Bee-Bee Gun



"Mr Burns: "I suggest you leave immediately." Homer: "Or what? You'll release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouths, and when they bark they shoot bees at you? Well, go ahead -- do your worst!""

- The Simpsons

Bee afraid. Bee very afraid.

Have you ever been to a picnic where everyone freaks out when a bee buzzes by? Wouldn't it bee great if you could take that primal reaction and channel it for your own purposes?

As it turns out, quite a few writers have had just that thought. Enter the Bee-Bee Gun—the weaponization of flying, stinging insects. Bees tend to be effective weapons of terror for a number of reasons—they're too small to shoot or stab, they always seem to come in swarms that can cover every inch of a person, they're difficult to outrun or outmaneuver, and they make that terrifying buzzing noise. Unlike honeybees and some others in the real world, these ones don't seem to die after the first sting. And god help you if you're allergic. ("Your insides will boil out of your eye sockets like a science-fair volcano!") And if you're not, well, being stung to death by thousands of bees would be a rather slow and unpleasant way to go.

In Real Life, of course, a foraging bee isn't likely to sting you unless you try to touch it, or you happen to be covered in sweet stuff, or you threaten their hive. Honeybees die when they sting (and workers can only sting once per bee; drones cannot sting at all) because their stingers are barbed, so that when they attempt to pull it out, they wind up wrenching it out along with a portion of their intestines: ergo they're not likely to do it unless they think it's really damn important. (Yellow jackets and most other wasps, on the other hand, have smooth stingers that enable them to be pulled out of whomever they sting, and they take malicious glee in reminding everyone of this fact.)

A stinging bee (or a crushed bee) releases attack pheromones that attract and rile up more bees. Bee venom is designed to make you think you've been hurt badly, and enough of it causes your throat to swell so that you asphyxiate. The pheromone sticks around and does not wash off quickly. Water is not an ideal deterrent - bees will sting whatever parts are above the water, and come after you when you get out. The sensation is not unlike that of being stung by ants or nettles, as all three use a venom cocktail that includes formic acid.

Ironically, a true swarm of bees is not particularly hostile; some people swear by bee venom therapy' for arthritis etc., and when bee workers kill their queen they do so not by stinging, but by balling up around her and vibrating her muscles until the heat kills her (Mmmm... popcorn...).

The Bee-Bee Gun comes a few varieties, such as:
 * 1) An actual gun that shoots bees.
 * 2) A special ability to control bees.
 * 3) A character that is actually made of bees.
 * 4) Dogs with bees in their mouths so when they bark they shoot bees at you.

A subtrope of Abnormal Ammo and Living Weapon (possibly also Attack Animal). Often hits a Did Not Do the Research / Somewhere an Entomologist Is Crying, because real bees often do not work that way.

Note that beeing able to control all kinds of insects is a semi-common Stock Superpower, but bees, specifically, just seem to bee the go-to insect for this kind of thing. Must be that whole Hive Mind idea. Or maybe it's because "bees" just sounds funny. Or it may bee that they're one of the more terrifying insects one may see on a regular basis.

For instances where the attacking bees are not under someone's control, see Gosh Hornet.

Anime and Manga

 * One of the competitors in the Hunter test arc of Hunter X Hunter used bees.
 * One of the Quirky Miniboss Squad from Ninja Scroll had a beehive for a back.
 * The Aburame clan in Naruto uses insects that live in their body for fighting and tracking, but they mostly stuck to various kinds of beetles and flies. In an early filler episode, they were rivals of another ninja clan that did use bees.
 * Archnemon/Arukenimon of Digimon Adventure 02 could control insects with her flute. This included a swarm of Flymon, who, despite the misnomer, are bees. (It also included Digmon and Stingmon, two insectoid protagonists.) The broader Digimon canon as a whole contains numerous bee species; its exemplars for this trope are the Funbeemon family - the Adult/Champion form's stinger takes up most of its body, the Perfect/Ultimate form IS several fucking shoulder-mounted laser cannons, and the Ultimate/Mega form is a Dual-Wielding cyborg knight.
 * The GetBackers manga has Dokubachi, a villain whose body is made of bees.
 * Although they're not technically bees, at one point in the Inuyasha manga, Moryomaru shoots the bee-like Saimyopushou. From his mouth.
 * In episode 7 of the original Yatterman cartoon, the evil Dokurobei drops a beehive on his subordinate, Doronjo, and her two henchmen. Much swelling results.
 * Not bees, but otherwise a perfect example of this trope in Darker than Black. The second season has the character Tania who has the power to summon large clouds of insects which she can control to engulf others and kill them in a particularly horrible and painful manner.
 * In Mahou Sensei Negima, Quartum has the spell "Apes Ignifera", which summons dog-sized bees made of fire to swarm the target.

