Scary Stinging Swarm

"Oh no, no, not the bees! NOT THE BEES!! AAAAAAAAARRRGH! OH, THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYYYYYES! AAAAHHHHH! AAAAAGGHHH!"

— Edward Malus, The Wicker Man (2006)

The worst fate in the universe is to face a Zerg Rush of stinging insects such as bees, wasps and hornets. Nothing so small should cause so much fear amongst creatures so much larger... and yet they do. The distinctive coloration. The horrible buzzing noise. The agony of stinging. The way they move in swarms. The kamikaze mentality. And their determination to chase you. Of course, if you're allergic or if there are a lot of the little bastards, they can put you in the hospital or even kill you.

Those using the trope often depict the insects as males and often use honeybees even though that kind dies after using its sting. The swarm will also share one mind and will often form shapes in the air like an arrow pointing to its target, or a weapon.

Often, the swarm is deliberately riled up by the one it attacks. A particularly common variant involves someone going after a beehive for its honey, only to be faced with a large swarm of very angry bees. Similarly, someone may mistake a wasp nest for a beehive, try to get honey from it, and only end up pursued by outraged wasps and without any honey to show for it. It's also possible for the nest to be knocked down or damaged by mistake, such as by someone climbing a tree or throwing balls, to the same result.

To escape the swarm, the character will often jump into a body of water. Since bees can't swim, they are usually forced to give up — which isn't advised in real life unless you have gills or the body of water is open and large enough for you to swim away underwater, since they'll wait. (Your best bet is to cover your exposed skin in mud.)

Subtropes include Bee-Bee Gun. If a monster or person is made of bees, then they're The Worm That Walks. Often seen in the Hornet Hole, or living in a Stock Beehive. Almost always overlaps with Bee Afraid, but may also overlap with Wicked Wasps, the bees' even meaner cousins. Sometimes overlaps with Bears Are Bad News because fictional bears like their honey, and may set these bees off when trying to get at the hive. See also The Swarm, which refers to anything tiny and dangerous that moves and attacks in large numbers, and Ant Assault, another troublesome members of Hymenoptera order. Contrast Virtuous Bees.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A commercial for the Toronto Blue Jays starts with a bunch of kids throwing rocks at a big glass living-room window. Roy Halladay, strolling along the street, notices the kids, picks up a rock and throws it in the same direction. The rock, however, knocks a nest of bees out of a tree above the kids, forcing them to flee as Halladay turns and strolls away with a tiny fist-pump of triumph.

Anime & Manga

• Arakawa Under the Bridge: Season 2, Episode 5 has Jacqueline, a woman dressed as a bee, accidentally hitting a beehive while trying to grab a bird. Because of her outfit, nobody besides Hoshi and Rick realizes she's being attacked, thinking that bees won't sting another bee.
• Are You Lost?: The four girls, stranded on a remote island, must gather honey from a beehive, which involves getting past the bees. Homare makes it clear that bee stings can be dangerous and comes up with a plan to use a torch to smoke them out, then retrieve the honey. It works, but Homare gets stung a few times.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: In one episode, Bobobo became a roulette and picked Donpatch and one of the Terrible Triplets, Beep, to face punishment. One of these punishments was to be attacked by a swarm of hornets.
• Case Closed: One of the mysteries involves a woman being chased off of a balcony by hornets. The murderer knew that she was nearly stung to death as a child and used her phobia against her.
• Dae Jang Geum: In the episode 12 of anime adaptation, an old woman sends a group of her pupils to retrieve wild honey from an old mountain hermit. The hermit explains that the honey must be extracted straight from a giant beehive, a process that gets one guy and one girl from the group stung.
• Dragon Ball: Roshi tries to toss a beehive on Goku and Krillin as part of their training. He actually goes one step further by tying them to a tree, and then deliberately knocking the hive. By the end of the session, the boys are covered in stings.
• Ganso Urayasu Tekkin Kazoku: Chapter 172 deals with a variety of different species of bees and wasps, most notably an entire hive of Asian hornets that gets stuck on Akane's clarinet, leading to her friends very carefully trying to help her out. Spoiler: It doesn't end well for her.
• Happy Lucky Bikkuriman: Episode 26 has Jello being stung by angry bees while out in the woods. She seems surprisingly chipper in the scenes that follow, despite her grossly lumpy face.
• Himajin: Tsugumi gets stung by bees while collecting honey in the forest.
• Is This A Zombie?: Episode 2 of the second season has Haruna throwing Ayumu into a swarm of bees that was pursuing her. Surprisingly, he is unharmed when the swarm dissipates.
• Itadakiman: In episode 9, the trio of villains is chased by bees after hitting a beehive with a rock.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run, during the fight with Oyecomova, he knocks down a wasp nest and sends it towards Johnny and Gyro to get the wasps with Sticky Bombs attached to blow the duo up.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: The second DVD short features a scene where all the dragons are dressed up like bears. Kanna brings along a beehive as part of her outfit, resulting in Kobayashi getting chased by an angry swarm.
• My Hero Academia: Vigilantes: Hachisuka, a part-time villain who works for the creator of a Psycho Serum, at one point injects it into numerous random bystanders by commanding a swarm of special bees that live in her eye socket.
• Nalong: Season 2, episode 10 has Atchan be attacked and stung by a swarm of bees seemingly out of nowhere.
• Naruto:
  • The Filler villains in the "Search for the Bikochu Beetle" arc weaponize bees, as they are a clan of bug users.
  • A semi-filler fight in Shippuden has Sakura accidentally dislodging an enormous hornet's nest from a mountain while attacking Kabuto. Oddly, the hornets ignore her and go straight for Kabuto who, despite being startled, cuts them down before they can hurt him.
• Onegai My Melody: In the first episode, Kuromi tells a story about an unfortunate picnic mishap that eventually led to her disturbing a beehive and getting stung.
• One Piece: The South Bird that Luffy and Chopper are chasing drops a beehive and a wasp's nest on them, one after the other.
• The 18th episode of the PaRappa the Rapper anime ends with Gaster and Groober being chased by bees.
• The Pet Girl of Sakurasou: One of Sakura Hall's assignments involves dealing with its chronic beehive problem. In the first opening alone, we see a cautious Sorata attempting to deal with a hornet's nest on the balcony, with Mashiro and Misaki (safely behind a glass door) cheering him on; later, he's running away from an angry swarm, followed shortly by Jin and Chihiro-sensei.
• Pokémon: Beedrill attacks have happened more than once in various media. Since Beedrill are three-foot tall bugs with stingers (yes, plural) like kitchen knives, people have it worse than most examples on this list.
  • This is a recurring event in the anime for Ketchum & Co. If they're within a hundred kilometers of a hive, they can expect to be running from a swarm of Beedrill by the episode's end.
  • Team Rocket isn't spared either. In the original series episode "Challenge of the Samurai", they get attacked by a swarm of Beedrill while they're hiding in a tree dressed as Kakuna, after their protective cardboard "tank" is eaten by Weedle.
  • This ends up happening to Red during a bicycle race in the Pokémon Adventures manga, and to Diamond when he and his Munchlax anger a swarm of Combee by eating from their tree sap.
• Pokonyan: In Episode 80, when Poko finds a beehive in his backyard, he carries it around the town trying to find a suitable spot to hang it. After bringing it to the flower shop, beauty salon and even a wedding, swollen faces abound.
• Prehistoric Boy Kum Kum: The title character knocks down a hornet's nest in the second episode, and the angered insects comically attack the whole village.
• Reborn! (2004): Reborn casually tosses honey on protégé Tsuna before unleashing a swarm of bees on him. "The mafia always live with danger", he warns Tsuna as the latter runs for his life.
• Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth: The second episode has Lee giving Sakura a bouquet of flowers... filled with bees. As he panics and tries to swat them away from her, he accidentally beats her up and gets himself stung.
• Sherlock Hound: One episode has Sherlock substituting a draped cage with valuable a parrot in it with a draped cage with a hornet's nest in it, this isn't found out until the villains are high up in the air on their little airplane and can't exactly run.
• Shimauma: Chapter 8 features a particularly gruesome example. Kiinu is riding on the bus when she overhears a beautiful, arrogant woman verbally harassing a timid overweight girl nearby. Kiinu follows the bully out of the bus, waits until she enters a bathroom stall, then dumps a hornet nest inside. She even stays long enough to take a picture of the nearly-dead woman's grossly swollen body, reveling in the irony that now she's the ugly one.
• Squid Girl: In chapter 141, Ika hits a sunflower that happens to be housing an angry bee... which is followed by a shot of Eiko putting a band-aid on Ika's nose.
• Tantei Opera Milky Holmes: In the first episode, TD, Sherlock, Elly, Nero and Cordelia all attempt to enlarge their breasts by getting bees to sting them. The plan works, but they end up stung on their faces as well.
• Teekyuu: One chapter in volume 6 involves the main cast playing a board game that inexplicably releases a swarm of hornets on them. Yuri skillfully swats every angry insect that comes her way, only to turn and find Kanae and Marimo horribly stung.
• Tomatoman: The Butterfly Queen is chased by bees while wearing a honeycomb-themed dress at a ball in Episode 28.
• Utawarerumono: In the second chapter of the manga, Aruru tries to get honey from a beehive while the group is hiking in the mountains. She winds up falling from the tree, taking the hive with her, and everyone gets stung.
• Vector Case File: A girl and her brother try to take on a nest of Japanese giant hornets with a can of aerosol and a young beekeeper tries to keep her restless bees in their hive... by hugging it. Neither situation turns out well. The worst is in chapter 38, where two kids were mysteriously stung by killer bees. Later in the chapter, the highschool girl responsible is nearly stung to death when her plan backfires.
• Viewtiful Joe: In an episode of the cartoon, an annoying forest sprite tries to force Gaia's Vengeance on Joe and Junior by dropping a beehive on them.
• Yatterman: In episode 7, Doronjo gets a beehive dropped on her as part of Dokurobe's random, sadistic punishment game. Similarly, episode 33 has Doronjo succeed in escaping from Yatterman with the Dokuro stone she was looking for... which she discovers is actually a wasp's nest after bringing it onto her ship.
• Yume no Crayon Oukoku: In episode 12, Silver plays dead to elude a bear. She's almost successful, but her monkey companion accidentally knocks a beehive next to her, leading to both the bees and the bear attacking her.
• Zatch Bell!: Zatch helps Kiyo and his classmate during a bug hunt... by dropping a beehive on them. Running quickly ensues.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In Season 5 episode 50, Doctor H. mind-controls a swarm of bees into chasing the Supermen. The Supermen fend them off by burning leaves and distracting them with the smoke that comes out of the flame.
• Harry and Bunnie: In "Hypnotized Bunnie", most of the main cast falls victim to this trope after a beehive gets tossed around at a beach party.
• Motu Patlu: In "John the Bee Man", the show's villain, John the Don, obtains a special light that causes bees to start chasing after anyone that it's flashed on.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: In episode 2, Wolffy is covered in honey upon entering Goat Village. Weslie then unleashes a horde of bees on him; Wolffy, predictably, is not amused in the slightest.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Numerous bee and bee-related cards have been released over the years, most conforming to this trope to various degrees.
    • Bee Sting, a direct damage-dealing card, show a terrified goblin being swarmed by angry bees.
    • The creature card Killer Bees shows bees that went beyond just stinging people and figured out how to forge metallic weapons.
      The communal mind produces a savage strategy, yet no one could predict that this vicious crossbreed would unravel the secret of steel.
    • The Unyaro Jungle of Jamuraa was home, before being erased from existence alongside a good chunk of northwestern Jamuraa during one of the setting's many near-apocalypses, to notoriously vicious and dangerous bees referenced in the cards Unyaro Bee Sting and Unyaro Bees.
      With no jungle left to contain it, the "plague of daggers" spread across Dominaria. — flavor text for Unyaro Bees.
  • Wasps and hornets have their fair share of cards as well. Like the bees, their cards usually depict them moving in swarms or emphasize their aggressive nature and stings.
    • The artifact card The Hive depicts an enormous wasp nest that allows players to generate a small wasp creature each turn.
    • The basic damage-dealing card Hornet Sting.
      It was only then — to his infinite sorrow — that Gork realized hornets don't make honey.
    • Actual wasp creatures include Caustic Wasps, Giant Dustwasp, Jagwasp Swarm, Hornet Queen (which instantly destroys any creature it deals damage to, presumably through its poisonous sting, and creates a small swarm of weak wasp creatures when it enters the battlefield) and Hornet Nest (which creates an amount of new insects equal to the damage dealt to it, representing each attack sending out a swarm of angry hornets).
    • While the wastelands of the Alaran shard of Grixis were mostly home to hordes of demons and undead, they also had some notable living fauna in the form of banewasps. While these insects normal prefer to feed on corpses, they can be quite vicious and have no compunctions against swarming and devouring living creatures. They live in enormous, reeflike hives that are so numerous and large that the area most infested with them was known as the Droning Isles.

