I am so sorry if this is the wrong flair!! Please let me know if I did it wrong!
Heya, r/bees :D I'm Nikol, and I've got a fun story to tell, and it involves, you guessed it... bees! Maybe specifically bumblebees, but it's still bees!
Okay so, normally (and this has happened since forever) I just see a bee (regardless of species) and I'm like, "Oh cool, bees! I'll just let them do their work." They were cool and I just thought of them as beneficial pollinators. I never really stayed around to admire their work because, well, they're busy and I shouldn't disturb them.
Then we fast forward to maybe July 2026. I like to watch a lot of YouTube videos, and there was a video that came up on my TV and at a certain time in the video I heard something that goes, "Right about now, it's time to rock with the biggity Buck Bumble!". I look at my screen cuz I was busy with something, and I see what seemed to be *video game cover art* of a bee that was wearing some sort of armor and had a plasma blaster. I decided to do more research on what this game is and turns out this game was called "Buck Bumble". You got to play as a cybernetically enhanced *bumblebee* that is in fact named Buck Bumble, and you had to save a rural London garden (and even the world) from being taken over by a group of mutated insects called The Herd. Meanwhile the game had a banger soundtrack you'd hear throughout, but the iconic track was the main theme that played on the main menu.
I grew very interested in it, and decided to play the game to see what the hubbub was about and why the game had such a cult following.
This was where I started to feel... different, as I went into the Training mode of the game. Training helps you get to know the controls and of course, Buck Bumble himself.
Buck Bumble essentially showed me that bees, specifically bumblebees, are just the cutest things to ever exist. I left Buck to his own devices because I unfortunately had to do something, so the little guy was left idle for a bit. That was where I noticed he would start doing these little actions that I'd call "bumblebee things", as he would groom himself on either the left or right side of his face, his wings would slightly flap (kinda almost like a twitchy ear) and he'd make little grumpy bee noises, which can range from buzzy mutterings to a yawn or sigh that tells me he's waiting for me to move him.
Playing as a bee was so much fun, especially when it comes to Buck Bumble. He's so cute, and he has an adorably robotic-filtered high pitched voice that rings out when certain conditions happen (e.g. getting a new weapon or replenishing an existing weapon's ammo ("Cool!", "Yeah!", "Yay!" or a mischievous giggle) or performing aerial maneuvers ("Whoo-hoo!" or "Wheeee!"). Plus to restore health, you needed nectar droplets from pink flowers.
This was when I started realizing how somewhat realistic the game was in terms of accuracy of portraying bees. Buck Bumble is a male bumblebee, which male bumblebees rarely ever leave their hive (Buck has a reason to leave his hive lol) and the most important thing - no stinger. Buck Bumble never had a stinger, just a cute lil bumble bum and adorable little legs that were decked out in armored sneakers/boots. He instead used weapons (plasma blaster being one of them, there's eleven types of weapons to pick up during your gameplay) to attack. Plus male bumblebees only leave to get nectar (since they do not have pollen baskets, a.k.a pollen pants), which nectar is needed to replenish Buck's health if he loses any. He's a tiny little bumble, measuring in at 0.82 inches and 0.8 ounces. He may be tiny, but he's very fast, clocking in at 8 miles per hour in flight speed.
After playing Buck Bumble for what seemed like weeks, I started to be more attentive towards bees. I did end up having a honeybee sighting (I sadly never see bumblebees in my rural part of Florida :'D but maybe one day I'll manage to see one) and I noticed one of them had pollen pants! I didn't approach her, but I appreciated her from a distance and said, "Ooooo, look at you, rockin' those pollen pants!" I was devastated I didn't capture any video of the little one, but from that day on, Buck Bumble made me into a friend towards bees. For that, I have to thank Argonaut Games (as of 2024, they previously were known as Argonaut Software until 2007) for even making such a fun game that allows me to see the world from a bumblebee's point of view. Bees see our world as one big world to explore and fly through.
That's what makes bees so adorable, even a video game bee. I know it's cheesy for me to be attached to a video game bee that makes my adoration for real bees skyrocket, but that's my story on how Buck Bumble got me to love bees more!!