Comic Books
"What good is hellfire against fascist bees, really?"
 * [[media:Swarm.jpg|Swarm]] is a Marvel Comics supervillain who is a sentient Hive Mind swarm of bees with Nazi sympathies, generally keeping to a humanoid form. Sometimes the skeleton of the Nazi scientist eaten by his irradiated mutant bee colony is under the bees, sometimes not. Either way, he appears to be in charge. "Everybody hates Nazis, and everybody is scared of bees. Together, they're the perfect foe!"
 * A version of Swarm also appeared in Ultimate Marvel, but because she was simply a woman with the power to control bees, was significantly less awesome.


 * In the Amazons Attack storyline in DC Comics, the Amazons deployed a secret weapon: bees. My God.
 * The "bees" in question were giant "stygian killer hornets" whose sting could kill a person within... hours. Of course, being "giant" meant they were not very hard targets to hit from a safe distance (unlike regular sized insects), and since their venom took "hours" to kill someone (unless a cure was found (which it was)) they were arguably far less deadly than a weapon that killed someone instantly. For a "secret weapon" unveiled by an invading nation that was already supposedly bringing America to its knees they left something to be desired.
 * And there was only about a dozen of the things anyway.
 * Parodied in Blue Beetle, where Traci Thirteen uses a staff to cast "Gds Ddly Wpon" - magical Bees. (Obligatory response from Jaime's father? "My God.")
 * There was also a running gag in Wonder Woman, post-AA, in which a special agent had to keep being reminded he wasn't recovering from an ordinary bee sting.
 * 'Barnaby's Spelling Bees' in Viz ... one of their usual spoof characters whose schtick is that he has a swarm of killer bees that attack on command ... so long as their target begins with 'B'. Hilarity Ensues as normal.
 * The Golden Age superhero the Red Bee's entire shtick was a single trained bee that he kept in his belt buckle; being so ridiculous, he's mentioned with surprising frequency by modern writers.
 * Straight from the Golden Age, Red Bee! Knowing more about him makes it much, much worse. And it took him how long to die?
 * And there was even a ripoff of the Red Bee, the first Yellowjacket.
 * Recurring DC villainess The Queen Bee is an alien empress with insect-like strength and speed, projectile stingers, and mind-control pollen that can turn ordinary humans into "drones" for her hive.
 * A strip appeared in a British Anthology Comic in the 1960s entitled "The Stinging Swarm". It was about a gang of thieves that used a swarm of robot bees armed with paralyzing stings. While their victims were paralyzed, the gang would rob them blind.
 * The Flea from PS238 can control insects—bees included. And while all his other bug attacks are annoying, only the bees have so far made a power armoured soldier run around in a panic screaming "BEEES!" until his Mission Control could activate counter-measures.
 * The Golden Age hero Captain Freedom once fought an evil hillbilly beekeeper who had the Amazons beat—he created giant killer vampire bees.