Comedy

• Ross Noble: The "No Talking or Phones" Warning for the El Hablador tour shows the punishments that would be inflicted on people who disobey a warning. One of them is being attacked by a swarm of trained killer bees.
• Second City's 1995 mainstage show was called "A Pinata Full of Bees." Note that Second City's titles tend towards either really bad Puns or just plain Word Salad Titles.

Comic Books

• Amazons Attack!: A subplot involves the Amazons having their stygian killer hornets attack another hero, giving him only hours to live.
• Asterix: This is how Dubbelosix and his handler Surreptitius are put to death in Asterix and the Black Gold; Caesar sends them to the Circus Maximus as punishment for failure, where they are covered in honey and chased by bees.
• Bone: Quest for The Spark: The main trio come by a swarm of giant bees working with bears who want to steal honey.
• Marvel Universe: Swarm is a Nazi whose entire body is made of bees. (Or possibly a swarm of bees in the shape of a Nazi, Depending on the Writer.) Before gaining his superpowers, he was just a regular Nazi scientist, known as Fritz von Meyer, who tried to tame and weaponize the hive of mutant bees, but ended up getting stung and devoured to death by them, but thanks to bees' bizarre biology, his consciousness instead overtook their hive mind. As one might expect, his primary method of fighting is using his body composition of bees to sting his enemies, causing them immerse pain and potentially knocking them unconscious from the pain they endure.
• My Little Pony Micro Series: In Issue #3, one of the activities Rarity does in the hippie farm is helping Flax Seed collect honey. She thinks ahead and puts a protective suit on, but the angry bees reduce it to shreds and, at the end of the day, Rarity is covered in bee stings.
• Pyrénée: The eponymous wild girl is chased into a stream by a swarm of bees when she tries to collect some honey for the bear who's raising her. She gets very badly stung since she doesn't even have clothes to protect her, but later rolls in some herbs to reduce the swelling.
• Rulah, Jungle Goddess: In "The Thirsty Stone" (Zoot Comics #12), Tombo is following Rulah across the jungle via Vine Swing when the vine snaps and he lands on top of a set of bee hives. Pursued by an angry swarm of bees, he has to dive into the river to escape them.
• Superman:
  • Action Comics: In #291, the prankster villain Mr. Mxyzptlk makes a swarm of bees huge◊, hoping they'll frighten people. Supergirl deals with them by creating a giant vat of nectar to distract them.
  • At the beginning of the story arc Who Took the Super out of Superman?, a swarm of hundreds of billions of killer bees is approaching Metropolis. Superman gets rid of them by forming a whirlwind which drags the swarm away from his city.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin hates bees and hornets, and has been known to throw rocks at their hives. When he is stung by a bee, the incident becomes exaggerated in his memory:
  Calvin's Mom: (applying ointment) I don't see the "harpoon" that "gored" you, but this will help the sting.
  Calvin: Call the National Guard. I'm sure they can track the bee on radar.
• Crankshaft: Crankshaft keeps a bee colony in his backyard, and they've gotten loose or been involved in accidents on more than one occasion.
• Dick Tracy: In a 1960's story, Spots and his partner are hiding in a disused army tank, set up as a memorial in a city park, but can't get out when they realize bees have started swarming around the tank. They get rid of them by electrifying the outside of the tank.
• The Far Side: Bees and wasps have been the subject of a few cartoons, with varying degrees of sympathy for them.
  • One strip depicts a boy peeking into a hornets' nest with the hornets sitting around enjoying drinks at a bar. The caption states that "while it was foolish for Russell to approach the hornets' nest in the first place, his timing was particularly bad", as the hornets are celebrating "angry hour".
  • In another cartoon, a nest of wasps in a man's backyard begin throwing rocks at his home without provocation.
• Garfield:
  • The August 16, 2015 strip: On his way to Liz's house, Jon picks up some flowers. Unfortunately, some bees show up looking for the flowers. By the time Jon arrives at his destination, his face is full of sting marks and the flowers are ruined.
  • In an earlier strip, Garfield wants to frolic through flowers in the backyard, but a swarm of bees is hovering over them. He decides to play a trick by disguising himself as a giant bee, and the tinier insects fly away in fear. The fat cat brags as he relaxes in the flowers... and that's when he notices an even bigger stinger emerging from the plants. As Garfield runs away in fear, the "bee" raises his head — it's actually Odie, who's just beaten the cat at his own game.

Eastern European Animation

• Mr Krbec and his Animals: Aggressive swarming bees appear near the castle gate in one episode and they won't let any visitors in.

Fan Works

• A.A. Pessimal: An Assassin more used to cities is getting a crash course in everything Howondaland can kill you with. After being educated in what some of the more lively wildlife can do to you, Emmanuelle is relieved to hear buzzing bees in the distance. This, she thinks, she can deal with. Then her local guide steers her in a very wide circle around the buzzing, explaining only "Howondalandian bees, madame!"
• Born to Bee Wild: Grunkle Stan's pug trafficking leads to a bizarre offscreen Chain of Deals that earns him a plastic box full of bees (as well as $42.18, a pair of sunglasses, and a rusty saxophone mouthpiece). He has no idea what to do with the insects initially, but eventually Mabel suggests mailing someone a hamster ball full of angry bees as part of a revenge scheme.
• Creamed Cherries: Bambi is trying to get ready for a lunch date when a bee's nest located near the lunch spot unwittingly sets off the conflict when Thumper, trying to swat away the bees, accidentally smashes the berries Bambi gathered for Faline, forcing Bambi to get creative. The bees continue terrorizing Thumper and Flower and eventually whisk them away, forcing Bambi to go after them.
• In Fate Genesis, Sonic the Hedgehog and Lancer are fighting, and one of Sonic's moves is to throw a wasps' nest at the Servant. Lancer easily deflects it with his Protection From Arrows skill, but then has to contend with a swarm of angry wasps.
• At one point in Total Drama Legacy, Emilia disturbs a beehive and ends up getting stung by a swarm of bees.

Films — Animation

• The Emperor's New Groove: The villainess Yzma is briefly chased back and forth in the background by Synchronized Swarming bees, while her oblivious henchman Kronk engages in bird-spotting.
• Kirikou and the Sorceress: In Kirikou and the Wild Beasts, Kirikou gets rid of a black hyena pursuing him by dropping a wild bees' nest on it. After that, he mends the nest and puts it back on its place on the tree while apologizing to the bees.
• The Lion King 1 ½: During Timon and Pumbaa's plans to break up Simba and Nala; Timon tosses a beehive at the lions... but the bees stay floating in the air right behind him and chase after Timon instead. The next shot shows Timon with a swollen head due to all the bee stings.
• Ralph Breaks the Internet: The final video Ralph uploads to BuzzTube is an unboxing video. When he opens the box, he is engulfed by a swarm of bees.
• The Return of Hanuman: Maruti and his friends encounter an angry swarm of bees. He later uses a staff to suck the bees and later shoots the bees to another area which blocks a truck driver.
• Roger Rabbit Shorts: Roger Rabbit gets chased by a swarm of bees in the short film Trail Mix-Up.
• Song of the South: Br'er Rabbit hoodwinks Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear by having them take him to his "laughing place", which is a bush with a beehive in it. Br'er Bear, who is the first to fall for the scam, lampshades this:
  Br'er Bear: Hey! There ain't nothin' in here 'cept bees!

