The Giant Bee

Creator: Ray Harryhausen

Film: Mysterious Island 1961

Giant Bee Video Clip

 

Honey bees are highly social insects and communicate with each other relaying direction and distance of nectar and pollen sources. Bees make combs of waxen cells placed side by side that provide spaces to rear young and to store honey. The bee colony lives on the stored honey throughout winters. As Elena and Herbert plan there wedding they notice a steady drip of honey from a rock formation that lead to a cave, Their curiosity takes over them and they investigate the cave where the honey is coming from. Out of nowhere they hear a buzzing sound and before they know it a giant bee arrives at the entrance of the cave.

 

 

The bee manages to chase and trap them inside of its cave where it kept his honey comb. Herbert and Elena try hide in one of the giant honey combs but that turns against them as the Bee creates a wall from its own saliva to trap them inside. Elena and Herbert mange to rip the back wall which leads them to the underground cave where they find The Nautilus.

 

 

 

 

Giant Bee Facts

•  In the original script this was supposed to be a bumble bee, but Ray thought that its size and shape would make it look too comical.

 

• The sealing of the comb by the bee was achieved by the used of a very thin sheet of paraffin wax on a wooded frame, which would represent the sealed entrance to the cell. Gradually, frame by frame Ray removed tiny sections of it as he animated the bee in movements that looked as though he was taking the wax away.

 

Credit: An Animated Life

By Tony Dalton