Film

 * The Wicker Man remake: "Not the beeeeeeeees! ARGLEBLARGLE MY EYES! MY EYYYYYYYYES!" There was Nightmare Fuel potential here somewhere, but it ended up as possibly the Narmiest moment of Nicholas Cage's career. It is worth noting that there were no bees whatever in the original. There were some apples, but they never attacked anyone. (They didn't need to.)
 * Little Nicky: "So while we wait, for your enjoyment, I bring you a dear sweet man and an international icon...Henry Winkler! Covered in bees!"
 * In Defendor the title Crazy Awesome superhero throws jars of angry bees at bad guys.
 * In the Speed Racer movie, one member of the Viking-themed racer team had her car equipped with a beehive catapult. It is a testament to Crazy Awesome that this doesn't seem out-of-place at all.
 * Ruthless People: When Barbara learns of her husband's infidelity (and refusal to pay her ransom) she fantasizes about how she would punish him by covering him with honey and taking him to a bee farm.
 * The backstory of the titular Candyman is that he was hunted down by thugs, had his hand cut off, and stung to death by a hive of bees after having its honey spread over him. Later on
 * The Deadly Bees (shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000) has a mad bee farmer who bred a special breed of bee that will attack anyone or anything that has a trigger scent on it. However, the bees manage to kill everyone except the intended targets because the villain is really inept at placing the scent.
 * In The Stupids, Stanley Stupid is at one point assaulted by the dreaded Drive Bee, sent by his nemesis Mr Sender to kill him. Or at least that's what he thinks, since he's a complete Cloudcuckoolander. It does make him drive off the road though.
 * Sleepaway Camp had a scene where the murderer kills a bully by locking him in washroom stall before cutting open the window above him and dropping a beehive on him.
 * Western Rio Lobo has a Confederate raiding party throw a hornets' nest into a train car carrying some Union soldiers and a large gold supply they were guarding. One of the Union soldiers even dies from injuries sustained by throwing himself out of the train to escape said bugs.
 * In Bedazzled, the Devil demonstrates his evil by tossing a jar full of wasps into a peaceful group of flower children. Stanley, who has sold his soul for seven wishes, criticizes the deed, but isn't willing to use one of his wishes to help them.
 * In Jackass 3D, the boys have a skit where two of them actually play tetherball with a beehive. This goes about as well as can be expected.
 * In The Men Who Stare at Goats a gun that shoots wasps is proposed by  in between a non-lethal airbag mine and mutilating enemy corpses-- "We don't do that anymore! Idiot!".
 * In one of the Three Stooges pictures (they were cave men), they fight off another band of cavemen by shooting a beehive at them using a giant sling shot. They also use chemical warfare by shooting a skunk at them.
 * In Apocalypto, Jaguar Paw throws a beehive at his pursuers, who are forced to run from the bees.

Literature

 * Tad Williams' novel The War of the Flowers features a variation on this trope: the fairies in the story use magic guns that shoot metal bees that fly forever until they hit something.
 * In Rudyard Kipling's The Second Jungle Book story "Red Dog", Mowgli stirs up a hive of wild bees to attack the marauding wild dogs of the title, having smeared himself with garlic so the bees won't attack him before he can reach the comparative safety of the river.
 * The Wicked Witch of the West has control over a swarm of bees in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
 * Elphaba retains this ability in Gregory McGuire's revisionist book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
 * In Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, the first humans to land on Mars are killed by a native Martian's Bee Gun.
 * In Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy, Molly once tricked a squad of guards into thinking she could control bees. She made sure she was in shadow while the guards were brightly lit (knowing that the bees would fly towards light), opened the beehive and told the bees to kill them all.
 * The Discworld novel Lords and Ladies has Granny Weatherwax figure out how to possess the entire Hive Mind of a beehive just in time for a Big Damn Heroes moment.
 * Goosebumps: BEE THROWING! This blog explains it much better than I ever could.
 * In Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, Dag defends himself against a group of village toughs trying to disrupt his wedding by dropping a wasp's nest on their heads. That he was able to magically convince the wasps to climb up pant legs and down shirt collars and to follow the boys all the way downriver was really just icing on the cake there.
 * Something similar happens in Redwall at least twice:
 * The original Redwall; Jess Squirrel and Silent Sam put a hornets' nest in a barrel and drop it over the wall onto the bearers of the battering ram.
 * Marlfox; the Abbeydwellers see that the titular villains and their followers are knocking down an old tree to use as a battering ram. They do nothing, because they know that said tree is full of wasp and termite nests, and the attackers suffer the consequences.
 * Not quite the same, but Martin and his friends in Martin the Warrior get trapped in a clearing full of angry bees.
 * In the most recent novel Doomwyte, some of the characters are attacked by bees apparently ruled by an elderly female hedgehog who is... a few honeycombs short of a full hive, so to speak. Unfortunetly, the plot device they need is in her possession and she won't give it up so easily.
 * Then there's Owch Mansions in Eulalia, designed to be a paradise for wasps. Very handy when vermin come to call.
 * In the novel The Road to Damascus, a Bolo story written by Linda Evans and John Ringo, at one point in an alien invasion of their world, some protagonists throw the bee hives used for making honey into a barn where several of the invader's soldiers are found, the stings of the swarming bees, designed to be more aggressive to force out native competitors, killing the soldiers.
 * In P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath book To Ride a Rathorn, protagonist Jame and insect-attracting boy Gari jointly kill someone by sending a swarm of bees down their throat.
 * In Robin McKinley's Chalice, the heroine is a Fisher Courtier who's also a beekeeper. Most of the book she just has magic honey, but at dramatically appropriate moments she has magic bee swarms as well.
 * In Survivor's Quest, the  have swarms of "schostri", yellow and black insects that can hide under their clothing or swarm in a protective spherical pattern around their handler. Their stings are quickly fatal to most life-forms. If this seems like a Vong thing... who knows? Maybe it is.
 * In Suzanne Collins's novel The Hunger Games, Katniss, the heroine, gruesomely kills two of her opponents by dropping a hive of hyper-angry, mutated wasps on them. The author describes, in full detail, one of the girls' slow, painful, seizure-filled death; and how the once "breathtakingly beautiful girl" is now unrecognizable from the stings.
 * To make matters worse, a single sting from one of these critters (called tracker jackers), is enough to induce vivid, terrifying hallucinations, as Katniss discovers the hard way.
 * At the end of The Culture novel Look to Windward, the Culture takes a horrific revenge on the masterminds behind a terrorist attack in a way that fully supports their Beware the Nice Ones credentials. One plotter is attacked by some kind of Nanomachines which transform into insects (which he is afraid of) and invade every orifice and sting him to death.
 * In undoubtedly one of the creepiest parts of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King, the titular girl, who's name completely escapes me at the moment, hallucinates a "man" made of bees, possibly with a skelaton underneath. He claims to be the herald of the monster in the woods that's hunting her. It's that kind of book.
 * In Of Bees And Mist the Evil Matriarch Eva uses bees which arise from her spiteful words, to control her husband among other terrifying things.
 * In Divine Eagle, Gallant Knight aka Return of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong (Louis Cha) Xiao Long Nü controls swarms of white Jade Bees she can attack intruders with.
 * From The Wheel of Time one of the Blue Ajah's special weaves summons a swarm of stinging insects.