Films — Live-Action

• Bonnie Scotland: Laurel and Hardy, running for their lives from Khan Mir Jutra and his guards, go barreling into the khan's apiary. They then start picking up beehives and throwing them at the khan and his men. This works, but eventually the swarm of bees comes after Stan and Ollie. The film ends as our heroes run out of the khan's fort and right into the oncoming British regiment, the bees in hot pursuit.
• The Crush: Adrian, a messed-up teenage girl who wants Nick for herself, attacks his love interest Amy with a swarm of wasps released in a darkroom shed where she is processing pictures.
• Daddy Day Care:
  • Phil tries to remove a hornet's nest from the porch... by poking it with a stick. The kids who are safe indoors, however, think the result is quite a hoot.
  • The ending scene has Miss Harridan, reduced to a traffic guard, attacked by bees because of a flower Crispin placed on her vest.
• Holmes & Watson: While attempting to swat a mosquito with a cricket bat, Holmes unleashes a swarm of killer bees that badly sting Watson and then escape to terrorize London.
• Little Nicky: Adrian proves to the crowd how evil he is by bringing out Henry Winkler and covering him in bees. Later, Nicky has to do something bad so he can get back to Hell, so he also covers Winkler in bees.
• My Girl: Vada and Thomas jump into a lake to escape from a swarm of bees. Unfortunately, Thomas does not manage to escape from them later on, and dies from an allergic reaction to the stings.
• Robin Hood (2010): Friar Tuck attacks the French with his bees by hurling two beehives at a group of soldiers in a room and leaving the soldiers to be attacked by the bees.
• Save the Green Planet!: The protagonist douses a man in honey and then unleashes crates full of bees. Guess what happens.
• The Swarm (1978) has killer bees invading Texas. There are scenes of them dropping helicopters, crashing a train and making a nuclear plant explode.
• Tommy Boy: Tommy attempts to beat a drunk-driving arrest by pretending he is being attacked by a swarm of vicious bees.
  Tommy: Bees! Bees in the car! Save yourselves! Your firearms are useless against them!
• Troop Beverly Hills: The Animated Credits Opening shows the troop being attacked by a swarm of bees. They fight them off with their hair dryers, which apparently work in the wilderness.
• Tucker & Dale vs. Evil: An angry swarm of bees attacks Tucker when he accidentally cuts into their hive with a chainsaw. The sight of the screaming Tucker running around waving a chainsaw frightens one of the college kids so badly he accidentally impales himself on a branch trying to get away. While he's dying, a bee lands on his nose as if to mock him.
• The Wicker Man (2006): The Island's inhabitants are honey farmers rather than the fruit farmers of the original. The main character is deathly afraid of bees, due to being allergic to their stings, and flees in terror after running into a hive by mistake. His over-the-top fear of bees in the film is often mocked by viewers, particularly his famous utterance "NOT THE BEES!"
• The X-Files: Fight the Future reveals that domesticated bees are being used by the Government Conspiracy to spread a deadly virus that turns living humans into breeding tanks for homicidal aliens. All it takes is a single sting from their bee to make a Grey emerge from your body Chestburster-style. Oh, and The Syndicate can remotely control their bees, too. Sleep tight tonight.

Gamebooks

• Fighting Fantasy: In Slaves of the Abyss, the main villain, Bythos the Lord of the Abyss, has the ability to sic entire swarms of enchanted hornets on cities and villages, where anyone stung by his hornet swarm will be rendered unconscious... before disappearing altogether, and re-awakening in Bythos' Prison Dimension in the abyss. He abducted entire populations throughout the story, and much of the adventure revolves around the hero trying to infiltrate the Abyss in order to destroy Bythos.
• Nintendo Adventure Books: In The Crystal Trap, Zelda must retrieve some magic honey from a beekeeper as part of a Fetch Quest to rescue Link from a Crystal Prison. If she doesn't have the correct item to trade with the beekeeper for some of his magic honey, the beekeeper sends his bees to attack Zelda, resulting in a Game Over.

Literature

• In Bud, Not Buddy, Bud's foster parents lock him in a shed for the night. He sees what he thinks is a vampire bat hanging from the ceiling and cuts it in half with a shovel so it won't bite him. It turns out to actually be a hornet's nest. The swarm attacks Bud, who manages to escape through a window before he's stung too many times.
• The Cat Who... Series: Book #18 (The Cat Who Said Cheese) has an Exit, Pursued by a Bear where the murderer is stung to death by bees because the beekeeper he's coerced into being an accomplice forgot that wool attracted them.
• Chalice: In the climax of the story, the villain's plot is foiled when a veritable ocean of bees descends to interrupt his one-sided duel with the Master. There's not a lot left of him afterward.
• Cherry Ames: In Cherry Ames: Mountaineer Nurse, when the villain threatens Granny Smith, his shouts awaken a bee swarm that attacks him. He jumps into a spring, saving himself, but is badly injured by the stings.
• The Divine Comedy: The Uncommitted — people who in life took no sides, the opportunists who were for neither good nor evil but instead were merely concerned with themselves — are eternally doomed to chase an elusive banner through misty roads while being relentlessly attacked by swarm of wasps and hornets.
• Dresden Files: In Blood Rites, the entropy curse's first victim, Arturo's driver, is killed by a swarm of bees which inexplicably turn up in the trunk of a car.
• Goosebumps: Why I'm Afraid of Bees has Gary Lutz being very afraid of this happening. Towards the end, he actually leads such a swarm into his bedroom, to confront the boy who's taken over his body.
• The Homing by John Saul starts with a bug-loving Serial Killer whose schtick is kidnapping runaway teenage girls who look like his sister, who punished him as a small child by locking him in a dark room with a bunch of termites. He strips them, locks them in a lightless cell, and has swarms of his little friends attack them and sting them to death or eat them alive. He gets his comeuppance in the end when a Pest Controller he was menacing sends a tremendous swarm of insects to kill him in the same way he kills his victims.
• The Hunger Games: The tracker jackers — mutated wasps — were created by the Capitol as weapons of war. They're intensely territorial, and will fly in huge swarms after whatever draws their attention. They have the tracking capability of African bees and will hunt you down for at least a mile. Their stings instantly create painful, plum-sized lumps that ooze green fluid, and their venom causes hallucinations that will drive a person insane or even kill them if not treated immediately. Their only weakness is that smoke sedates them. At one point, Katniss drops a hive full of them onto a group of her enemies. Two of the targets die within a few minutes, the rest of them flee to a lake, and Katniss only makes it a short distance before her three stings make her black out for about two days.
• InCryptid: Apraxis wasps — Wicked Wasps each the size of a shoe — attack in swarms, sometimes tearing through their victims like a spray of bullets (like they did to Jonathan Healy), at the same time implanting their larvae in the living or dead bodies of the victims. On the plus side, their gigantic size means that a gun is actually effective against them, if you can aim and fire fast enough.
• The Jungle Book: In the second volume's "Red Dog," Mowgli's wolf pack needs to fight a larger pack of dholes. Kaa's advice is to trick them into awakening the Little People of the Rocks — a.k.a. Indian rock bees. It's clear that Mowgli is terrified of them, but he leads the dholes there after smearing himself with garlic, which repels the bees, and quickly jumping into the water where Kaa is waiting.
• Little House on the Prairie: Charlie accidentally jumps on a yellowjacket nest in Little House in the Big Woods. Although he survives, there's an illustration of him wrapped up like a mummy.
• Early in Mermaid Moon, Sanna gives a simple demonstration of her magic for Thyrla, but she accidentally attracts the attention of some bees in the courtyard, causing them to fly in and attack Thyrla and Peder. Later, during Sanna and Peder's wedding, Sanna makes a last-ditch attempt to escape the Arranged Marriage by causing all the petals to fall off the courtyard roses and fly into the air, but in doing so she also enchants the bees, and her Power Incontintence causes them to sting Peder to death.
• The Probable Future: In the end, the murderer is killed by a swarm of bees.
• The Raven Cycle: Gansey is deathly allergic to bees, to the point where an EpiPen is useless and he's actually killed by them as a child (though he got better). Gansey is also supposed to die somehow within the year the series takes place. In Blue Lily, Lily Blue when the gang goes spelunking and Gansey winds up dangling from a rope over a dark pit, it's terrifying enough. Then he starts to hear a buzzing swarm coming from the pit.
• Slaves of the Abyss: The presence of a huge, magically-summoned swarm of bees is a surefire sign of Bythos, the Lord of the Abyss, unleashing his powers, and for every citizen within the vicinity to flee, for good reason: victims upon being stung by Bythos' enchanted swarm will be rendered unconscious immediately and suddenly disappear in an instant, where they will regain consciousness in an Interdimensional Prison void, the domain of Bythos, where they will be trapped for all eternity.
• Tales from the White Hart: In "Critical Mass", a truck crashes near a facility where various very dangerous substances are manufactured and stored, and wrecks. The truck driver and some pedestrians both do a Don't Ask, Just Run. The locals in town conclude that it's time to panic, and start to evacuate when someone volunteers to go up there and finds out the truck was carrying beehives, and the driver and pedestrians fled from a swarm of angry bees.
• A Taste Of Blackberries is about a boy whose friend is allergic to bee stings and dies when they and some other kids get swarmed one day. The main character finds this absurd when he's told, because to him, bee stings are just a minor inconvenience, not a potentially lethal danger.
• Warrior Cats: In SkyClan's Destiny, one scene involves the cats accidentally knocking down a bees' nest, and getting attacked by the resulting swarm.
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The Wicked Witch of the West sends a swarm of deadly bees after Dorothy & Co., which they defeat by disemboweling the Scarecrow and having all the "meat" characters hide under the straw, while the bees break their stings off on the Tin Woodman and die.
• Worm: Skitter's power is absolute control of insects in a three-block radius. While she normally relies on nonvenomous bites, pepper-spray-coated bugs, spider-silk bindings or pure menace to subdue her foes, she occasionally swarms enemies she really hates with hornets and deadly spiders.
• Young Sherlock Holmes: In Death Cloud, the Big Bad uses swarms of weaponized killer bees as Animal Assassins.

