The Bee's Knees

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Desktop/Console/Mobile-Only Content: This information applies only to the Desktop, Console, and Mobile versions of Terraria.
The Bee's Knees
  • The Bee's Knees item sprite
Stack digit 1.png
Statistics
Type
Weapon
Uses ammoArrows
Damage23 (Ranged)
Knockback3 (Very weak)
Critical chance4%
Use time23 (Fast)
Velocity8
TooltipWooden arrows turn into a column of bees
RarityRarity level: 3
Sell2 GC
Research1 required
Projectiles created
  • Bee Arrow
    Bee Arrow
  • Bee
    Bee
Sounds
Use
Obtained from Obtained from Obtained from
Classic Mode.png Classic
Expert Mode.png Expert
Master Mode.png Master
EntityQty.Rate
Queen BeeQueen Bee.gif Queen Bee133%
Treasure Bag(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)
(Queen Bee)Treasure Bag (Queen Bee)Treasure Bag
(Queen Bee)(Desktop, Console and Mobile versions)		133%
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 Arrows 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.[1] 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.[2]
  • 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.
  • The arrow itself deals damage on contact with an enemy as it disperses into bees, which then also deal damage.

Tips

  • The Bee's Knees is a very powerful weapon for ranged players, significantly outperforming all other bows until the Hellwing Bow in terms of single-target damage.
  • 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 significantly worse than Molten Fury, which is easier to obtain, and especially the Hellwing Bow post-Skeletron. For this reason, it is better to just use Wooden Arrows with the bow. The bow never converting other arrow types also means that it can never inherit those arrows' higher base damage for its special projectile.
    • 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 good weapon against the Wall of Flesh, as the bees can pierce through The Hungry and attack the eyes, which have 0 defense.

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".
  • 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 if the Bee's Knees is fired horizontally.

History

  • Desktop 1.4.0.1:
    • Sprite updated. Old sprite was: The Bee's Knees (pre-1.4.0.1).png
    • Damage decreased from 26 to 23.
    • Use Time increased from 23 to 24.
    • Sell value increased from 54 SC to 2 GC.

References

  1. ↑ Information taken from the Desktop version Desktop 1.4.4.9 source code, method Kill() in Terraria.Projectile.cs.
  2. ↑ Information taken from the Desktop version Desktop 1.4.4.9 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.
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