways so they didn't come running towards the village center and die in the lava. Also, the ravager beasts seemed to stay out of the lava for the most part but since they are pretty slow, we could just shoot them with the bow and they'd die eventually.

I did find out that vexes can fly straight through the cobwebs at the top of the fortress without slowing down so they were a bit of a challenge when they spawned by the Evoker. Still, the raid fortress worked well for dealing with raids, so that was good.

I realized that the top of the fortress would make a great spot to deal with phantoms when I stay up too many nights in a row while mining. So, I added some cobwebs that I collected from the abandoned mine I found.

And you can see I already fought off a few phantoms

I haven't had a raid yet with this fortress, and I'm not sure if these will slow down vexes, but if they do that as well, that would be awesome.

I started working on a much bigger house. I looked at a lot of pictures of houses online for ideas. I really liked one called "Falcon Manor" so I've taken most of my ideas from that Minecraft design. Apparently the Minecraft version is based on a real place. Either way, I'm not going to copy the entire design, but I'm using a lot of the same basic building styles from it.

After building some more

And more

Somewhere along the way, I also added the fourth row to the sorter inside the sorter building

The first row is almost completely full, I've got plans for most of the last row, and I'm thinking of adding another level at the top of the building.

The only drawback is that I've noticed some lag, especially when loading up the game at the beginning. I think all those hoppers and redstone devices may be causing the lag. We'll see how it goes if I add more.

One other thing I did. Some days ago, I created an experience farm out of a skeleton spawner. As you can imagine, I get a lot of bones and arrows, and not a little armor and bows out of it as well. So I decided to build a special sorter just for that stuff.

And here's the sorter, with some large chests to collect the drops.

Here's a picture from the top level of the tower. You can see my base photo tower in the background.

The end rods double as something to keep you from accidentally walking into a hole from the end as well as providing light.

Inside the tower, I've added another level as well

You can see the bottom of the level from here,, also, there's windows that open with trap doors so you can shoot at raiders.

Here's the middle level, with more windows that open.

Finally, as you go up, before you get to the top. the inside view, where I've added some trap doors to use to shoot straight down if needed.

Previously, I posted the outside view with and without lava. Here's a couple more shots of the same, but of the finished building.

And the same with the lava flowing down.

Earlier, I created my iron farm below ground in a particular chunk on the far side of the sorter building from where I normally post base pictures. So I decided to create the raid fortress centered in that chunk with an entrance from below ground that can only be accessed from other buildings.

Here is the entrance from a tunnel that goes under the sorter building.

I laid out where the wall will be along with a "moat" around it where I will have lava that I can turn off or on with a switch.

Underground, I dug out an area for redstone, repeaters and sticky pistons to make the moat deeper and open it up for lava to flow into.

I didn't take pictures of all the repeaters and sticky pistons, but you can see the corners that I couldn't put pistons because there was no good way to activate them that I could find.

After the pistons were in place, this is a shot of them "off", in other words lowered. Again, you can see the corners that don't move.

The intent was to have lava source blocks on top of where you see the stone brick under the edge. When the pistons are lowered, then the lava flows into the moat. When the pistons are raised, the lava is blocked off.

And here's the pistons raised, it just looks like a nice green grassy square around the fortress.

After building the tower up a lot higher...

I added some extra overhang area on the top with pistons that control lava source blocks that I can turn off and on.

It adds some character to the tower as well so it isn't just a tall rectangle or square.

Once the pistons are retracted, the lava falls

After seeing how the lava flows into the moat, I decided, I may not need lava around the outside edge underground.

As you can see, once the moat pistons are lowered, the lava flows through all of it with no grass showing.

Anyway, here's a couple more shots from the tunnel and inside the tower.

The switch is for the pistons that raise and lower the level of the bottom of the moat.

At the bottom of the tower looking down towards the tunnel.

And now looking up towards the top of the tower where a platform is in place.

And finally the top of the tower where the pistons are blocking off some lava. I have obsidian around the lava so you know not to accidentally expose the lava at the top.

I've added doors and trap doors to different openings in the barn that I can close to keep skeletons and pillagers from shooting at me, or creepers from blowing up on the outside if/when I'm standing on the inside.

And from the side

I finished the "loft" floor and have it well-lit so no mobs spawn

And I've added doors to the various pens and put some horses in place.

Eventually I'd like to have at least one of each color and pattern--that's why the barn is so big. Admittedly, I'm a bit of a hoarder too, but that's a separate issue. There's several colors I don't have yet. I guess I need to do some exploring.

On a separate note, as previously stated, I have an iron farm that is still producing tons of iron. But that also means it is producing tons of red poppies. I noticed the other day my barrel containing poppies is nearly full so I had to figure out what to do with them all. Well, once I figured out how to make an automatic composter, I realized I could sort out the poppies, put them through a composter, and that would significantly reduce the problem. So, part way down the pipe that takes the iron from the farm to put it in the sorter, I added this:

The iron and poppies drop through the pipe and any poppies get sorted out here. You can see a switch in the background that I can turn off when I want to keep the poppies though, if for some reason I'm running out of red dye (not likely, but you never know.)

Then the rest of the iron and any bonemeal is transported to the sorter.

There is another switch here to stop bonemeal from going into the sorter in case I decide to collect it here rather than the regular sorter.