Live-Action TV

• 1000 Ways to Die:
  • "Me So Hornet": A redneck uses a paintball gun to shoot down a hornets' nest and, well... you can guess what happens from there.
  • "Crappy Ending": There's the American dude who went to Thailand for sexual tourism and ended up stung to death by Asian giant hornets.
• Billy the Exterminator: The bee and wasp jobs tend to be especially grueling, and even dangerous due to the potential to be swarmed by thousands of venomous insects (particularly for Ricky, who is allergic to wasp venom).
• The Bold and the Beautiful: Sheila Carter sets a trap for her Guilt-Ridden Accomplice after recalling that he'd mentioned that he was allergic to bees by filling his hotel room with them and leaving him to die from shock. Whether this was purely For the Evulz or to ensure that he kept his mouth shut isn't clear.
• Desperate Housewives: In season two, Edie winds up disturbing a yellowjacket nest and is stung pretty badly.
• Fear Factor occasionally features a stunt wherein a contestant has bee pheromones applied to their body and has to remain covered in honeybees for a certain amount of time.
• Fixer Upper: At least two of the project houses have had beehives concealed in them, which required removal and relocation before the renovations could continue.
• The Good Place: In one of the many several different reboots Michael puts the main characters through to keep them from figuring out they're really in the Bad Place, Chidi is in the background screaming and running away from a swarm of bees as Eleanor realizes the truth behind everything.
• Little House on the Prairie: An episode in Season 6 has Albert selling Mrs. Oleson and Nellie a tree trunk filled with bees. They remain docile until Oleson's wagon begins to rock while they transport the hive home, causing the bees to angrily sting both the women as they lose control of their horses.
• Lost: One of the first episodes has Charlie standing on a beehive and eventually breaking it ("it wouldn't be an irrational fear of bees if I could just pull myself together, would it?") causing people to run and take off their shirts ("It was, um, it was full of bees." "I'd have thought Cs, actually.").
• Malcolm in the Middle: Hal gets chased by a swarm of bees in "Jessica Stays Over". In another episode, he invokes this by fitting a fighting robot with a laser-guided Bee-Bee Gun.
• Merlin (2008): Gwaine reaches into a tree trunk when the patrol stops in one episode, and as the shot cuts to Arthur and Sir Leon discussing military matters, Gwaine in a Funny Background Event yanks his arm out of the tree, bringing with him a bee hive that is stuck to his hand and runs around shaking his hand and swearing.
• Midsomer Murders: In "Sting of Death", the first Victim of the Week is doused in a synthetic pheromone that is used as a swarm lure, and stung to death by a swarm of honeybees. The bees are still swarming the body when the police arrive.
• Mission: Impossible: "Zubrovnik's Ghost" features a swarm of seemingly supernaturally empowered bees bent on revenge. One of the bad guys is driven out a window to his death by the swarm, and at the end, the spirit of the beekeeper who was murdered in order to fake Zubrovnik's death (long story) apparently uses smoke to herd the main bad guy into the room where he is attacked and killed by a swarm of bees.
• My Name Is Earl: When Earl falls for a sexy woman named Alex and begins to ignore his list to spend time with her, the forces of karma send bees after him and, when that fails, a whole swarm after her. Her badly swollen face is enough to make him realize that his debt is still WAY off with karma in terms of making up for his past (the last time something this good happened to him, in the pilot, he was hit by a bus and almost died), so he goes back to doing the list.
• One Foot in the Grave: "I'll Retire to Bedlam" has Victor and Margaret trapped for several hours inside their garden shed thanks to a swarm of bees.
• Rescue 911:
  • "Swarm Save": A flatbed truck transporting beehives tips over in the middle of the night, and the swarms of agitated bees attack the driver and the rescue personnel. It's mentioned that the driver retires from beekeeping after the incident.
  • "911 Honeybee Horror": While mowing some property, a man agitates a hive of feral honeybees. Again, the bees swarm the victim and the rescue personnel, and they have to call in some beekeepers to help evacuate the victim.
  • "Yellow Jacket Attack": A husband goes into anaphylactic shock after stirring up a hillside wasp nest while playing catch with his neighbor.
• Sliders. In "Summer of Love", the group slide into Spiderwasp World. The divergence point for this Earth occurred in 1987 when Venezuelan scientists artificially created a spider/wasp hybrid as a potential form of pest control. The final result was a swarm of "spiderwasps" with a wingspan of up to a foot, barbed stingers filled with venom, and an immunity to all known pesticides. The queen spiderwasp eventually escaped, and within eight years the swarm had flown eight thousand miles north through much of South America and into southern California. The insects' appetite for drywall and human flesh have rendered any building useless for protection, and any citizen caught in the swarm's path is doomed to a painful death
• Walker, Texas Ranger:
  • Trivette suffers this during the B-plot in Season 9's "Medieval Crimes", where he is escorting a prisoner named Morris Dobbs from Buell to Dallas to testify in a murder trial, and en route, Dobbs claims he is a jinx. When Trivette calls Walker in a phone booth when the battery for his cellphone goes dead after his car breaks down, then gets fixed, Dobbs warns him not to close the booth because there is a beehive inside. Trivette doesn’t listen to Dobbs’ warning and closes the booth. Sure enough, he gets stung like there's no tomorrow. Trivette is later seen at the end of the episode with his face bandaged after bringing Dobbs to Ranger HQ.
    Alex: Oh, my Lord!
    Walker: What the devil...?
    Trivette: Don't say anything!
    (Beat)
    Walker: That was Trivette, right?
    Alex: Have you ever seen so many Band-Aids on a human being before?
    Walker: Not a live one.
    (Walker, Alex, Gage and Sydney start snickering over this; then the Executive Producers' names appear and the episode ends)

Manhua

• Old Master Q has various comic strips where the titular character gets into trouble with beehives and chased by bee swarms, and one where his indoor garden comically attracts a swarm of bees that chases him out his apartment.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The Hellwasp Swarm from 3.5 is a Hive Mind of killer wasps from the depths of Hell itself. Like all things from the Nine Hells, these wasps are Lawful Evil.
• Pathfinder: Wasp swarms are immune to weapon attacks, fly at a speed of 40' ^note which guarantees they will catch a low-level party. Very few characters can exceed speed 40 at low level, and fewer still can fly, so the wasps will ignore the difficult terrain that the player characters are guaranteed to hit eventually., and they hit automatically. When they hit, they force a save that can be tough for a Squishy Wizard to make to prevent the stacking poison effects and the nausea-related debuff that prevents you from doing much more than fleeing and crying. The warriors tough enough to make that save are the ones who rely on weapons for damage, so they have almost no chance against the swarm. Their only weakness, area-of-effect damage, is something most low-level parties don't have much of and which a power gamer would consider underpowered for fighting anything else in Pathfinder, not to mention it is usually the province of those Squishy Wizards who are too busy throwing up and howling in pain to actually cast anything. These things are rated for a level 3 party; look at them and try to decide what happens to a typical level 3 party is hit by this.

