The Bee's Knees

  

Desktop/Console/Mobile-Only Content: This information applies only to the Desktop, Console, and Mobile versions of Terraria.

The Bee's Knees

• 

Statistics

Type	Weapon
Uses ammo	Arrows
Damage	23 (Ranged)
Knockback	3 (Very weak)
Critical chance	4%
Use time	23 (Fast)
Velocity	8
Tooltip	Wooden arrows turn into a column of bees
Rarity	03*
Sell	2 GC
Research	1 required

Projectile created

• Bee Arrow
  

Sounds

Use

• Internal Item ID: 2888 (Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)
• Internal Projectile ID: 469

 Obtained from

 Classic

 Expert

 Master

Entity	Qty.	Rate
Queen Bee Queen Bee	1	33%
Treasure Bag(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions) (Queen Bee)Treasure Bag (Queen Bee)(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)	1	33%

The Bee's Knees firing a line of bees.

The Bee's Knees is a pre-Hardmode bow that, when consuming Wooden Arrows as ammo, fires special Bee Arrow projectiles which resemble lines of bees. Bee Arrows are unaffected by gravity and disperse upon impact with an enemy or solid block, spawning three small homing bee projectiles with three independent 1/3 (33.33%) chances to spawn an extra bee. The bee projectiles deal 1/3 (33.33%) of the weapon and ammo's damage (9 base damage) before dissipating after a 10-second duration or upon contact with water or lava, and have a 1/2 (50%) chance to deal 1 extra damage. Individual bees can pierce one enemy or ricochet off of blocks once, but never both simultaneously. The Bee's Knees has a 1/3 (33.33%) chance of being dropped by the Queen Bee.

Its best modifier is Unreal.

Notes

• With the Hive Pack equipped, all Bee projectiles have a 1/2 (50%) chance to be converted into Giant Bee projectiles, which always deal 1–3 extra damage, have a knockback of 0.5 (Extremely weak), fly noticeably faster, and last 11 seconds. Both kinds of bee projectiles can only pierce one enemy or ricochet off solid blocks once and will dissipate immediately on contact with water or lava.
• When shooting at a 1-block thick wall at the left or above the player, some bee projectiles from the initial projectile could be spawned on the other side of the wall. Bees will never pass through blocks to the right or below them, however.
• Bee Arrow projectiles, due to being unaffected by gravity, do not travel in arcs after being shot as normal arrows do and instead fly through the air in straight lines.

Tips

• The Bee's Knees is a very powerful weapon for ranged players, and it can be obtained fairly quickly thanks to its high drop rate.
• The Bee's Knees works well with the Endless Quiver. However, since the Endless Quiver can only be obtained in Hardmode, and since either the Palladium or Cobalt Repeater can be obtained early into Hardmode as well, The Bee's Knees quickly loses its effectiveness. Nonetheless, it can still be used if one does not yet wish to destroy an Altar as not to risk a potentially early and underprepared mechanical boss fight.
• Because of their more limited number of ricochets, the individual bees fired from The Bee's Knees generally have less longevity than the other bee weapons. However, the weapon's main Bee Arrow shots deal much more damage in comparison.
• Unlike many bows that convert arrows for special projectiles, the Bee's Knees can be used to fire non-Wooden Arrow arrows normally. In this capacity, it is an above-average bow, second only in pre-Hardmode to the Molten Fury but accessible much earlier. However, its special projectiles can never inherit the higher base damage of a superior arrow type due to requiring Wooden Arrows for them to be sent out.
• In close quarters, The Bee's Knees can be used to do trick shots, striking the projectile against a surface to send bees into an area without requiring the player to leave cover. However, bees will ricochet more often in confined spaces as well, causing them to die off faster and deal less damage overall.
  • If a target is difficult to hit out of the air, it may be viable to fire shots at the ground and let the bees home in on the enemy.
• The bees this bow summons are able to deliver near-constant damage to enemies, essentially stun-locking them through knockback. This makes The Bee's Knees viable even into early Hardmode.
• The Bee's Knees is a great weapon against the Wall of Flesh, as the bees can easily take care of The Hungry in a short amount of time and build a swarm to take out the Wall of Flesh itself.

Trivia

•     Modifier prefixes are added in front of the "The" in its name, which can result in a grammatically incorrect name such as "Keen The Bee's Knees". It shares this trait with all other items that can obtain modifiers and whose names begin with "The". This error is not present in the  Old-gen console version.
• The name refers to the phrase the bee's knees, which means something excellent or outstanding.
• This weapon is a part of the set of bee-related weapons, all connected to the Queen Bee and Bee Hive.
• Despite the tooltip claiming that the arrows turn into columns of bees, they can also be rows, should the Bee's Knees be fired horizontally.

History

 Desktop version

• Desktop 1.4.4: Usetime reduced from 24 to 23.

• Desktop 1.4.0.1:
  • Sprite updated. Previous sprite was:
  • Damage decreased from 26 to 23.
  • Use Time increased from 23 to 24.
  • Sell value increased from 54 SC to 2 GC.

• Desktop 1.3.0.1: Introduced.

 Console version

• Console 1.0.933.1: Introduced. ()

• Console 1.0.750.0: Introduced. ()

 Nintendo Switch version

• Switch 1.0.711.6: Introduced.

 Mobile version

• Mobile 1.3.0.7: Introduced.