I bought and installed the bee from the VIP and while it works I really don’t know how to capitalise on its supreme qualities. I’m using it on a now level 50 Acton the shield is a 49. I notice that sometimes it starts regenerating well before the dwell time expires. Is this related to shooting or killing enemies? When this happens I’m usually up to my elbows in bandit soup. 
Thanks for any assist.
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Sounds like you’re specced into quick charge. It’s debatable, but i recommend not using it with the bee.
I can/will provide more info after i get home from work if needed
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Wow there are action skills that enhance the bee! Please if anyone has a list for Axton or even better for any or all characters, I’d really be thankful. I’ve been playing the Borderlands games for years and am still having gamers show me cool new (to me) stuff. Like today I just got into the Minecraft cave in caustic caverns.
In fact it yielded one new head and 3 new skins. P.S. If you know of secret spaces you’ll give up I love finding them !
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First yes please do provide additional info especially what where did I get into that quick charge and why I should opt out.
Thanks
Tom
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Quick Charge starts regenerating the shield for 1% per level for some seconds on kill. So regeneration will ensue if OP is
Problem is, while Quick Charge is a good skill, it regenerates a percentage of the shield’s strength. So with 5 points in QC you’re getting 25% of maximum in 5 seconds. This likely won’t be enough to top off the Bee and enable the Amp effect. QC does its best work with strong shields.
Willing from the left tree enhances recharge rate and lowers recharge delay. Maybe that helps a little better. Shorter wait until recharge starts and much faster rate.
And maybe this is what you’re looking for regarding Axton skills:
And this helps too:
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Maybe you are spec’d into Pressure or Willing? They both can make your shield start recharging sooner than the time listed. Also, maybe you have spent some badass ranks on reducing your shield recharge delay. These help all shields (except the Rough Rider, which has no “shield”), not just the Bee.
There is also an Axton guide in these forums:
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Best way to use a Bee shield is with extreme caution. 
Don’t get shot.
I mean, I’m kidding, but I’m also not: a Bee that’s not full is like wearing a paper bag.
All shield skills? Gaige’s Blood Soaked Shields is a little nutty with the Bee (full restoration on kill).
Kill skill, 2nd row of the right skill tree(survival)
Restores 1% of your shields capacity per lvl when you get a kill. It lasts 7 seconds, so at 5/5 you’d get 35% of your shield back. For some shields this is a very good skill, but for the bee it’s basically useless
The bee is good only when it’s at full capacity, otherwise it’s completely useless. And it has a really high recharge rate, fully charging way faster than it would if you let quick charge, well charge it
You use the bee when you need more damage. If you can kill stuff without the amp damage then you should wear basically anyother shield.
I would recommend something like this build at lvl 50 if you plan to keep using the bee.
https://bl2skills.com/commando.html#05053150005005010000005055000000
This assumes you don’t have any specific gear.
Willing reduces recharge delay(faster bee recovery)
Preparation is a decent skill and the best way to move down the tree
Pressure is also reduces recharge delay
Oh and maybe look at this
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Thanks to all. My heads spinning☺
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That describes perfectly my first couple of months on the forum.
@Piemanlee I’ve always liked Quick Charge with beefy shields because I felt like it could beat out DOTs. Is that accurate or am I just imagining things?
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The guys discussed already the shield skills above.
I will just give you some tips to keep the bee up,
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you need to be constantly be moving Like The Wind, utilize jumping forward, backwards, sideways, ducking to dodge enemy bullets. If you watch some gameplay, you might notice that some of us keeps jumping up and down like mad rabbits. Well there is a reason for that, jumping disrupts enemy AI and it thinks that no one is in the area. We take advantage of that by killing them before they even hit us.
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You need to Be Like Water and adopt to your surroundings. Cover is your friend here. Just take advantage of the area you are in, singularity also helps to control them.