Video Games

• 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue: In the first level, the way to drive off Jasper is to trick him into cracking open a beehive with his net, to which he responds in shock, "I hope I'm not allergic!" and runs off, with a swarm of bees charging after him.
  Oddball/Domino: I guess Jasper got the point... in the ''end''! *giggles*
• 720 Degrees: The announcer says "Skate or Die!" when the game's timer runs out. Take too long, and then a swarm of killer bees appear, and if your skater gets hit by the bees, then it's an automatic game over. The longer you run from them, the more their speed increases, until they inevitably catch up with you. They will also start to form menacing shapes as they speed up, such as a pounding hammer, a skull and crossbones, a pair of scissors, and a hypodermic syringe.
• AMBER: Journeys Beyond: one of the ghosts you assist is a gardener named Brice. If you click on the beehives in one of the house's garden areas, a swarm jumps out and hovers around for a minute while a distorted voice mocks Brice over his supposed insanity and alien conspiracies.
• Animal Crossing: Throughout the main series, five wasps' nests will spawn in a town's trees at random. Shaking one of these out results in the angry wasps (named bees in English localizations prior to Animal Crossing: New Horizons) chasing the player relentlessly, stinging them if they catch them. Getting stung leaves the player with a swollen eye that can only be cured through either saving & quitting or using medicine (introduced in the e+ re-release of the first game); in New Horizons, getting stung while already carrying a swollen eye causes the player to pass out. The only ways to escape the swarm are through catching it with a net or running into a building. The beehive even appears in the Super Smash Bros. series as an item. When thrown, a number of bees emerge from the beehive and swarm around their target, constantly dealing a small amount of damage before dissipating.
• Banjo-Kazooie:
  • The beehives start out empty and harmless, but become filled with active swarms in later levels. In Click Clock Wood, the same swarms appear without the beehives during summer (though the hives with swarms still show up).
  • Click Clock Wood also features a giant-sized beehive that houses the Zubba swarm. Defeating them is necessary for a Jiggy. The Zubbas return in Banjo-Tooie, but they're harmless (they even invite Banjo and Kazooie to play a minigame whose reward is another Jiggy).
• Bio Menace: There's a large beehive in the second level of the second episode with mutated bees that are larger than Logan's head. If you activate the colored switches in the wrong order, then instead of getting access to a cache of powerups, the ceiling opens up and the bees come out.
• BlazBlue: Arakune has a curse mark. Once you are hit, bees will come from the screen and begin the assault.
• City of Heroes has the Swarm, a cloud of bees encountered as a minor but annoying mook enemy in the Devouring Earth.
• Clonk has zap nests. Breaking them releases a swarm of zaps, and they are annoyingly fragile. It's fun to catapult them into your enemies base though. There's also a spell that creates a small group of zaps that will float around the caster, waiting to sting any nearby dangers.
• Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back: The beehives in the "Diggin' It" and "Bee-Having" levels only let out one bee in "Diggin' It", but in "Bee-Having" can let out up to five. In Crash Twinsanity, it happens where you escort Cortex through obstacles as he is swarmed by bees, gets a beehive stuck on his head, and gets chased by a hungry bear.
• If Bentley Bear doesn't quickly collect the pot of honey for bonus points in Crystal Castles, a dangerous swarm of bees comes down to protect the honey. The swarm appears regardless if Bentley takes too long collecting the gems in a level.
• Donkey Kong 3: Donkey Kong disturbs beehives whose insects go after Stanley's flowers. If Stanley should touch one, he will fall down and all the rest will swarm him to death.
• Dreamkiller has a giant beehive as a boss. The game throws a giant tree monster into the area as a decoy and keeps the hive hidden behind it.
• In Elroy Goes Bugzerk, a nest of hornets is inconveniently placed next to a key. Elroy can't get the key until he gets rid of the hornets somehow.
• Far Cry 4 has the occasional beehive hanging from buildings, usually at places where enemies are close by. Shooting the hive with any gun releases a swarm of very pissed-off bees that kill everything human in the area, the Player Character included, in alarmingly short order. Not even Heavies are immune to them. While this offers an effective (and entertaining) tactical angle for stealth attacks, it also leaves you with a persistent DoT cloud covering an area you'll likely have to explore, like bell towers for instance, resulting in a Hoist by Their Own Petard scenario for yourself. Thankfully, flame weapons make short work of the buzzing menace, assuming you have one on hand. That said, even undisturbed beehives aren't safe — getting too close to one still results in the occasional sting that, naturally, goes right through Ajay's body armor.
• Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light: Swarm is a spell tome that summons a swarm of insects to attack their victim. In the original game, it was a high might spell, but its sequel and remake change it to be a long-ranged spell that strikes the foe from afar.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening: Gaius says in the free-time event tiles that he goes honey hunting and then offers to show his bee stings. In his supports with Sumia, she attempts to help him get more honey... and they end up chased by angry bees when she finds a beehive and tries to give it to him. This is later subverted: seeing that she did not give up on the honey despite being stung all over, actually raises Gaius's impression of Sumia (up until then he only thought of her as a "a crazy noblewoman"), which leads to them starting to get along better.
• Freedom Planet has Pangu Lagoon, a stage exclusive to Lilac that is filled to the brim with green wasps and their nests. The second half of the stage takes place inside a Hornet Hole Temple of Doom with the wasps covering the entire background in spots.
• Frogger 3D: In the Honey Bee Hollow level, while the stage isn't very large, any beehive you approach will spawn a swarm of bees that chase you down relentlessly.
• Hazelnut Hex has bees as enemies in the first stage, and they always appear in large numbers. You can also shoot at beehives, which serves as Mook Maker dispensing large numbers of bees.
• Kingdom Hearts has several:
  • The first game and Chain of Memories have minigames in the Hundred Acre Wood where you must get Pooh honey, while keeping swarms of angry bees from attacking him.
  • Kingdom Hearts II: One of the early jobs Roxas can do in Twilight Town involves him killing bees inside the town's theatre district. Even when not doing the job, or when playing as Sora later on, the bees just keep coming back. They also appear as foes in the penultimate episode for the Hundred Acre Wood.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has the Hundred Acre Woods Command Board, which has a giant pumpkin knock Rabbit's stack of hunny jars as a board-specific event: this causes six jars to fall on random spaces. Stopping on (or having one fall on you) of the two jars with bees around it causes you to lose money, while the ones without them give you more money.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: A swarm of bees is one of the things Link can knock out of a tree by dashing into it. Single bees might also appear when you cut bushes or grass. With a net and an empty bottle, Link can capture them to use against enemies.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: You can give Tarin a stick to knock a beehive out of a tree. When he does, an angry swarm promptly flies out of the beehive and chases him away, leaving you to pick up the dropped honeycomb.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Link drops a beehive on a group of Gerudo soldiers, leading to a lot of frantic running and girlish shrieks. This scene is also in the manga adaptation.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Link can knock down beehives to get larvae to use as fishing bait, but doing this (or even just coming close to them) will anger the bees (named hornets in-game) and send them out to attack him.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: Beehives can be found on trees, and if Link knocks them down the angry swarm will attack him. In the manga adaptation, after Link accidentally knocks a beehive down, he actually fears for a moment that he'll die from the stings. Beehives work in much the same way Spirit Tracks, and getting attacked by bees in this manner can get you a Game Over before even leaving your hometown.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Deku Hornets and their nests can be found in Faron Woods. If they aren't caught or chased away with the bug net, they swarm around Link and sting him. Their nests can be shot down with a slingshot, or grabbed with the Beetle and dropped on enemies.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Beehives often spawn hanging from trees in temperate and tropical areas. The honey is a useful cooking ingredient, but coming too close to the beehive will anger the bees and cause them to attack Link. This can also be done by knocking down the hive from a distance, which will case the swarm to attack the nearest living thing; sniping down beehives with an arrow is an excellent way of scattering hapless enemies, but won't do much good against lizalfos because their scales protect them from the bees' stings.
• Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places): One of the hazards on Nontoonyt Island is a tree containing a vicious swarm of killer bees, who will drag Larry back to their nest and force him to become the queen bee's love slave, earning you a game over.
• Little Busters!: One childhood flashback involves Masato allowing a nest of hornets to sting him all over while the other Little Busters spray them all down.
• Mega Man Zero:
  • Mega Man Zero 3: A beehive sub-boss throws an oily substance to the walls and then at you for its bees to chase on it.
  • Mega Man Zero 4: A boss throws a substance that makes your ground movement slippery and then bees home on you.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater features The Pain, the first encountered member of The Cobra Unit sent out to kill Snake, who possesses the ability to control hordes of bees. Your actual first encounter with him is during the first duel between Snake and Major Ocelot and is denoted with a huge bee swarm appearing out of nowhere — Snake and Ocelot manage to only barely escape (Snake by jumping into a shallow ravine, Ocelot by... twirling his revolvers to swat them away), but Ocelot's troops aren't as lucky and suffer a horrifying fate within seconds.
• Minecraft: Like in the real world, bees are normally docile when left alone. However, anger one by either attacking it, harvesting its honey or combs without a campfire underneath it, or breaking its nest, the bee you angered and any nearby bees will swarm you.
• Monster Eye: During the Chinatown stage, you're trapped atop a paifang and need to survive hordes and hodres of hostile, mutated bees coming at your direction via Shooting the Swarm.
• Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee has killer bees as a puzzle obstacle. They'll kill you if you stand still, and once they start chasing you the only way to get rid of them is to pass them off to Elum or another Mudokon (who strangely will survive).
• The One Piece: Grand Battle series of games features a beehive item that sends a swarm of bees to confuse and damage whoever hits it.
• Paperboy: If you move too slowly, bees will start chasing you, combining this with Stalked by the Bell.
• Pokémon:
  • Attack Order, a Bug-Type attack introduced in Generation IV, is the signature attack of the bee-like Pokémon Vespiquen; the other two being Defend and Heal Order. The user calls upon its underlings to pummel the opponent and possesses a high critical hit ratio.
  • Infestation is a Bug-Type attack introduced in Generation VI where a swarm of insects covers the target and deals them damage over several turns.
• Prayer of the Faithless: The Hornets of the Woodland Hills are always encountered in groups of 4, and have their stingers on display.
• Quest for Glory III has a minor subquest where you have to get a feather from a honeybird for the apothecary to make healing pills for you. How do you get said feather? When you find the bird, follow it until it roosts in a tree surrounded by a horde of killer bees. Getting too close to the next, or throwing a rock at it will lead you to a horrific, painful death.
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil and the remake has larger-than-normal bees that pose almost no threat, but they attack in swarms and they do sting you, although their stings do very little damage, putting them into Goddamned Bats territory. The remake has a puzzle that makes you use a still living bee to solve it and once the puzzle is solved, the bee comes to life to attack you. The remake also has a key resting on a table underneath a beehive just like in the original game, but now you have to use insecticide on the hive to kill all the bees before you can safely grab the key.
  • Resident Evil 6: Gnezdo enemies are essentially a swarm of hornet-like insects taking the shape of a human.
• Riviera: The Promised Land: The team disturbs a Kredna Beehive early in the story and somehow manages to forget the incident in time to anger some killer bees later in the game.
• The Sims 2: Sims spending time outdoors will sometimes find themselves fleeing from bees. Witches and Warlocks can also summon a swarm of bees to attack someone.
• Sega Superstars: The Swarm item in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed releases, well, a swarm of giant hornets who position themselves in the way of the racer in 1st place, hoping for him or her (and potentially other racers) to crash into them. Even after the sting operation, they'll continue to bug the bewildered racers by flying around their heads.
• In SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman, Spongebob buys a beehive from Squidward thinking it's a giant acorn and gives it to Sandy as a present. When she takes it out of its container, it unleashes a bunch of bees and wasps that Spongebob must capture in addition to knocking the hive off the tree.
• Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!: The sentient trees of Fracture Hills shake the beehives built on them so that the bees will attack Spyro.
• Super Mario Bros.
  • Paper Mario 64: A beehive appears in the Forever Forest. If Mario uses his hammer on the beehive, it will cause an angry Bzzap to attack.
  • Yoshi's Story uses beehives as obstacles. The bees swarm into the shape of a hand and block your progress, and they'll sting if Yoshi gets too pushy.
  • Super Mario Sunshine: There are wild bees guarding beehives attached to tropical trees. Yoshi can eat them one by one and, in some cases, when all of them are eaten, either a blue coin or an extra life will appear. The beehives in certain levels are more dangerous than most enemies.
  • Mario Party:
    • Mario Party 2: One minigame is Honeycomb Havoc. The players take turns selecting one or two fruits (or coins) each, and anyone who gets a honeycomb gets chased off by a swarm of bees and loses. The last player left wins the game.
    • Mario Party 7: The minigame Big Dripper has all players visit a large honeycomb harvesting zone. The objective for each player is to use their jars to catch the falling drops of honey, but every few seconds they must duck to avoid being stung by the incoming large swarm of bees (the game will alert them when is the right moment to duck); if a player is stung, they'll be stunned and waste precious time. Whoever collects the most honey drops after 30 seconds is the victor, though two or even three can win if they're tied. Conversely, if all four gather the same amount, then nobody wins and the minigame ends in a tie.
  • WarioWare: Twisted! has this in Kat and Ana's level. Kat pokes a beehive that eventually falls, and bees start chasing them. Obviously you have to Press X to Not Die.
• Toe Jam And Earl: One enemy is a swarm of bees who follows you everywhere. If you try jumping into water to avoid them, they just hover over you.
• Trinity: The main area includes a giant hive of man-size bees. They won't bother you if you don't bother them... but unfortunately the plot requires you to steal honey from them, leading to immediate death if you're not careful.
• World of Warcraft: A quest requires you to steal honey from a Furbolg village. Doing this will randomly cause bees to attack you, which dispels in either ten seconds or jumping into a nearby pond.
• Xena: Warrior Princess: One level has a beehive filled with a swarm of killer bees, which will chase after Xena and kill her on the spot if she fails to outrun them. However, the bees are also the only weak spot of the ogre at the bridge — to proceed, lure the killer bees to follow Xena until they're close to the ogre, at which point the bees will attack the ogre instead allowing Xena to exit the level.

Web Animation

• Brackenwood: The tiny white specks seen flying around the Brackenwood forests are harmless when alone, but when Bitey steals their hive a large swarm gathers together to chase him and pursues him relentlessly. After it catches up to him, Bitey only manages to escape the stinging cloud by diving into a river.
• Happy Tree Friends: Subverted in "Take a Hike": Nutty finds a beehive and proceeds to sucks all the honey out of it with a straw. The bees, rather than immediately stinging the invader for violating their hive and eating up their food storage, simply continue buzzing around obliviously even after the beehive is completely shriveled up. Nutty is instead mauled by an enraged bear.
• Mighty Magiswords: "The Wrath of Neddy" ends with Vambre and Prohyas claiming a beehive magisword, and accidentally unleashing its stingy ability on themselves.
• RWBY: Lancers are Creatures of Grimm that take the form of huge hornets around the size of a person. They live among the floating islands of Lake Matsu in Anima and attack any airships that attempt to travel through their airspace. They have the ability to use their stingers like grappling guns, hooking onto ships and reeling them; once latched on, they use their powerful mandibles to chew their way through the ship's hull. A small swarm of Lancers can be enough to overwhelm even airships that have Huntsmen on board.

Web Comics

• Foxes in Love: Blue and Green are jogging and getting exhausted. Although Green asks for a break, they both get a second wind Blue points out that stopping here will leave them at the mercy of a swarm of mosquitoes.
• True Villains: Xaneth's dungeon has chests filled with bees — chests that are at the ends of inescapable death traps.

Web Original

• Halo 2 ARG I Love Bees, despite its name, has a protagonist named Melissa who hates bees.

Websites

• Craigslist is worse with bees, too.
• SCP Foundation: In the situation that the diary is bees, a modified document will be provided.
• This story from the website Superbad.

Web Videos

• Dan Bell, a YouTube explorer, has been swarmed by bees in abandoned buildings at least twice, the second incident possibly involving the Africanized "killer" variety.
• TierZoo: Humans are acknowledged as in-universe Game Breakers due to their high intelligence and other factors allowing them to dominate the metagame. The animals they fare the worst against are flight-capable stinging insects like bees, wasps, and hornets. A lack of thick fur means that humans have terrible defense against stingers without specialized protective equipment, while the apids'/vespids' fast aerial mobility and Zerg Rush tactics allow them to outpace and get several painful stings in. This easily destroys a human's resolve and causes them to flee — or, even worse, causes anaphylactic shock that can kill.