Live-Action TV

 * There was a bee-based villainess in the second season of Who Wants to Be a Superhero?.
 * In the robot rumble episode of Malcolm in the Middle, Hal constructed a robot that shot a laser-guided stream of bees at the opposing robot's controller.
 * There was supposed to be a villain named Kane in Heroes season 2 that could control insects, with bees being his main "weapon". But he never showed up. This may be because of the Writer's Strike, or perhaps due to Special Effects Failure.
 * Or, more likely, given that this is Heroes, they didn't have the budget to show it more than once.
 * Smallville: One of the Krypto-Freaks of the Week was a girl who could control bees with her mind, which she used to eliminate her competition for class president.
 * X-Files, "Zero Sum." The conspiracy decides to test the viability of killer bees as a weapon.
 * In another episode, titled "X-Cops", Mulder and Scully wind up on the TV show "Cops" in Los Angeles chasing a monster that assumes the form of its victim's worst fear. Though the viewers don't get to see it, one of the cop's fears is a bee-man and the man is nearly stung to death.
 * And The Movie had . X-Files really loves this trope.
 * Rescue 911: One of the segments detailed a traffic accident that involved a driver stuck in his vehicle, which was turned on its side—and the vehicle was a truck carrying bees. Of course, the bees were released. The fact that it happened at night didn't help; the bees were even more agitated by the headlights and sirens. This resulted in several rescue workers being sent to the hospital as well, and that stretch of the roadway had to be shut off for a few days. Ah, a testament to the power of bees.
 * A villain in Pushing Daisies killed the Victim of the Week by siccing trained bees on her.
 * The episode "Cupid's Quiver" of Friday the 13th: The Series had the surprisingly creepy villain kill a girl by trapping her in a car with a sack containing a beehive.
 * Don't forget the cursed apiary that turned the bees within it into something much worse than mere killer bees: vampire bees!
 * In the Doctor Who serial Time and the Rani, the Mad Scientist the Rani had spheres full of killer insects in the village she had subjugated.
 * One of the early Mission: Impossible episodes had the team trying to figure out who the killer was in an estate by gaslighting the suspect, and there were bees everywhere in the background. And there's a new corpse. In the climax, the door locks on its own, trapping the team out and the killer insde, and the killer is killed by thousands of bees swarming into the room. The new corpse turns out to be the late beekeeper of the estate. This was the only supernatural episode in the entire history of the show.

Music

 * The song "Lord of the Hornets" by Robert Calvert of Hawkwind is about a crazy guy who breeds the aforementioned insects to attack people.
 * The song Voodoo Acid by Steve Vai is about a dream, in which the artist is seduced by the Queen of Bees. Vai is Known for leeping bees in his garden.

