Castle Crashers is a beat-em-up game in which Killer Beekeepers appear both as enemies and as a player character. The enemies appear in only a single level of the game and the player character has to be unlocked, both little touches that make the Killer Beekeepers feels rightfully special. But is that specialness justified?

Well, the enemy Killer Beekeepers are, as I say, rare. They will only attack when the player’s rampage brings them through the fields where the Killer Beekeepers’ bees live and work, and even then the only after the player has taken out a number of bees. In spite of the word “Killer” appearing as an adjective in their name, these Beekeepers just don’t show a sign of Beekeeper Rage. They legitimately just want to protect their bees. That’s admirable.

The unlockable player character Killer Beekeeper is a better study for the skills these Beekeepers can have as they level up. Upon starting the game the Killer Beekeeper is armed with a weapon called the Rat-Beating Bat, implying that they honed their skills protecting their hives from rats. As they level up their magical abilities, they gain the power to summon bees and use them as projectiles to fire at opponents (these bees are perfectly willing to die for the cause). And, indeed, with fully-levelled magic they can summon bees so quickly that enemies find it hard to resist being hurt. And while it isn’t directly related to beekeeping (though it is accompanied by smoke effects), they also have a magical jumping ability and can attack bosses while in the air, something apparently few other characters in the game can do.

It feels natural to compare the Killer Beekeepers with the Beekeeper from Fist Puncher. She was another who existed in the world of a beat-em-up game and could wander around fighting everyone who needs to be fought. A similar comparison would be the Beekeeper from Citizens of Earth, though she has numerous powers beyond just combat, such as healing skills, which give her the edge ratings-wise. The Killer Beekeepers show no talent as healers and have no talking bees or anything like that. They’re impressive fighters, but they have so much more to learn.

Four Honeycombs out of Five.

Hachibee is the Apiarist in Distress found in a Ghost of Tsushima expansion. This means he lives back in Samurai Times of Japan (I don’t feel it necessary to bother with a more detailed description of the era at this time.)

At this point I’ve covered enough of these that I could have told you how it goes before even looking: The hives/the Beekeeper are in danger, the game’s protagonist has to save them. It’s done by the numbers and doesn’t deviate.

I can’t rate Hachibee more than a Two for this. That’s the standard for this role. But Hachibee actually gets a little bit more detail than most of his fellows, which makes me wish I could go higher.

For example:

• His honey is used for healing.
• He writes poems for his bees.
• He suggests his bees may be useful to the protagonist in a fight.
• He has a good beekeeper name.
• He refuses to abandon his hives even when the enemies arrive.

It’s all good stuff, but just not enough to escape the surprisingly cliche role of videogame Apiarist in Distress.

Two Honeycombs out of Five.

“She is part-support and part-offense, able to fit into most party combinations. With her bee companions, she is able to inflict status ailments as well as buff her allies!”

Citizens of Earth is a computer game in which the player is the Vice President of the World and all the NPCs are potential members of the VP’s team. Naturally, one of those potential teammates is a Beekeeper.

By the end of the game the Beekeeper has potentially travelled inside the Internet, ridden Ogopogo, fought monsters inside dreams, and defeated alien warlords in combat. That’d be an impressive resume for any adventurer and would stand out against most other Beekeepers I’ve reviewed, but here, in this game, all of that stuff is also true of every other character. In this game, that’s just the baseline amount of cool that any character can have. Is there anything to justify this Beekeeper highly apart from that stuff?

I’m not going to try and build suspense for this review. The answer is yes. Yes, this is a damned high-ranking Beekeeper. First of all, most Beekeepers in videogames are what I call Apiarists in Distress. Usually the Beekeepers are in trouble and they wait for the game’s protagonist to come get them out of it. And sure, this game’s Beekeeper does give the player a quest, but it isn’t because she’s in danger or needs his help. She’s just unwilling to leave her work early to help the VP unless he pitches in on keeping bees, which makes sense to me.

And, of course, the fighting prowess and supernatural powers that I look for are not lacking in the slightest. She can beat up a lot of monsters, with her bees stinging single enemies or groups of enemies and has a powerful thermal attack. But don’t think she just puts her bees at risk while she stays out of the action: she also has a very powerful attack called Final Sting that does a lot of damage to the target, but also reduces her hit points completely, in true bee style. Another videogame Beekeeper who spent a lot of time fighting was the one from Fist Puncher. She was a badass fighter and everything, but that was it. Her anger let her peak at badass. The Beekeeper in Citizens of Earth has other skills. She can have her bees defend her party, and she can heal her teammates, and she is able to offer a “Bee’s Eye View” to get a better look at the world around them. The fact that she has learned to use her bees and her knowledge for things other than just doing harm proves that she doesn’t let Beekeeper Rage rule over her. In fact, she’s downright happy most of the time.