Western Animation

• The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan: Suzie, Alan, Anne and Tom Chan get chased by a swarm of bees thanks to Tom's plan to extract honey from a beehive. In one scene, the bees form an arrow and Tom and Alan getting stung on the butt.
• Boo Boom! The Long Way Home: Episode 3 has this happen to Christopher when he mistakes a wasp nest for an abandoned beehive, breaks it open in hopes of finding honey, and just gets chased by wasps instead.
• Brandy & Mr. Whiskers: In "The Fashion Fascist", Mr. Whiskers gets a beehive stuck on his head and, because he's being hailed as a fashion guru, everyone else starts wearing one too. Brandy eventually gives in and tries it herself, but finds it unbearably painful.
• Bunnicula: In "Scaraoke", a malicious ghost drops a beehive in front of Mina. Ever cheerful, her initial reaction is "Cool, bees!" before being stung repeatedly.
• Camp Lakebottom: In "Pod Parents", Suzi disturbs a beehive and is shown badly stung in a subsequent scene.
• Camp Lazlo: In "The Big Cheese", Scoutmaster Lumpus attempts to steal a cheese wheel by picking it up with his buttocks. Somehow he accidentally picks up a beehive instead.
• Class of the Titans: In "Recipe for Disaster", Atlanta is chased down and stung by a swarm of bees. She doesn't look any worse for wear after, but it's treated pretty seriously.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog:
  • In "The Magic Tree of Nowhere", after Eustace cuts down the titular tree, the latter tells Courage that the cure to Muriel's abnormally swollen head (caused by a wish Eustace made) is honey. So Courage finds a beehive in a tree and climbs inside, in which he is heard screaming in pain as the scene shifts to the background valley, and when he feeds Muriel the honey, thus curing her, Courage is shown with swollen sting warts all over his body.
  • In "Watch the Birdies", Courage tries to keep the baby birds from playing with a beehive and confiscates it from them to return it to the tree branch, causing the swarm of bees to emerge out. Courage, being caught by surprise, falls over and slams through the ground, in which the bees follow suit and sting him. As he climbs back into the tree, Courage is again shown with swollen sting warts all over his body. The bees return in the climax, where they sting Eustace as the latter accidentally gets covered in feathers and runs away in fear while screaming in pain.
• Crash Canyon: Episode 4 has Roxy being attacked by a swarm of bees that sting her forehead.
• Danny Phantom: In one episode, a ghost that causes bad luck makes Tucker accidentally disturb a beehive at school, leaving most of his fellow classmates stung.
• Daria: In "Antisocial Climbers", Kevin gives his cheerleader girlfriend Brittany a bouquet of freshly picked flowers... filled with bees. It takes a few stings before she starts running.
• Dave the Barbarian: Fang gets a beehive stuck on her head twice in "Dog of the Titans". She doesn't seem too bothered, despite being badly stung.
• Dawn of the Croods:
  • In "A Spoonful of Soo-Gar", the whole tribe is on the run from a huge swarm of bees, though nobody gets stung.
  • In "It Crushes", Eep willingly lets herself be stung by bees as an attempt to drown out her feelings of love for her crush.
  • In "It Takes Ahhh! Valley Part 2", the Croods launch a beehive at a dinosaur in an unsuccessful attempt to ward it off.
  • In "Slak Attack", One-Eyed Amber recommends shoving beehives into the clothes of lazy teenagers as a way of motivating them, then proceeds to demonstrate by cramming one down her own loincloth.
  • In "A Gran Adventure", Ugga is badly stung by swarms of bees Gran has employed as booby traps to safeguard her treasure.
  • In "Gorgey Girl", a male caveman is stung by bees as part of a lesson being taught to Eep's class. When the teacher realizes Eep isn't paying attention, he throws a hive at her as well.
• The Day My Butt Went Psycho!: In "Bums of Steel", most of the main cast is stung by bees at the end of the episode, and are shown nursing their wounds with toilet paper shortly after.
• Detentionaire: In "Fight or Flight", Holger and Steve end up being chased by a swarm of bees after being covered in green and smelly goo.
• Donald Duck: Donald is occasionally bugged by swarms of bees, such as in The Band Concert, Orphans' Picnic, and Moose Hunters. Curiously, the very last Donald cartoon with bees, Beezy Bear, shows him as the rightful owner of a bee farm, and he suffers no assault from them in the whole short... though he has to deal with Humphrey the Bear, who wants the honey and suffers the wrath of the bees and Donald.
• DuckTales (1987): In "Till Nephews Do Us Part", Millionara is attacked by bees after the triplets spray her with honey disguised as bug repellent.
• DuckTales (2017): In "Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks", Violet drops a wasp nest on the bear so the enraged wasps can chase it away.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy's episode "Pop Goes the Ed" starts off with the Eds (mainly Ed and Edd) impetuously whacking a beehive until the swarm of bees chase the Eds down the neighborhood. Eddy makes it safely inside his house, but Ed and Edd aren't as lucky as they end up getting stung so badly their heads are shown swollen the size of a couple of hot air balloons. The episode is also book ended when the Eds try to go back home after a disaster at a sprinkler party and end up into the tree, where they encounter the bees once again. They end up running away as the bees swarm around and sting them as they're running, closing out the episode.
• Edgar & Ellen: In "Manners Marathon", the title twins present Stephanie with an exploding pot of honey, drenching her in the sticky stuff and attracting a nearby swarm of bees that chase her away. She's badly stung in the next scene.
• Eek! The Cat: In "Lord of the Fleas", Eek naively throws a beehive to Sharky, who is relaxing poolside with his female wrestler friends, thinking it's a beach ball. They can briefly be seen running from the bees in the background of the subsequent scene.
• El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera: In "Oso Sole Mio", el Oso is attacked by bees after punching their hive in a flashback. Later, the bears shove a beehive on Frida's head, and her face is horribly stung when she removes it.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • "Mr. Right", an episode where Timmy wishes he was always right, has him encountering Francis, who had previously had his hand swelled up after getting stung by a scorpion earlier. Timmy then tells said bully he's holding a wasp nest, in which Francis is stung multiple times by said insects, which even impairs his hearing so he doesn't hear Timmy tell him he has fairy godparents (which was the key to getting Cosmo and Wanda to reappear after Timmy told Mr. Crocker he didn't have fairy godparents when the latter suspected how the wish worked). Timmy then gets a taste of his own medicine at the end when he unwishes being always right and Francis returns to retaliate by having multiple wasps sting Timmy, as well as a jar of scorpions and the female wrestler Timmy wished up earlier.
  • In "Who's Your Daddy?", Timmy, embarrassed by his own dad, tries out being the son of his friends' dads. When he wishes to have AJ's dad, the latter doesn't like the idea of camping for real and instead opts for virtual camping, where his head gets swarmed by virtual bees.
  • "Frenemy Mine" has Timmy handing Vicky a beehive to try and get her to stop being nice to him. She gets badly stung, but still manages to contain her anger.
• Family Guy:
  • "Stuck Together, Torn Apart": Peter fills a jar with bees, then lets Lois open it for him as a joke.
  • "Gronkowsbees": Brian and Stewie start raising bees to produce honey, and Stewie has the idea of giving the bees steroids to increase their production. The result is a swarm of super-strong, super-angry bees.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
  • In "Seeing Red", Bloo convinces Red that the imaginary bee friends will give him their honey if he dances for them. The "dancing" that Bloo shows Red is just jumping up and down, which causes Red to unintentionally antagonize the bees, who sting him in response. Later, when Terrence gets launched into their hive at the end of a long Humiliation Conga, they chase him into the horizon.
  • "Camp Keep a Good Mac Down" has Bloo getting stung by bees attracted by his attempt to make a beard out of honey and pine needles. However, thanks to Madame Foster becoming The Beastmaster, they later return to help the gang when most of them fall in quicksand.
• Gawayn: In episode 43, Roderick returns from a walk with gifts for the princess: a bouquet of wilted flowers and a beehive. The cast are all badly stung before Percy Pond appears and uses his raw charisma to placate the swarm.
• Gravity Falls: In "The Stanchurian Candidate", Stan mentions offhand that he let bees loose in an elementary school a few years back.
• Hey Arnold!:
  • In "Helga's Boyfriend", bees attack and sting Helga because of a flower she's wearing on her hat.
  • In "Grudge Match", after Grandpa Phil and Big Bob give each other fender benders on their cars, they try to settle who pays for the damages in a game of golf. The problem is that Grandpa gets golf confused with tennis, so Arnold coaches him. One of Grandpa's disastrous practices at golfing ends with the ball puncturing a beehive, and Arnold and Grandpa run as the angry bees chase them. The scene then cuts to the two of them covered in bandages.
  • In "Friday the 13th", Wolfgang and Edmund trick Arnold and Gerald into coating themselves in a mixture of honey and barbecue sauce, causing a massive swarm of bees to come after them until they jump into a fountain.
• Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi:
  • In "Record Breakers", Ami attempts to break the record for the largest beard of bees. This goes terribly wrong when the bees are attracted to Kaz's cotton candy and chase him, eventually causing him to trip, launching the sugary treat into Yumi's face and subjecting her to the stinging swarm's wrath.
  • In "Koi Fish", Ami narrowly avoids getting hit by several disasters, then when gloating to the fish it tells her she shouldn't breathe. She reasons that his advice is nonsense because she needs to breathe, so she opens her mouth and a swarm of bees fly inside.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes:
  • In "Spew-Tube", one of Lucius' attempts to regain his reputation after an embarrassing old movie sees him kill a bee. Then Jimmy, in a misguided attempt to make him seem even tougher, tosses a rock at a nearby hive. Needless to say, he makes things worse.
  • "Happy Birthday, Lucius": One of Lucius' birthday presents is oven mitts... filled with "extra-stingy bees".
  • In "Panda-Monium", Heloise destroys a giant panda statue and accidentally breaks a chunk off of the giant beehive inside, with stingy results. It's made funnier by the fact that she rarely ever gets hurt.
• Johnny Bravo: The episode "Rashomoron'' involves a swarm of bees attacking Johnny, Little Suzy and Carl during a disastrous day at the park. Suzy's story sees Johnny bumping into a tree containing the beehive after emerging from a lake covered in algae, causing it to roll down onto her picnic blanket, then a Unicorn shows up to save her, though not before Johnny tries to steal its horn to sell it on the black market, where he is promptly trampled as a result. Carl's story sees his robot, Sparkly, firing his laser beams at the hive by mistake while attempting to attack Johnny after mistaking him for an algae monster after the latter falls into the lake, then the bees warn a mounted police officer about the supposed algae monster, and the officer and his steed trample Johnny. Johnny's story sees him trying to seduce a woman, as usual, then when Sparkly attacks her, Johnny grabs a beehive to attack the robot, sending it running.
• Johnny Test:
  • In "Johnny Unplugged," Johnny, his father and two sisters are all stung by a swarm of bees after disturbing a hive while hiking.
  • A recurring villain is the Bee Keeper, whose gimmick is pretty much what you're imagining. Subverted in that he's rather ineffectual and more interested in trying to make his honey-flavored candy bars a success.
• Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil: In one episode, Brad attempts to rat Kick out for a minor scratch on their father's car (caused by Brad himself) and the bees swarm out of their hive and into Brad's mouth, stinging his tongue in the process, inhibiting his ability to talk coherently, which prompts their father to drive him to the hospital in their mother's car while Kick and Gunther attempt to efface the scratch from his father's car.
• King of the Hill: In "Mutual of Omabwah", Dale decides to try his hand at beekeeping, taking a bunch of bees he's purchased and placing them in a large glass tank. When thing don't work the way he hoped, he kicks the tank in frustration, knocking it over and spilling out its contents.
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: In "Explosion Berries", Wolf messing with a beehive releases a swarm of angry bees too numerous, quick and small to fight. Wolf only manages to flail helplessly at them, and in the end Mandu deals with them by throwing the nest over the side of the giant turtle they're riding on and sending the bees desperately flying after it.
• The Lion Guard:
  • "Can't Wait to be Queen": Most of the main cast is stung by an angry swarm of bees except for Bunga, whose thick skin protects him from the stings.
