Gosh Hornet

You should jam an epipen in your arm. Now!

It's a beautiful day in the park. You're enjoying a picnic or some other outdoor activity... What's this? A pesky bee? Just flick him away. It's so tiny, he's hardly a bother.

Ah, but now you've made the bee mad. It's got a stinger, and it's not afraid to use it. And it's brought friends. Hundreds of them, all ready to sting you.

There's nothing left but to run for your life!

Subtropes include Bee-Bee Gun. Related to Everything's Worse with Bees and The Swarm. While The Swarm refers to anything tiny and dangerous in large numbers, Gosh Hornet is exclusive to stinging insects (particularly bees, wasps, and hornets).

This is mostly an animation and comedy trope.

Those using the trope often depict the bees as males, and often use honeybees even though that kind dies after using its sting. The swarm will also share one mind and will often form shapes in the air like an arrow pointing to its target, or a weapon.

To escape the swarm, the character will almost always jump into a body of water. Since bees can't swim, they are usually forced to give up - which isn't advised in real life, since they wait.

Examples of Gosh Hornet include:

Advertising

• TWO HUNDRED KILLER WASPS!!!
• This Ballpark Franks ad.
• A few years back, there was a commercial for the Toronto Blue Jays that started with a bunch of kids throwing rocks at a big glass living-room window. Roy Halladay, strolling along the street, notices the kids, picks up a rock and throws it in the same direction. The rock, however, knocks a nest of bees out of a tree above the kids, forcing them to flee as Halladay turns and strolls away with a tiny fist-pump of triumph.