Tabletop Games

 * In Mortasheen, this is such a common power that it's actually its own damage type. And it's not just with bees either.
 * In Hunter: The Vigil one of the Endowments that could be afforded to hunters to put them on an equal level with supernatural beings was a Personal Defense Swarm, which was, in essence, a magical hand that shoots bees. The bees are hinted to be made from a Pandoran, and the user is advised to keep their emotions in check - one guy had found out his partner was sleeping with his wife; when he let the bees out against a bunch of monsters, they slaughtered his partner while the monsters tore the rest of the group to shreds.
 * Numerous Tyranid bioweapons in Warhammer 40,000 fire the alien equivalent of bees. Which then chew through the target's insides.
 * D&D 4e has the Swarm Druid, and divine spellcasters in earlier editions often had the stinging swarm spell, which not only covered a target in a swarm of biting or stinging insects, but the swarm could spread and would distract any caster who tried to perform a spell while afflicted.
 * The Melissidae, a bloodline of the Ventrue from Vampire: The Requiem, are vampiresses known as Queen Bees who attempt to organize themselves and those around them into complex hive-like societies. They have powers such as turning their blood tremendously addictive (more than the usual), causing pain with their kiss that's so severe you're unable to do anything other than writhe, and tearing apart your personality and memories to make you an near-mindless drone of her hive. And if it wasn't disturbing enough they also have the power to control bees (or wasps), store hundreds of them inside their stomachs/lungs, and release them any time they want. But one of the nastier things these bitches can do is to implant a queen bee inside your ear (or some other cavity), turning you into a living hive: The insects lay eggs and the larvae feed on you slowly, and you won't feel anything 'til they become adults and burst out of your body, ready for her to control. Nightmare Fuel indeed.
 * Let's put it this way: these girls so disgusting the rest of vampire society that they tried to commit genocide on them. Too bad they missed three.
 * Magic: The Gathering has:
 * The artifacts Hornet Cannon (pictured above) and The Hive.
 * The spells Bee Sting, Unyaro Bee Sting (the latter functionally identical, but with more flavor than the former), and Hornet Sting (which makes for funny game wins).
 * The creatures Killer Bees and Unyaro Bees (which, as you may note, combined Killer Bees with Unyaro Bee Sting), Caustic Wasps, Giant Dust Wasp, Hornet Harasser, Jagwasp Swarm.
 * Belligerent Hatchling, which actually matches up with description #4.