What else? She wears a suit with bee colours. She speaks in incessant bee and honey puns. She’s written at least one book (“Lord of the Bees”). She lobbies for bee rights. Some of her bees can even speak. And it’s worth noting that when she joined the party, she was already a level 14, a starting point that only a couple other characters match and very few exceed. That means within the world she’s cool and tough even before she joins the VP’s adventure. She’s got it all.

Five Honeycombs out of Five! She’s a keeper.

We haven’t, to date, had the best of luck with Beekeepers who live in fantasy videogame realms. It’s a shame, because some of our highest-ranking Beekeepers come from fantasy novels. But in games, the Beekeepers are always there to just beg for the help of the players. Apiarists in Distress, as I have said before. So I didn’t expect much of Barry, a Beekeeper found in the world of World of Warcraft. But there are always surprises in reviewing Fictional Beekeeper.

To be sure, Barry is another NPC who will set the player off on quests and stuff, but it isn’t because he needs help. All indications are that Barry’s own beekeeping operations are doing just fine without any help from the player. Instead, Barry gets the player to help out with another colony of bees altogether. It turns out that there’s a new hive in the valley, giant bees have arrived from places unknown, and Barry tells the player about it. When the player finds the hive and the bees are ready to defend themselves, Barry steps in and brokers peace between the player and the bees of the Honeyback Hive. You see, Barry can speak the language of the bees fluently and he’s not about to let the new bees (or the player) waste their lives in combat. After that he seems to operate as a freelance translator between the bees and the players, in spite of the fact that the Honeyback Hive isn’t even his own hive. He’s doing extra beekeeping on the side of his own.

Barry seems like a nice guy. Very genial and none of the telltale signs of Beekeeper Rage. His bees are extremely large, if not the size of the newcomers. And he loves his bees and they love him back/ And he loves the Honeyback bees as well, enjoying petting their fuzzy thoraxes. As for supernatural or combat prowess, Barry seems about standard for a denizen of Azeroth, a place where magic and combat are ubiquitous. It’s a world where a Beekeeper needs to be extra careful because you never know when a honey-crazed mauler is going to turn up. We can only infer that if Barry is successful in this world, he’s got the skill to back it up.

4 Honeycombs out of Five. He’s standout in videogame NPC Beekeepers.

We’ve seen Beekeepers who use vehicles for their beekeeping before (Doc Beebles’s truck comes to mind.) But today’s Beekeeper is a character from the game series Vigilante 8, so he spends most of his time fighting in his truck. He is called Beezwax and he’s definitely given into his Beekeeper Rage.

He had been a farmer until his farm was polluted with radioactive waste from a nearby government testing facility. After that, “Beezwax packed up and hit the road in a rage of madness” and sought revenge on those who had wronged him. As is so typical when a Beekeeper goes bad, the justification is sound, but the response is too much and they go evil. In his mentally unstable state, Beezwax encounters the leader of Vigilante 8’s villains, a man called Sid Burn, and starts thinking he is a prophet. Beezwax sides with Burn and his villainous team and we lose another Beekeeper to the bad side.

It seems like Beezwax’s quest for revenge becomes a little unfocused when he joins the villains. He continues finding things that piss him off, such as when he sees ski resorts taking over his hometown, but I doubt Syd Burn is as concerned with nuclear waste dumping as Beezwax ought to be. Perhaps it is the justice of the bees then that, in one of the endings in which Beezwax wins the game, his acquisition of some nuclear warheads goes awry when one of his bees sets off the bomb, presumably killing Beezwax.

Beezwax has a pretty sweet thing going here. Just having a mobile apiary is impressive, but this truck is equipped with all manner of other gadgetry that can help in a fight. Guns and rocket launchers, for example. It’s considered one of the game’s more heavily armoured, but slower vehicles. A tank, I believe is the term for this sort of setup. But it isn’t just the truck! The bees themselves have been mutated into a “Gamma Swarm” by the radiation. They seem larger than average and can be sent out of attack Beeswax’s enemies.

If only it had all been in the hands of a more well-adjusted Beekeeper. If someone had the same origin, the same setup, the same powers, but hadn’t given into a destructive spiral of anger, that would have been one awesome Beekeeper.

3 Honeycombs out of Five.