Anime and Manga

• In the second season of Da Capo, Aisia tries to force Jun'ichi to use magic by disturbing a beehive. The plan fails when he simply grabs her and runs instead.
• In Ranma ½, Ranma's father tosses a beehive at his son as Training from Hell... with fairly mixed results.
  • The exact same thing happens in Dragon Ball, when Roshi tries the same training method on Goku and Krillin. He actually goes one step further by tying them to a tree.
• In an episode of the Viewtiful Joe cartoon, an annoying forest sprite tries to force Gaia's Vengeance on Joe and Junior by dropping a beehive on them. They actually manage to escape unharmed.
• In episode 7 of the Yatterman anime, Doronjo gets a beehive dropped on her as part of Dokurobe's random, sadistic punishment game.
  • Similarly, episode 33 has Doronjo succeed in escaping from Yatterman with the Dokuro stone she was looking for... which she discovers is actually a wasp's nest after bringing it onto her ship.
• This ends up happening to Red during a bicycle race in the Pokémon Special manga. Unfortunately, since Pokemon's original equivalent to Bees is a three-foot tall bug with stingers (yes, plural) like kitchen knives, he had it worse than most examples on this list.
  • This is actually a recurring event in the anime for Ash and co. If they're within a hundred kilometers of a hive, they can expect to be running from a swarm of Beedrill by the episode's end.
  • Team Rocket isn't spared either. Like in episode 4 of the first season when they get attacked by a swarm of Beedrill while they're hiding in a tree dressed as Kakuna... for some dumb reason.
• One of the bad guys in Ninja Scroll is a spear-wielding hunchback whose hump is actually a wasp nest filled with hundreds (or thousands!) of wasps he commands. Wasps are even worse than bees because, yes, they can sting you more than once. A variation of the water trick is used against him—he gets wounded and falls into the water, and the hornets start tearing him apart from the inside trying to escape drowning. The hero cutting off his head at that moment was probably a small mercy.
• The Katekyo Hitman Reborn anime has Reborn casually tossing honey on protege Tsuna before unleashing a swarm of bees on him. "The mafia always live with danger," Reborn warns Tsuna as the latter runs for his life.
• In Zatch Bell, Zatch helps Kiyo and his classmate during a bug hunt... by dropping a beehive on them. Running quickly ensues.
• In the first episode of Onegai My Melody Kirara, Kuromi tells a story about an unfortunate picnic mishap that eventually led to her disturbing a beehive and getting stung.
• In the second chapter of the Utawarerumono manga, Aruru tries to get honey from a beehive while the group is hiking in the mountains. She winds up falling from the tree, taking the hive with her, and everyone gets stung.
• In Vector Case File, a girl and her brother try to take on a nest of Japanese giant hornets with a can of aerosol and a young beekeeper tries to keep her restless bees in their hive... by hugging it. Neither situation turns out well.
  • The worst is in chapter 38, where two kids were mysteriously stung by killer bees. Later in the chapter, the highschool girl responsible is nearly stung to death when her plan backfires.
• Episode 50 of the Beet the Vandel Buster anime has the main cast foraging for food, but extracting honey from a giant beehive is tough even with magic.
• One of the Detective Conan mysteries involves a woman being chased off of a balcony by hornets. The murderer knew that she was nearly stung to death as a child and used her phobia against her.
• A semi-filler fight in Naruto Shippuden has Sakura accidentally dislodging an enormous hornet's nest from a mountain while attacking Kabuto. Oddly, the hornets ignore her and go straight for Kabuto who, despite being startled, cuts them down before they can hurt him.
• In One Piece, the South Bird that Luffy and Chopper are chasing drops a beehive and a wasp's nest on them, one after the other.