Video Games

 * Averted in Kingdom Hearts. One of the Keyblades in KH 2, Sweet Memories, has bees floating around the head of the blade (a hive; you get Sweet Memories from 100 Acre Wood). However, instead of being an angry, bastardy weapon, it's just lovely; it has low attack, releases presents when you kill enemies, and makes a lovely noise.
 * BlazBlue's Arakune is undoubtedly the ultimate summation of this trope. After he curses his opponent with any of his Drive attacks, he can press the same button again to summon, yeah, BEES! But these aren't just any bees. These are bees that repeatedly hit you and keep you juggled in the air. Worse still is the fact that if you block, you remain in blockstun until they go out of range, leaving you in a very vulnerable state as Arakune rushes in to throw you. No wonder he's so hated.
 * However, in CS you will have to fill up the curse gauge before you can use the bees. Note, however, that because the original mechanic had the curse dissipate the next time Arakune was hit, the curse now lasts longer.
 * In Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, you get bee-esque buzzer swarms for the Scrin. They function as anti-infantry, but instead of stinging, they rip them to shreds like buzzsaws.
 * The Witch Doctor from Diablo 3 has an insect swarm as one of his main attacks. Well, locusts, actually, but probably close enough to this trope to count.
 * A plasmid in BioShock (series) turns your arm into a living beehive and shoots bees at your enemies.
 * It gets more horrific in Bioshock 2; you can upgrade so that dead enemies become hives, releasing bees against other enemies that get close.
 * The Pain, a boss from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, is a soldier whose body is also a living beehive. His powers can best be described as being covered in bees and covering others in bees.
 * This was mocked constantly in The Last Days of FOXHOUND. "I'm covered in BEES!"
 * The official explanation for his abilities are... interesting at best. He got stung enough that the hornets thought he was a hornet too. Plus he kept a Queen Hornet a pack at his hip. Apparently that's all you need to control hornets with your mind.
 * And apparently all that you need to make hornets turn into a Tommy gun is a persuasive argument.
 * Considering how big they are, The Pain appears to control Japanese Giant Hornets; which frankly count as Nightmare Fuel.
 * If you defeat The Pain by stamina-killing him (lowering his stamina meter as opposed to his health meter) you get the Hornet Stripe camo, which lets you control bees if you shoot down a beehive close to you. You can then make the bees attack enemy soldiers if you get close enough to them.
 * Half Life had the hive hand weapon, which shot alien "thornets", which are less like bees, and more like flying, seeking armor-piercing daggers of death that can find you anywhere.
 * So if you're an apiphobic, just like bees.
 * There's an enemy in Kingdom of Loathing named "The Guy Made Of Bees". Guess what his gimmick is.
 * And guess how effective attacking is ... or how effective getting attacked is.
 * If you do manage to defeat him, you get a Guy Made Of Bee Pollen.
 * There's also a door in the Sorceress's tower that shoots bees at you if you enter the wrong code.
 * They've turned it Up to Eleven. There's an entire mode of play now called "Bees Hate You."
 * In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, you can catch bees and use them to attack enemies. The special "Golden Bee" returns to you afterwards.
 * Normal bees return as well, but will start stinging you unless you catch them again.
 * Normal bees will also only sting the enemies a few times before flittering off the screen. Golden bees stick around forever. Given enough time they will kill entire screenfuls of enemies.
 * The Pokémon named Vespiquen is a queen bee who uses a swarm of its prevolution Combee to attack, defend, and heal herself. There's also Beedrill, which is a giant bee with enormous spikes on its forelegs.
 * The Custom Robo series has a recurring Hornet Gun.
 * Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath has Stingbee crossbow ammo, which work like machine gun bullets and home in on enemies.
 * In Mega Man Battle Network 6, some of the enemies were beehives that, when you shot them, shot bees out at you. The battlechip you got from defeating them? It shot bees that home in on enemies. And if you deployed the beehive at just the right moment, when an enemy hit you, he'd stir up the hive and summon more angry bees at himself.
 * Mega Man 9 features a robot master named Hornet Man, who attacks by summoning bees that chase Mega Man around the room. His weapon, the Hornet Chaser, lets Mega Man do it too. The strangely adorable bugs not only attack enemies, but fetch power-ups to return to the "queen" (Mega Man). This is the only way to get some of them. Best not to think too hard about why Splash Woman is weak to them. Something about her having lighter armor than the other masters...
 * Mega Man X 3 has Blast Hornet, who shoots hornets at you as a primary attack. His weapon, the Parasite Bomb, is an Awesome Yet Impractical bomb that latches onto the enemies it hits and rams them into the nearest enemy they can find, blowing both of them up... until you charge it up. Then it shoots homing bees.
 * Mega Man ZX Advent has a boss named Queenbee, who is (surprise, surprise) a giant robotic bee... with a rather sultry tone of voice. In addition to launching smaller bees (which explode!), she can also shoot fire from her stinger, and she will sometimes fly offscreen to pick up, then drop on you, a rather large bomb which explodes with Anime Light Beams coming out of it.
 * Q-Bee in Darkstalkers is a Cute Monster Bee-Girl who uses smaller (that is, about football-sized compared to her) bees in many of her attacks.
