Obtained from
The Bee's Knees firing a line of bees.
The Bee's Knees is a bow which has a 33.33*1/3 (33.33%) chance of being dropped by Queen Bee. When fired using Wooden Arrows, the bow instead emits a special Bee Arrow projectile resembling a line of bees. On impact with an enemy or solid block, the projectile will break apart, spawning 3-6 bees which home in on nearby enemies. These bees deal 33% base damage (8 base damage), can each pierce one enemy or ricochet off solid blocks once, but not both.[1]
Its best modifier is Unreal.
Notes
- The Bee Arrow projectile will spawn at least 3 Bee projectiles, and has three independent
33.33*1/3 (33.33%) chances to spawn an extra bee.[1]
- The Bee projectiles from the Bee's Knees have a
50*1/2 (50%) chance to deal 1 extra damage and last 10 seconds. With the Hive Pack equipped, all Bee projectiles have a 50*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.[2]
- 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 shots deal much more damage in comparison.
- When shooting at a 1-tile 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.
- The Bee Arrow projectile is unaffected by gravity, meaning it does not dip after being shot like normal arrows do.
- Modifiers with speed penalties such as Annoying, will cause the weapon to fire 2 times in one attack.
Tips
- The Bee's Knees is a very powerful weapon for ranged players, and it can be obtained fairly quickly even if it is not obtained on the first try.
- The Bee's Knees works well with the Endless Quiver. However, due to the fact that the Endless Quiver can only be made in a Hardmode world (unless the player has brought in a Crystal Ball from a Hardmode world), and since either the Palladium or Cobalt Repeater can be obtained early into Hardmode as well, The Bee's Knees quickly loses its effectiveness. However, 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.
- 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.
- 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 enemies.
- The bees the 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 due to the fact that 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 "bee's knees", which means something excellent or outstanding.
- This weapon is a part of the set of bee-related weapons, all connected to 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 1.4.0.1:
- Sprite updated.
- Damage decreased from 26 to 23.
- Use Time increased from 23 to 24.
- Sell value increased from 54 to 2.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Information taken from the Desktop 1.4.3.6 source code, method
Kill() in Terraria.Projectile.cs. There may be inaccuracies, as the current Desktop version is 1.4.4.9.
- ↑ Information taken from the Desktop 1.4.3.6 source code, methods
beeType() in Terraria.Player.cs, beeDamage() in Terraria.Player.cs, beeKB() in Terraria.Player.cs, and SetDefaults() in Terraria.Projectile.cs. Although the actual knockback of Giant Bees is 0.5 + Bee knockback × 1.1, all normal Bees have 0 knockback, making the 1.1× multiplier never effective. There may be inaccuracies, as the current Desktop version is 1.4.4.9.
Classic
Expert
Master
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