• Subverted in Chapter 269 of Gintama when Gin is hired to exterminate a beehive... filled with alien half-man half-bee gangsters. He and Kagura accidentally destroy three hives within the chapter with no real negative repercussions.
• Just barely averted in Kemono no Souja Erin, when Erin approaches a beehive without any protective equipment, unaware of the danger. The beekeeper stops her just in time.
• One of the villains in Hohzuki Island accidentally attacks a wasp's nest thinking that he was disarming a different kind of trap.
• In the episode 12 of anime adaptation of Korean drama Jang Geums Dream, an old woman sends a group of her pupils to retrieve wild honey from an old mountain hermit. The hermit explains that the honey must be extracted straight from a giant beehive, a process that gets one guy and one girl from the group stung.
• The erotic swimming manga Frogman has main character Michiru being stung by a bee while searching for firewood in chapter 10. The female lead, Haruka, is there to suck the poison out.
• Brief makes his debut appearance in Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt completely covered with bees.
• Season 2, Episode 5 of Arakawa Under the Bridge has Jacqueline, a woman dressed as a bee, accidentally hitting a beehive while trying to grab a bird. Because of her outfit, nobody besides Hoshi and Rick realize she's being attacked, thinking that bees won't sting another bee.
• In the 1975 anime Prehistoric Boy Kum Kum , the titular character knocks down a hornet's nest in the second episode, and the angered insects comically attack the whole village.
• In chapter 141 of Squid Girl, Squid Girl hits a sunflower that happens to be housing an angry bee... which is followed by a shot of Eiko putting a band-aid on Squid Girl's nose. It's painful ~de geso!
• Tsugumi from the 4-Koma manga Himajin gets stung by bees while collecting honey in the forest.
• In Amanin Shoujo Azuki it's mentioned that ninja-in-training Azuki is known for accidentally disturbing beehives when climbing trees.
• The feudal romantic-comedy Abarenbou Shounangon has spunky protagonist Sei throwing rocks at a beehive so she can collect the honey within. Her companion warns her to stop, but a comical mishap ends with Sei being stung.
• In Steel Ball Run, an enemy Stand User releases a swarm of bees on Johnny and Gyro. What's worse, each bee is rigged with a bomb! (This is par for the course with a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure story.)
• An episode of Sherlock Hound has Sherlock substituting a draped cage with valuable a parrot in it with a draped cage with a hornet's nest in it, this isn't found out until the villains are high up in the air on their little airplane and can't exactly run.
• Episode 12 of Yume no Crayon Oukoku has protagonist Silver playing dead to elude a bear. She's almost successful, but her monkey companion accidentally knocks a beehive next to her, leading to both the bees and the bear attacking her.
• The second episode of Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth has Lee giving Sakura a bouquet of flowers... filled with bees. As he panics and tries to swat them away from her, he accidentally beats her up and gets himself stung.
• Episode 2 of the second season of Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? has Haruna throwing Ayumu into a swarm of bees that was pursuing her. Surprisingly, he is unharmed when the swarm dissipates.
• Episode 80 of Pokonyan is entirely devoted to this trope. When Poko finds a beehive in his backyard, he carries it around the town trying to find a suitable spot to hang it. After bringing it to the flower shop, beauty salon and even a wedding, swollen faces abound.
• Episode 26 of Happy Lucky Bikkuriman has Jello being stung by angry bees while out in the woods. She seems surprisingly chipper in the scenes that follow, despite her grossly lumpy face.