 * Ratchet and Clank has two examples: Nano Swarmers in Tools Of Destruction and the Bee Mine Glove in Size Matters.
 * Both Civilization IV and the Medieval 2 : Total War add-on feature the Mayan Hornet Thrower. See below.
 * Hellgate:London has the Hive Blade/Swarm Edge swords and the Wasp/Windhopper/Swarm Hive guns. Of course, this is the same game with Electric Eel Launchers, so it's no surprise there. Also, the spell "Venom Armor" automatically sics bees on anyone that attacks you.
 * The aerial shooter Snoopy Vs the Red Baron has one of these as a weapon for Snoopy to mount on his Sopwith Camel.
 * Secret of Evermore has the alchemy spell Sting, one of the hardest in the game to locate, which summons a swarm of bees that attack enemies.
 * The Incredible Hulk had the Enclave (A Secret Society of Mad Scientists) attacking the titular Hulk with a wide variety of weapons. Including The Swarm, which are... swarms. Of presumably bio-engineered bees. They are actually effective against the friggin' Hulk, who's proven capable of shrugging off nuclear weapons. Fortunately, his signature 'hand clap' attack is effective at dispersing the little buggers...
 * Resident Evil Zero features as enemies men made out of leeches, who are all controlled by a scientist who was eaten by a leech and whose personality was digested into its genetic memory.
 * EVE Online: "Imagine a swarm of deadly hornets pouring from the devil’s mouth. Now imagine they have autocannons." - Designer of the HEL drone Carrier.
 * Champions: Return To Arms had the Iksar Shaman, a man-sized sentient magic lizard who, for one spell, shot out bees. To balance that out, though, his animal summoning spell was a badger. Who will die a lot. I named him Kenny.
 * The monstrous Devouring Earth in City of Heroes have "the Swarm", roughly spherical masses of bees that may be encountered independently or summoned by certain monsters. They're more a nuisance than a threat, except in large numbers; their stings do mild continuing damage and slow down the speed of your movement and attacks.
 * City of Villains has a mission where you get to make these yourself courtesy of a Jar Of Bees.
 * One April Fools joke advertised a "Bee Bark Upgrade" that would grant various Dog and Wolf based pets the ability to shoot bees out of their mouths when they bark.
 * The Stranger in Stranger's Wrath gets Stingbees and Super Stingbees (these ones can home in on Outlaws) for his crossbow.
 * In the ARG "I Love Bees", one half of a fractured combat AI is sent back in time, finding its way to a website about bees and honey. Everything about it, up until the conclusion, revolved around...well, you can guess.
 * The Hornet's Nest ring from zOMG! has you throw a hornet's nest to the ground, releasing a swarm of angry hornets that sting enemies and make them run in fear.
 * One of the traps in Evil Genius releases a swarm of bees that attacks nearby characters.
 * The Deathbellows Transgenants of UFO: Aftermath, which emit clouds of nondescript insects (likely bees, though) as a rapid-fire sustained area-effect weapon, can and WILL be your squad's number 1 cause of death until the Reticulans start bringing in bioengineered rocket launchers.
 * Riviera has a one-use weapon called the Hornet Vulcan. It's a killer bee nest that the player has the option of retrieving. When the player uses it, massive damage ensues. Of course, there's always the chance that the bees will go for you rather the opponent...
 * In the Let's Play of Baldurs Gate 2, sir Anomen is killed when he falls into a gate to the elemental plane of bees. At least, that's what the protagonist insists is what happened...
 * The game itself has a druid spell that summons a swarm of bad-tempered bees that sting your enemies. This completely shuts down enemy spellcasting, as the mages are too distracted by the incessant stinging, allowing you to mug them.
 * In The Conduit, the Hive Cannon shoots exploding bees.
 * In the sequel, targets can be tagged with sticky bait so the bees can home in on it.
 * In World of Warcraft, druids who choose Balance talents can eventually learn the Insect Swarm ability. Bees are summoned, mayhem ensues.
 * Mother 3 has the honey spray. Using it covers an opponent in honey, who is then chain-stung by a few bees.
 * Bees are bad enough, but that particular item had a low chance to summon another animal that craves delicious honey.
 * In Dragon Age, mages get access to the Stinging Swarm spell, which engulfs enemy targets in a swarm of bees. Mages who specialize in shapeshifting can even transform themselves into a particularly large swarm.
 * This mod for Team Fortress 2 makes the Pyro's flamethrower into a bee shooter.
 * Recent but already legendary is the custom map achivement_all_4. To explain: achievement servers are special servers that players set up to grind achievements instead of actually going out and getting them ingame. One player designed a map to look like an achievement server with a uh...nasty surprise that players can accidentally trigger. Yes, it's a twenty-foot tall cat that shoots bees out of its mouth.
 * Touhou's Wriggle Nightbug uses bees, along with other painful (and deadly) insects and arthropods, for Bullet Hell. And failing that, she kicks you in the face.
 * Ed from Tonic Trouble can shoot bees from his blowpipe.
 * Heroes of Might and Magic 4 and 5 have a "Wasp Swarm" spell.
 * 5 also has "Call Hive", which is The Same but More More Dakka.
 * An equippable item in Spore: Galactic Adventures shoots a bee swarm at the enemy, causing them to take damage and lose control for a while while they run around chased by the bees.
 * Pun-laden as the game is, Adventure Quest has one item called a Bee Bee Gun. No extra points for guessing what it shoots.
 * In Populous: The Beginning, one of the first miracles the Shaman learns is Swarm, which summons a horde of insects that make enemies panic and scatter for a short time.