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You can beat DoTs with really low delay tediore shields without QC, so I’m sure QC and an actual shield could beat them, assuming you get kills of course
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Maya is my Bee user, and she rocks Inertia. Step 1 with the Bee is “don’t get hit”, but Inertia (her version of ‘shield regen on kill’ like Quick Charge) really does help keep DoT from tapping into my health.
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First of all, general bonuses are different with a Bee which affects both badass ranks and skills:
- Gun damage only increases the gun’s base damage and does nothing about Bee damage. Since the Bee does most of your damage, this becomes negligible when using this shield.
- Fire rate is often considered worse than gun damage, but the Bee changes this. Higher fire rate means more Bee hits per second while higher gun damage does nothing about Bee damage. So with the Bee, fire rate always trumps gun damage.
- Critical hit damage: without an amp shield, crit dmg bonuses are inferior to gun damage ones in almost all situations. With an amp shield like the Bee however, on critical hits both gun and amp damage are increased. This means that even crit dmg becomes superior to gun damage when using the Bee.
- Damage over time effects (burn/electrocute/corrode): don’t affect amp damage. When using the Bee, ignore them, they do almost nothing in comparison.
So when using a Bee, gun damage and DOT bonuses become much less useful, generally it’s better to go for fire rate and crit dmg.
I’m mostly a Maya player so here are my thoughts about her skills:
Ward: -8% shield recharge delay per level. Essential. Shield recharge delay is the most important stat when using the Bee. Recharge rate and capacity are negligible.
Inertia: Killing an enemy restores 0.8% of your shield per second per level. Doesn’t do much in most situations but keeps your shield full while suffering minor DOT, so with the Bee it can be very useful in some situations.
Life Tap: steals life based on damage dealt. The Bee does a ton of damage so you get a ton of life steal. It’s situational because with a Bee you should avoid getting hit in the first place, but still can make a difference.
Chain Reaction: while an enemy is phaselocked, bullets ricochet to other enemies on hits. Ricocheted bullets also get Bee damage, so this scales very well with the Bee.
Reaper: increases gun damage dealt to enemies with more than 50% health. Now I’ve said that gun damage bonuses don’t help with the Bee, but this is an exception, because unlike the description suggests, it also increases amp/Bee damage. A must have skill for Maya anyway that becomes devastating with the Bee.
Weapons:
Generally you want high fire rate and/or crit dmg, gun damage doesn’t matter. Elemental weapons will multiply both gun damage and amp damage on hits, so do use them. Just forget about their DOT effects. Explosive is not affected by the Bee, so forget rocket launchers and most Torgue guns.
Guns that go very well with the Bee are e.g. the B!tch (high fire rate, crit dmg and accuracy) and Lady Fist (insane crit dmg and high accuracy).
When it comes to guns with multiple bullets/pellets, there’s a huge difference between some of them. Most guns with multiple pellets show a “x 3” or something like that in the gun damage stat. With these, amp damage will be distributed among the pellets, so in this case each pellet will only do 1/3 amp damage. This makes these weapons much less useful with a Bee, especially most shotguns.
Some weapons however shoot several bullets/pellets/whatever without having it mentioned in the gun damage stat. For example, the Sand Hawk shoots 8 bullets per shot, but it’s not mentioned in the gun damage stat, and that means each bullet will do full amp damage. This is why the Sand Hawk/Bee combo is so devastating. There are other guns doing this, like the Bekah, the Sawbar, the Unkempt Harold or one of the Fibber variants. These combined with the Bee are damage heaven.
Another effect of this is that the gun’s level hardly matters at all. For example, if you’ve got a lvl 28 fire Lady Fist, it will multiply an OP10 Bee’s amp damage by x1.75 on hitting a flesh target and by another x17 on critical hits. An OP10 Lady Fist has the exact same stats except for higher gun damage which still is very little compared to the Bee’s amp damage, so as long as your shield is full you do almost the same damage with the lvl28 as with the OP10 one. The only problem here is when you’re hit, the OP10 gun will still do a good amount of damage while the lvl28 one will do nothing.
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Ok well thank you for the detailed lesson on the bee.
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