Comic Books

• Played straight in the French graphic novel Pyrenee. The eponymous wild girl is chased into a stream by a swarm of bees when she tries to collect some honey for the bear who's raising her. She gets very badly stung since she doesn't even have clothes to protect her, but later rolls in some herbs to reduce the swelling.
• "Bees. My God."

Film

• In The Return of Hanuman, Maruti and his friends encounter this. He later uses a staff to suck the bees and later shot the bees to another area which blocked a truck driver. Hilarity Ensues.
• In Tucker and Dale Versus Evil, an angry swarm of bees attacks Tucker when he accidentally cuts into their hive with a chainsaw. The sight of the screaming Tucker running around waving a chainsaw frightens one of the college kids so badly he accidentally impales himself on a branch trying to get away. While he's dying, a bee lands on his nose as if to mock him.
• In Daddy Day Care, Phil tries to remove a hornet's nest from the porch... by poking it with a stick. The kids who were safe indoors, however, thought it was quite a hoot!
• My Girl: Poor Tom Sennett.

Literature

• Pendragon turned this Up to Eleven in The Pilgrims of Rayne with killer quig bees.
• Dramatic/Tear Jerker/Death by Newbery Medal example: the children's book A Taste of Blackberries is about a boy whose friend is allergic to bee stings and dies when they and some other kids get swarmed one day. The main character finds this absurd when he's told, because to him, bee stings are just a minor inconvenience, not a potentially lethal danger.
• Happens quite a bit in Redwall, among a few instances of characters using it to their own advantage.
• Spoiled cousin Charlie accidentally jumps on a yellow jackets' nest in Little House in the Big Woods. Though he survives, there's an illustration of him wrapped up like a mummy.
• In the Book The probable future the murderer is killed by a swarm of bees.
• Played for Laughs in one of Harry Graham's Ruthless Rhymes.

When Mrs Gorm (Aunt Eloise)
Was stung to death by savage bees
Her husband (Prebendary Gorm)
Put on his veil and took the swarm.
He's publishing a book next May
On How to Make Bee-keeping Pay.

• The Hunger Games have tracker jackers, which are pretty much killer bees on steroids with hallucinogenic stings. Very easily capable of killing a human being.

Live Action TV

• Mr. Bean did this one too. Of course, Hilarity Ensues.
• In season two of Desperate Housewives, Edie winds up disturbing a yellow jackets' nest and is stung pretty badly.
• An episode in Season 6 of Little House On the Prairie has Albert selling Mrs. Oleson and Nellie a tree trunk filled with bees. They remain docile until Oleson's wagon begins to rock while they transport the hive home, causing the bees to angrily sting both the women as they lose control of their horses.
• Bear Grylls has some trouble with this while trying to get honey from a beehive in Man vs. Wild.
• In My Name Is Earl, when Earl falls for a sexy woman named Alex and begins to ignore his list to spend time with her, the forces of karma send bees after him and, when that fails, a whole swarm after her. Her badly swollen face is enough to make him realize that his debt is still WAY off with karma in terms of making up for his past (the last time something this good happened to him, in the pilot, he was hit by a bus and almost died), so he goes back to doing the list.
• Gwaine reaches into a tree trunk when the patrol stops in an episode of Merlin, and as the shot cuts to Arthur and Sir Leon discussing military matters, Gwaine, in a Funny Background Event yanks his arm out of the tree, bringing with him a bee hive that is stuck to his hand and runs around shaking his hand and swearing.