Web Comics

 * Get Medieval brings us the unforgettable Bee siege.
 * One recurring character in the Dada Comic Witch's Brew is Twenty Bees Man, a sort-of superhero with a beehive for a head and the ability to summon twenty bees to do his bidding.
 * House assaulting Foreman with bees is a Running Gag in MS Paint TV.
 * Subverted in a sidestory of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Beeman prepares one of these, but it's not very effective because he loaded it too far in advance and all the bees died.
 * While the type of insect isn't specified, in Dead of Summer, a bad guy attacks  with this. They're biting insects as opposed to stinging ones, first eating part of his clothing before attacking. Unlike some other examples, it's played seriously and scarily. At one point   screams that they're eating him alive, and it doesn't look like he was exaggerating.
 * In Sherlok Holms, has bee-inator eyebeams, which turn people into bees.

Web Original

 * Bric-A-Brac Burning Man features a swarm of bees terrorizing the Burning Man festival

Western Animation

 * On The Simpsons, in the episode "Burns' Heir", Homer guesses that Mr. Burns's home is guarded by dogs, bees, or dogs with bees in their mouths so that when they bark, they shoot bees at you. (He is incorrect. Burns just goes back inside and locks the door. A deleted scene reveals that he has a Robotic Richard Simmons guarding the manor.)
 * In The Terrible Thunderlizards, the Thunderlizards used bazookas, grenades, and guns that shot bees.
 * The Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Risky Beesness" was about a wacko woman who wanted to break into the music business in the worst way—by hypnotizing bees into doing her bee-dding: getting them to seal away Iron Goose and keep people from leaving the concert. She also used them to attack the Rangers when they attempted to stop her.
 * Invader Zim features bees amongst its other animal references, such as when a single bumblebee took down Zim's Voot Cruiser in "Attack of the Saucer Morons". Jhonen Vasquez has admitted on the DVD commentary that he has a thing for bees.
 * Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends did an episode where a glowing meteor crashes to Earth and creates a "body" for itself out of a swarm of bees. This entity, calling itself Swarm (see Comic Books above), sadly does not shoot pieces of itself, but instead energy blasts that turn humans into mind-controlled bee-hybrids.
 * Johnny Test has a recurring villain called the Bee Keeper who uses bees as a weapon and speaks in bee puns. In his first appearance, his raison d'etre is to eliminate all the sweet foods from the town of Porkbelly with his bees...
 * Justice Friends in Dexter's Laboratory also has a whole episode dedicated to this: "Bee Where?". Complete with the yell as noted above... BEEEEEEE!!!
 * The Disney movie about Tinkerbell features a scene where Tink and the other Fairies play darts with bees. Tink pulls out a slingshot/crossbow to fire hers instead.
 * The 1945 Tom and Jerry cartoon short "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 that's really makeshift breathing apparatus for the cat, and directs them straight down into the bamboo tube. You can guess what happens next.
 * On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Lucius has a button on his desk that shoots bees at people.

Other
"My father was a beekeeper, and his father was a beekeeper. And I'm going to follow in their footsteps. And their footsteps were like this: "AAAAAAAAAH!  I'm covered in BEEEEEEEES!" "I like my women like I like my coffee. Covered in beeeeeeeeeeeeees!""
 * From a Eddie Izzard stand up piece about beekeepers:


 * In the newspaper strip Pogo, Albert the Alligator invents the B-Bomb: “With a real B-hive in it!”

Real Life

 * The Mayans had soldiers specializing in throwing hornet nests at their enemies in battle. They covered themselves in thick mud to protect themselves from the obvious potential for blowback.
 * According to William Gurstelle in "The Art of the Catapult," Alexander the Great had his catapults fire hornets' nests onto the decks of enemy galleys during the Siege of Tyre. Which is just ghastly.
 * A cancelled US Army weapons project involved a chemical weapon that, when dropped on enemy troops, would attract and enrage any bees, wasps, or related insects in the area. The project was never fully realized.
 * Bees and wasps emit an attack pheromone that attracts others to the target, usually when the hive is perceived to be threatened.
 * The venom of the Asian Giant Hornet is not only one of the most painful in the world, but it also contains an enzyme that marks the unfortunate victim so that other Asian Giant Hornets in the vicinity will home in and attack the target. It also dissolves human skin
 * One episode of the Discovery show Pitchmen featured an aspiring inventor trying to sell windshield wipers that could, among other things, remove splattered bugs from a windshield. To demonstrate the product, his friend designed a gun that shot bees at a windshield at a high velocity.
 * In the Middle Ages, throwing/catapulting beehives over city walls at attacking armies was an effective tactic, and fairly common, as in those days honey was the most available sweetener and almost everybody had a couple of hives around.
 * Some yellow jackets and hornets, including the aforementioned Asian Giant Hornet, can spray venom.
 * Bosses of the Greenfield Valley Heritage Park in northeast Wales are considering "using bees to deter people from going into the protected buildings." Yes, that's right. To deter vandals in the park, they're considering employing security bees.

"Oh Crap! RUN! *bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*"