  • "The Ukumbusho Tradition:" Bees nearly derail Ukumbusho — a ritual meant to commemorate the peace established between Simba's pride and the elephants, long ago — after Makini uses pollen to paint the sunbursts on the elephants' foreheads. (She used up all the yellow fruit painting Fuli, Ono, Beshte, and Bunga to look like lions.)
• Looney Tunes: "The Bee-Devilled Bruin" has Papa Bear determined to get some honey from a beehive. Most of his resultant injuries are the doing of his idiot son, but late in the film he gets chased by a bee swarm and his face ends up horribly swollen with stings.
• Molly Moo Cow and the Butterflies: Molly sends the Lepidopterist tripping against a beehive, prompting the bees to chase him off.
• ¡Mucha Lucha!: In one episode, Buena Girl shoots a beehive during archery practice and is attacked by the bees.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "Woe Is Me, Part 2", when Woebegone tries to leave Dream Valley, he disturbs a Stock Beehive that falls down and releases a swarm of angry insects that then chase him down.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Winter Wrap Up" sees Twilight Sparkle dislodging a beehive and lodging her head inside it when she runs into a tree after getting startled by a flock of bats.
    • In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", Pinkie Pie's "Pinkie Sense" allows her to hide from an angry bee swarm that pops out from nowhere, but Twilight (who stubbornly refuses to believe in the Pinkie Sense) isn't so lucky.
    • In "Fall Weather Friends", Applejack uses a beehive to attack Rainbow Dash during the race.
    • In "Castle Mane-ia", Applejack and Rainbow Dash try to top each other in bravery with a staring contest... covered in bees. Luckily, they're both wearing beekeeper suits underneath.
    • In "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies", Seabreeze crashes into a beehive after dodging falling acorns. The bees promptly attack him, and only leave him alone after being chewed out by an angry Fluttershy.
    • "A Health of Information" features flash bees, insects resembling bees or hornets with blue rather than black stripes and electrified stings. Their honey is also the only cure for Swamp Fever, and it's consequently sought out by Fluttershy when Zecora contracts the disease. This is complicated by both the highly aggressive and territorial nature of the bees, who attack anyone who approaches their hive, and the painful electric jolts caused by their stings. Fluttershy eventually manages to fool her way past them by using a blue-and-yellow striped mask to make them think she is a bee herself.
    • In "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place", Rockhoof unwittingly delivers a tree containing a beehive to Zecora, who is immediately swarmed and stung.
• Nerds and Monsters: In "Fab Rock", Irwin and Becky get badly stung by monster bees at different points in the episode.
• The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries: In "The Bee Team", the team is hired to investigate the appearance of giant killer bees by a local beekeeper. Unfortunately, Shaggy and Scooby get just as much trouble from the normal bees as they do from the giant ones.
• The Owl House: In "Thanks to Them", a photo in Willow's picture album shows Hunter and Flapjack getting chased by a swarm of bees.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: "Sting Operation" has a swarm of hornets who frequently seek to sting anyone and even plan on stinging a group of children For the Evulz.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • "Hawaiian Vacation": Candace walks into a swarm of bees and swats one on a tree. Unfortunately for her, this dislodges a hive from the tree and it drops right on her head.
  • "Skiddley Whiffers": While on a camping trip, Vanessa and her friends are stung by bees — and they also happen to be allergic to bees.
• The Pink Panther: In "Pink Is a Many Splintered Thing" the Pink Panther tires to hide from some bees he'd annoyed by jumping into a hollow tree; the bees simply plug up the open end with a rock, slip into cracks in the trunk and proceed to give the Panther what for.
• Pop Pixie: In "Camp Pixie", Narcissa, Lockette and Amore are all stung by wasps after disturbing their underground nest.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen", an exhausted Ren tries to drink from Stimpy's canteen, but doesn't notice that it's full of bees, who begin sadistically attacking his tongue.
• Rocko's Modern Life: In "Canned", when Rocko becomes a product tester at Conglom-O, he chews a sample of gum that makes a tree grow out of his head. When Ed dumps more of the same gum in his mouth, he has a beehive grow instead and the bees sting him until his head swells up and he floats to the ceiling. At the end of the episode, Rocko gives a pack of the beehive gum to Mr. Dupette in retaliation for him ruthlessly firing Rocko from his old job at the beginning, and the bees make him crash his car into a street light, followed by being chased by the herd of mad giraffes Ed previously released on Rocko.
• Ruby Gloom: In "Hair(less) the Musical", Misery demonstrates how a picnic is worse with bees by jamming a honey stick into a beehive, causing the bees to swarm onto her face and sting her viciously. It's made creepier by the fact that she's mid-song when this is happening, and never breaks the tune.
• Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat: One episode has this happen to one of the daughters. The episode tries to explain that bees are normally harmless, but it's still alarming to see someone get stung for apparently no reason.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Lisa's Rival": Subverted. Homer has a giant sugar pile and is initially annoyed when a swarm of bees lands on it ("Oww! Oh, they're defending themselves somehow!"). However, the beekeepers arrive and offer to buy all the sugar to get their bees back. Unfortunately for Homer, a flash rainstorm melts the sugar and disperses the bees before he gets paid.
  • In "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson", Bart tries to help Lisa prep for an obstacle course and she ends up hanging by her foot right next to a beehive. Lisa is terrified of being so close to their hive and helpless, but unfortunately for her Bart freaks out at the mention of bees and runs for it.
  • "22 Short Films About Springfield": Smithers: "I'm allergic to bees, sir. They cause me to, um, die." In the same episode, a swarm of bees attacks Lisa to get at the gum stuck in her hair.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The show uses Electric Jellyfish as the underwater equivalent of bees, the main difference being that they're also caught and released for sport. The effects of their stings are similar to bee attacks, they're shown living in hives, and they produce jelly in a manner similar to bees producing honey.
• Les Sisters: In "En manque de Max", Wendy and Marine get chased and stung by a swarm of bees while exploring the forest. They're left covered in welts during the subsequent scenes.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Star's "Honeybee Tornado Swarm" spell is used to subject Ludo's henchmen to this.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The Turtles manage to beat the powered-up Baxter Stockman by shoving a Stock Beehive right into his armor's face slot, resulting in bees stinging him in the face, which makes him fall on his back. This allows Leonardo to stab the T-Pod, destroying Stockman's armor.
• Teen Titans Go!:
  • In "Laundry Day", Robin gets chased by a swarm of bees while trapped outside naked.
  • In "Two Bumblebees and a Wasp", most of the main cast gets a sting or two over the course of the episode. Beast Boy gets the worst of it towards the conclusion.
  • In "Beast Boy's St. Patrick's Day Luck and it's Bad", Starfire gets her face stung by a whole swarm during a musical number.
  • In "Booby Trap House", Robin, Beast Boy and Raven are trapped in an elevator with a beehive. They emerge as badly swollen, honey-covered blobs.
  • In "BBRAE", Starfire, Robin and Cyborg are all stung by bees that fly out of a bouquet Beast Boy had intended to give to Raven.
  • In "What We Learned At Camp", Artemis gets badly stung after Bumblebee sics a swarm of bees on her.
• Thomas & Friends: In "Buzz Buzz / James Goes Buzz Buzz", a beehive being loaded onto James' express train falls off a luggage cart and breaks open. The passengers flee the station as the bees escape and buzz around James, deciding to warm themselves on his boiler. One bee burns his foot, and thinking James burnt him on purpose, stings him on the nose as retribution. James spends the rest of the episode trying to get rid of the bees on his boiler.
• A Thousand and One... Americas:
  • During the introduction of the local fauna of the Mayans' geography in the sixth episode, a jaguar that is chasing a tapir passes by a honeyhive densely populated by bees, which then proceed to chase it. Even the jaguar knows how dangerous they can be and is terrified, so it tries to flee from them while the queen bee is ordering a direct attack at it (and the bees succeed). Amusingly, the tapir is unable to believe how lucky it is.
  • During the start of the twenty-fourth episode, Lon clashes against a tree while trying to catch a butterfly, which makes a beehive fall onto him and greatly upsets a big swarm of bees. The poor dog can only run away from them ceaselessly until he throws himself onto a river, making the bees lose sight of him and pass him by. Hilariously, despite passing by Chris (who was taking a nap until that point), the latter asks Lon what's going on without noticing the big swarm chasing him.
• The Tofus: In episode 15, Pop attracts a swarm of bees into his shed with music. Lola, Lily and Phil end up getting stung.
• Tom and Jerry: Tee for Two involves Tom attempting a golf game and Jerry making it pure hell for him. Near the end of the episode, Jerry kicks Tom into a tree, causing a beehive to fall on his head. Tom tries escaping from the very pissed-off bees by hiding in a bush, which Jerry promptly destroys. As the bees continue shooting around looking for revenge, they fail to notice a bamboo stem sticking out of a small lake. Jerry points out to the bees that it's really a makeshift breathing apparatus for the cat, and directs them straight down into the bamboo tube. You can guess what happens next.
• Total Drama: Bees are a recurring threat, usually as part of a challenge.
  • Owen has two encounters with an angry swarm of hornets that sting him while he's running errands for his team in "If You Can't Take the Heat...". He gets stung both times, but far worse the second time.
  • In "Search and Do Not Destroy", Lindsay has to retrieve a key that's stored in a beehive. Izzy gets it for her but so she does the bees, which form an angry swarm that chases Lindsay into the sea. Needless to say, she's not looking so hot in the next scene.
  • A dare handed out by Eva in "I Triple Dog Dare You!" requires the contestant who gets it to tolerate a beard of bees for a certain amount of time. Owen ends up getting and completing the date.
  • As Harold's trainer in "Crouching Courtney, Hidden Owen", Duncan comes up with a reflex exercise. A swarm of bees is trapped underneath a cloche and once the cloche is lifted Harold has to pick at the bees one by one with chopsticks. Thing is, Duncan fails to warn Harold of any part of the exercise and makes it seem like he's offering him a good meal. As soon as the cloche is lifted, Harold gets swarmed by the ticked-off bees.
  • The campers have to gather ingredients for a cook-off in the forest in "Eat, Puke and Be Wary". Lightning is under the impression that steaks grow on trees and that by punching a random tree he'll get a few to fall down. All that comes down is a beehive and its unhappy residents, which show Lightning no mercy.
  • In "Evil Dread", Scott triggers a trap that unleashes a swarm of bees that proceeds to chase him.
  • While Sam's munching through the giant pancakes in "Food Fright", he unwittingly chews down on a beehive hidden inside the stack. The bees go for his face en masse, but despite the injuries this leaves him with, he keeps eating. One bee gets stuck in his clothes and escapes when Alejandro holds Sam back from the finish. Then, it's Alejandro who gets stung in the face.
  • With a blowgun, Max pops two of the doom balloons Sky is holding in "Twinning Isn't Everything". Both happen to be filled with bees, which immediately go after Sky.
  • The hurdles race in "Pahk'd With Talent" was supposed to be a regular hurdles race, but Chris decided it needed a few traps to spice things up. Among others, a beehive hangs from one hurdle, which Sugar runs into. She barely registers the bees as she takes the opportunity to snack on the honey.
• Total DramaRama: A montage of Izzy falling asleep in various places ends with her falling off a branch and headfirst into a beehive.
• Unikitty!: In "Camp Unikitty", Unikitty gets a beehive stuck on her head and is viciously stung while exclaiming how much she loves nature.
• Wakfu: In "Bellaphone Island", Elaine steps onto a hive of wasps. The typical running and jumping into a nearby pond ensues for the girls.
• Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa: "How the West Was Shrunk" has Cody get chased by bees while trying to get honey.
• The ZhuZhus: In "If Wishes Were Rainbows", Frankie is chased and stung by bees after Chunk attempts to steal their hive as an offering.