Newspaper Comics

• In a 1960's Dick Tracy story, villain Spots and his partner are hiding in a disused army tank, set up as a memorial in a city park, but can't get out when they realize bees have started swarming around the tank. The villains get rid of them by electrifying the outside of the tank.
• An early 1900's comic Jennie and Jack, also the Little Dog Jap, has children Jennie and Jack foolishly pushing over a beehive to see what's inside.
• Calvin hates bees, and has pissed them off on several occasions, often blowing the size of them out of proportion (he once describes one bee as being "the size of a Kaiser roll," and describes a sting by one bee as being gored by a harpoon, and that he's sure the National Guard can track the bee on radar).

Video Games

• Animal Crossing - If you shake a tree, a bee hive could possibly fall out and the swarm will try and get you. If you don't find shelter fast (or catch it, which can bee tricky, but if you want that One Hundred Percent Completion...), the bees will sting you leaving a hideous bump on your face, and all of the animal characters will insist on commenting on it.
• In the game 720, if you run out of time on the main map, a swarm of bees start chasing you and inevitably catches up with you unless you get to a skate park (Lord help you if you have no tickets).
  • Before that, the bees/hornets appeared in Paperboy if you took it too slow.
• In The Sims 2, sims spending time outdoors will sometimes find themselves fleeing from bees.
  • Witches and Warlocks can also summon a swarm of bees to attack someone.
• In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater bees will chase you if you disturb their hive. You can make use of this by dropping hives on guards, causing them to be attacked by bees. And of course there is also The Pain, who uses bees to attack, causes a swarm to appear in a couple of critical cutscenes and is famously covered in bees!
• In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Link drops a beehive on a group of Gerudo soldiers, leading to a lot of frantic running and girlish shrieks. This scene is also in the manga adaptation.
  • In Links Awakening you can give Tarin a stick to knock a beehive out of a tree. Three guesses what happens next.
  • The manga adaptation of Phantom Hourglass has Link accidentally knocking a beehive out of a tree in an Animal Crossing-esque fashion. He actually fears for a moment that he'll die from the stings, which is a pretty sobering thought.
    • And in Spirit Tracks, this can actually happen. That's right, you can get a Game Over before even leaving your hometown.
  • In Link to The Past, a swarm of bees was one of the things Link could knock out of a tree by dashing into it.
  • Hornet's (called "bees" in-game) nests in Twilight Princess.
• The original Resident Evil has a segment where your character must get an important item that somehow wound up under a giant hornet's nest. Despite being a horror game, the way characters flail their arms around while being stung is pretty hilarious.
  • Resident Evil 4 has the Novistadors, who have a hornet's nest-like hive in the Castle.
• Yoshi's Story uses beehives as obstacles. The bees swarm into the shape of a hand and block your progress, and they'll sting if you get too pushy.
• Wario Ware: Twisted! has this in Kat and Ana's level. Kat pokes a beehive that eventually falls, and bees start chasing them. Obviously you have to Press X to Not Die.
• The video game Dreamkiller has a giant beehive as a boss. To make matters worse, the game throws a giant tree monster into the area as a decoy and keeps the hive hidden behind it.
• Disturbing beehives in a small area of BioShock (series), searching for a bee enzyme you need, will sometimes provoke a swarm to attack you for a few seconds, doing only a bit of damage. Of course, you can soon turn this to your advantage with the Insect Swarm Plasmid.
• In Vigilante 8, Beezwax' special weapon produces a bee swarm that will home in on you and knock you into the air, even if you are driving a truck or bus. This is because they are radioactive and have apparently gained superpowers.
• Bosses with the Hivehost power in Hellgate:London emit a swarm of bees in your direction when you attack them. This ability is somewhat bugged and sometimes kills you nearly instantly.
• A Noodle Incident mentioned in Jak II had something to do with a "wumpbee" nest, so it likely involved something like this.
• This happens twice in Riviera: The Promised Land, where the team disturbs a Kredna Beehive early in the story and somehow manages to forget the incident in time to anger some killer bees later in the game.
• The One Piece Grand Battle series of games features a beehive item that sending a swarm of bees to confuse and damage whoever hits it.
• Power Stone, another 3D fighter, has a similar item.
• Super Mario Sunshine has beehives in some of the levels, which are surprisingly deadly.
• The Beehives in Banjo-Kazooie started out empty and harmless, but became filled with active swarms in later levels.
  • In Click Clock Wood the same swarms appear without the beehives (though the hives with swarms still show up).
• Twice in Conkers Bad Fur Day, the Queen Bee's hive is stolen by wasps, and Conker steals it back. The wasps will chase the squirrel all the way back.
• Monster Lair has a giant wasp nest and its queen as the boss of Stage 4.
• Donkey Kong Country 3 has a level in which the player must outrun a swarm of bees. Completing it within one minute and fifteen seconds unlocks a bonus area.
• Frogger 3D, in the Honey Bee Hollow level. While the stage isn't very large, any beehive you approach will spawn a swarm of bees that chase you down relentlessly. Given that Frogger is a One-Hit-Point Wonder, this level is considered a somewhat early Difficulty Spike.
• Clonk has zap nests. Breaking them results in this, and they are annoyingly fragile. It's fun to catapult them into your enemies base though. There's also a spell that creates a small group of zaps that will float around the caster, waiting to sting any nearby dangers.
• Legend of Legaia has three killer bees and their queen in the main character's hometown, defeating them gives you honey which permanently boosts your stats. However, the bees are about level 18, however, and will completely mutilate you until you return after the halfway point of the game.