Real Life

• The Battle of Tanga (otherwise known as "The Battle of the Bees") in World War I, where startling military incompetence was compounded by a great many killer bees, who decided to sting the ever-living fuck out of both sides. One unlucky soldier who fell unconscious was actually stung back into consciousness so the bees could continue to whale on him.
• Truth in Television: Once a bee or wasp stings or is swatted, especially killer bees, hornets, and yellow jackets, it releases an alarm pheromone that signals nearby bees/wasps to attack. If you happen to be near their hive... to make matters worse, the exhaust fumes of a diesel engine are similar enough to incite the same behavior in a number of species (because some light esters fit right in). Coincidentally, the same substances give overripe fruits this characteristic thick sweet smell. Prepared to quickly wash your face after a juicy snack? Bon Appetito.
• Unlike her worker offspring, which sting only once and die shortly after, the honeybee queen is capable of stinging multiple times due to having a smooth, barb-less stinger. However, she hardly if ever uses them against humans or large mammals: her trademark royal weapon is reserved for one purpose and one only: killing other queens (her own mother or daughters included) to ensure she reigns alone. Game of Drones, anyone?
• And don't fuck with the Asian Giant Hornet. They are the size of your thumb and typically make their meals by attacking beehives and slaughtering the entire population, then eating all the honey and the larvae. They've been known to easily win fights with bees even when outnumbered a thousand to one. The bee stings hardly bother them. Even so-called "killer bees" are easily wiped out and yellow jacket wasps will abandon their hives as a result of this terrifying menace. 50 people a year killed by these horrid creatures in Japan alone.
  • The famous "30 vs. 30,000" video is of Japanese Hornets vs. European Honey Bees, who have no idea what to do against them. Japanese honey bees have a way of dealing with hornet scouts (cooking them alive via a Dog Pile of Doom), which prevents the main force from ever showing up, provided they lap up the pheromones, too. Half the time the scout gets away without being detected or the Japanese honeybees didn't eat the pheromones in time after roasting the scout and they get wiped out the same as their European cousins. The roasting tactic is especially interesting because Japanese honeybees can withstand at maximum temperatures of between 118 and 122 degrees Fahrenheit while the hornet can only handle up to 117. By raising the temperature to 118, the hornet dies but the bees survive the heat and live on. In this case, the bee is your only hope.
  • As well as the crested/oriental honey buzzard, the ONLY animal in Asia that dares to raid the hives of these panzers with wings.
  • The venom of the Asian Giant Hornet contains an enzyme that in some cases can destroy flesh quickly. So even a person that is not allergic can still die from less than five stings due to renal failure. Even one sting, though not fatal, can be extremely painful. To make it worse, they have very strong bites as their huge mandibles are adapted to crush the exoskeletons of bees and wasps. So, when they attack, not only do they sting, they bite.
  • Native Japanese honeybees have another, less spectacular tactic: When they spot a scout hornet, they release a specific pheromone called an "I See You" pheromone, which, thanks to co-evolution, simultaneously tells the rest of the colony "Hey, there's a hornet scouting us" and the hornet "don't even try, because we're ready for you". Scout hornets that pick up this pheromone leave, and go off in search of easier prey.
  • In 2020, Asian giant hornets were reported to have been found in the Pacific Northwest of North America, causing a panic amongst the general populace. They even earned the nickname "murder hornets" from the media, and while their notorious reputation is certainly a cause for alarm, scientists and beekeepers are more worried about the impact they could have on honeybee populations because of the above-mentioned defenselessness North American honeybees have against these little monsters.
• The nests of the southern yellow jacket often contain several dozen queens and hundreds of thousands of workers, and can reach several feet in diameter. Without a double layered bee suit, do not even think about approaching one of these nests. Even with a double-layered bee suit, the Zerg Rush will be dense enough that the small proportion of yellowjackets that get in a lucky strike will make your day very unpleasant. Also, they nest in the ground. Heaven help you if you get a nest in your back yard and "discover" it with your lawn mower.
• Two of the first American aircraft carriers were clearly named with this trope in mind: USS Hornet and USS Wasp (both actually recycling names that had been used numerous times before in the US Navy). Consider that an aircraft carrier's primary means of attack is to send swarms of small planes to overwhelm their enemies... Most other American carriers tended to be named for important people (Presidents are popular for this) and the sites of famous battles (particularly battles involving aircraft carriers). They continued the tradition with the carrier-capable fighter/attack jet, the F/A-18 Hornet. And there are Attack Drones like the Predator drone—this is the reason they are named as such.
• Debate rages about whether or not the Vuvuzela which sounds like bees is making the 2010 World Cup worse, MAKE IT STOP ALREADY!. So what happens when bees merge with vuvuzelas, and with some car alarm thrown in? WHY DID YOU ASK?!?!.
• Hymenoptera, the order of insects that includes bees, wasps, and ants, is responsible for more lethal attacks on humans than any other animal.
• Africanized honey bees, a.k.a. "killer bees".
  • Much of this was inherited from their ancestors, African honeybees. They are like European honey bees, but twenty times worse. Overly defensive and easily provoked, they will whip the entire hive into an angry frenzy and chase down a single person for over half a mile. The reason why African honey bees are so aggressive? You would be too if you evolved with the honey badger as one of your predators. Oddly enough, the local African populations have a special ritualized way to take their honey.
  • Forget mice, elephants are even more afraid of African honey bees, which will will sting elephants on their most sensitive spots, since elephants tend to demolish the trees that bees live in. This has also proved beneficial to farmers, who protect their crops from elephants by encouraging the bees to build hives at the perimeters of their farm or play the recorded buzzing of angry bees to keep elephants away. If an elephant tries to push through the hive-infested perimeter, it will rouse the bees, resulting in the elephant running away. This is being used as a nonlethal deterrent to condition elephants to avoid farms, resulting in fewer violent confrontations.
  • The reason Africanized honey bees even exist was due to human intervention. In the 1950's, some Brazilian bee keepers had the idea to cross-breed European Honey bees with African Honey bees to increase honey production. They ended up with a bee that is a superior honey producer but is also more aggressive. Unfortunately in 1957, 26 swarms escaped quarantine and have since been spreading northward to North America ever since.
• Accidents where lorries shed their loads on the road are bad enough but during an accident in Idaho the load in question was 400 beehives resulting in a cloud of 14 million bees being released, which resulted in every member of the team that responded to the accident being stung, though none suffered any serious side effects. The authorities are also worried the honey may attract bears too. Though bears do eat honey, it would be far more likely they would be attracted to the brood, as that is what bears are usually after when they attack a hive.
• Members of the terrorist sect Boko Haram in Nigeria been flushed out of the jungle by mysterious attacks from snakes and bees. Some regard the animals as the manifestation of the vengeful spirits of their victims.
• The white-faced hornet is a black-and-white yellowjacket on meth, crack, and steroids. It can be half the size of a big man's thumb, and hundreds may live in a football-sized nest hanging off of a branch. Which nest they will defend with a legendary aggressive fury, chasing the offender for up to two hundred metres at speeds up to 40 km/hour. "Stirring up the hornets' nest" is an English idiom for drawing large amounts of painful trouble. Unlike yellowjackets, they are quite mellow and inoffensive creatures when away from the nest. Also, that big gaudy aerial nest is one of Nature's great warning signs; yellowjackets' nests are typically hidden, and often in close proximity to human dwellings. Most people with experience of both species would rather have white-faced hornets around than yellowjackets.
• European hornets were introduced to North America in the 1800s, and have been a menace ever since. Unlike white-faced hornets, they often establish nests in hidden cavities. European hornets are large, active during both day and night, very aggressive, and protective of their nests. If you discover a hornet colony, contact a pest control professional instead of trying to exterminate the colony yourself.
• The tarantula hawk wasp is one of the largest wasps in the world (7 cm long) and infamous for having the most painful sting in the insect kingdom just behind the infamous bullet ant. Said sting can deliver five minutes of, to quote one scientist, "immediate, excruciating, unrelenting pain that simply shuts down one's ability to do anything, except scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations". Females are also famous for their ability to take on tarantulas and win with their paralyzing venom before feeding the spiders to their young, although adults usually feed on nectar. The good news is they're generally docile and also solitary. It's also the state insect of New Mexico.
• One to beware of, however, is the warrior wasp, which possesses a sting comparable to the tarantula hawk, except that it's both aggressive and social. So, if you get too close to their nests, you risk being swarmed by one of the most painful stings in the world. Thankfully, they do warn you with a drumming sound that sounds creepily like actual marching warriors (hence the name). If you hear that, it's time to back off immediately. One thing that makes warrior wasps so much more dangerous than many of their cousins is the speed at which they go into all-out "attack mode". Most bees and wasps have stages of aggression: sending a few out at first as a warning, then escalating as the threat escalates. Warrior wasps will send out the entire nest at once with very little provocation, and they're *fast*. An unfortunate victim can find themselves covered with hundreds of these things before they even realize what's happening.

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