Web Comics

• Cat and Girl has the titular characters fighting an "International Army Comprised Solely of Bees" during a picnic.

Web Original

• In V5E2 of RWBY, the cargo airship on which Weiss escaped Atlas is brought down by a swarm of Lancers, Grimm wasps the size of cows (and their queen, which is several times as big as the airship).

Western Animation

• Done in Tom and Jerry at least once.
  • That would be "Tee for Two", the one where Tom is golfing. He escapes the bees by diving into a pond and breathing through a straw. Jerry then gets a funnel for the bees to go through said straw.
• In the Classic Disney Shorts, Donald Duck fought with unnamed bees in The Band Concert, Orphans' Picnic, and Moose Hunters, faced the same bee twice in Window Cleaners and Home Defense—and then after the war, fought with Spike the Bee in about half a dozen cartoons.
  • In Beezy Bear, Humphrey Bear keeps getting chased off Donald's bee farm by swarms of bees, diving into a lake every time. Don, thankfully, gets spared this time around.
• Another Disney example: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.
• The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Sting Operation", with hornets.
• In an episode of Danny Phantom, a ghost that causes bad luck makes Tucker accidentally disturb a beehive at school, leaving most of his fellow classmates stung.
• In the Daria episode "Antisocial Climbers", jock Kevin gives his cheerleader girlfriend Brittany a bouquet of freshly picked flowers... filled with bees. It takes a few stings before she starts running.
• Roger Rabbit gets chased by a swarm of bees ("Yo, Goombah!") in the short film Trail Mix-Up.
• In Song of the South, Brer Rabbit tricks Brer Bear and Brer Fox into going into a bush with a beehive inside, telling them it was his "laughin' place".
• The main cast gets attacked by bees pretty regularly in Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy.
• In Total Drama Island, Lindsay has to retrieve a key that's stuck in a beehive. Izzy gets it for her, by ramming her hand right into the hive, and an angry swarm chases Lindsay into a lake. Needless to say, she's not looking so hot in the next scene.
• This happens in a camp episode of Mucha Lucha, when Buena Girl shoots a beehive during archery practice and they attack her.
• Bees stings are an occasional cause of death in Happy Tree Friends, but so is just about everything else.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, this happens to Lucius when he's trying to make himself look good to recover from an embarrassing old movie. Needless to say, he makes things worse.
  • In the season 2 episode "Panda-Monium," Heloise destroys a giant panda statue and accidentally breaks a chunk off of the giant beehive inside, with stingy results. Its made funnier by the fact that she rarely ever gets hurt.
• Suzie, Alan, Anne and Tom Chan in The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan, thanks to Tom's plan to extract honey from a beehive. Including the bees forming an arrow and both Tom and Alan getting stung on the butt. Fortunately they suffer no lasting effects.
• This happens to Lois in Family Guy, when Peter fills a jar full of bees then lets her open it for him as a joke.
  • It also happens to Quagmire when, in a Jackass-esque stunt, he covers his genitals with bees. Despite a scare, he seemed perfectly fine moments later.
• In an extremely Alice Comedies short, "Alice Gets Stung," a girl named Alice goes hunting with her cat. They are chased a bear who traps them in a barrel, drops a beehive in it and throws them into a river.
• In an episode of The New Scooby Doo Mysteries, "The Bee Team," Scooby and friends are hired to investigate the appearance of giant killer bees by a local beekeeper. Unfortunately, Shaggy and Scooby get just as much trouble from the normal bees as they do from the giant ones.
• In the Hawaii Vacation episode of Phineas and Ferb, Candace walks into a swarm of bees and swats one on a tree. Unfortunately for her, this dislodges a hive from the tree it drops right on her head.
• In the Brandy and Mr. Whiskers episode "The Fashion Fascist," Mr. Whiskers gets a beehive stuck on his head and, because he's being hailed as a fashion guru, everyone else starts wearing one too. Brandy eventually gives in and tries it herself, but finds it unbearably painful.
• The Fairly OddParents episode "Frenemy Mine" has Timmy handing Vicky a beehive to try and get her to stop being nice to him. She gets badly stung, but still manages to contain her anger.
• In the Hey Arnold! episode "Helga's Boyfriend," bees attack and sting Helga because of a flower she's wearing on her hat.
• My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: The episode "Winter Wrap Up" sees this happen to Twilight Sparkle when she runs into a tree after getting startled by a flock of bats.
  • And then in the episode "Feeling Pinkie Keen" Pinkie Pie's "Pinkie Sense" allows her to hide from an angry bee swarm that pops out from nowhere, but Twilight Sparkle isn't that lucky.
  • In "Fall Weather Friends, Applejack uses a beehive to attack Rainbow Dash during the race.
• In the Camp Lazlo episode "The Big Cheese", Scoutmaster Lumpus attempts to steal a cheese wheel by picking it up with his buttocks. Somehow he accidentally picks up a bee hive instead. Hilarity Ensues.
• Happens twice in Ruby Gloom; First to Misery's cousin Malady in "Misery Loves Company," then to Misery herself in "Hair(less) the Musical."

Real Life

• The Battle of Tanga (otherwise known as "The Battle of the Bees" in World War I, where startling military incompetence was compounded by a great many killer bees, who decided to sting the ever-living fuck out of both sides. One unlucky soldier who fell unconscious was actually stung back into consciousness so the bees could continue to wail on him.
• Truth in Television: Once a bee or wasp stings or is swatted, especially killer bees, hornets, and yellow jackets, it releases an alarm pheromone that signals nearby bees/wasps to attack. If you happen to be near their hive...
  • To make matters worse, the exhaust fumes of a diesel engine are similar enough to incite the same behavior in a number of species.
  • ...because some light esters fit right in. Coincidentally, the same substances give overripe fruits this characteristic thick sweet smell. Prepared to quickly wash your face after a juicy snack? Buon Appetito.
• And don't muck with the Asian Giant Hornet. They are the size of your thumb and typically make their meals by attacking beehives and slaughtering the entire population, then eating all the honey. They've been known to easily win fights with bees even when outnumbered a thousand to one. The bee stings hardly bother them.