DR. BEES is a series of web animation shorts by Harry Partridge, created as a parody of cheaply-made superhero cartoons from The '60s and '70s. The titular character has the ability to carry an exorbitant number of bees, and the solution he has to every problem involves unleashing his bees. The series currently has four shorts, the first in 2013, the second in 2015, the third in 2021, and a fourth in 2026.

What's this? A work page underpopulated by bees?! My tropes full of BEES oughtta put a stop to that!

• Affectionate Parody: Of the Golden and Silver Ages of superhero comics, and their cheap cartoon adaptations.
• The All-Solving Hammer: A laaarge influx of BEES ought to put a stop to any given problem approached by Dr. Bees! Yes, that includes problems caused by an over-abundance of bees.
• American Gothic Couple: Dr. Bees imagines one with two apes while he wonders if an apiary is a home for apes.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Dr. Bees is a bee-themed superhero who fights crimes and resolves bee-related situations with more bees. However, he has no control over the insects and ends up making most situations worse. He also claims to be a wasp-themed hero by day called the "Striped Stinger", although we never see this in action. In "DR. BEES FOREVER", he temporarily assumes a new identity as Dr. Homeless Apes.
• Animation Bump: Though still possessing deliberate instances of Limited Animation, DR. BEES FOREVER has the characters in general move a lot more than in prior installments, making it look more in-line with Partridge's other work.
• Bait-and-Switch: Thrice in DR. BEES RETURNS:
  • The security chief called attention to Dr. Bees arriving from his Bee-mobile, with the screen panning towards a bee-themed vehicle speeding away. Then immediately afterwards, the Bee-mobile turns out to be Dr. Bees arriving from atop a mattress being pulled by a babushka.
  • The location of the Comforter's hideout is written on a napkin, which Dr. Bees requires an advanced supercomputer made out of bees forming a Hive Mind to figure out he just needs to unfold to read it. When he arrives in said hideout, the Comforter asks how he managed to find him, only for Dr. Bees to respond with this:
    Dr. Bees: "Your address was written on a folded napkin which I dropped and lost through a crack in the floor while attempting to open it so BEE BOY [read: Omnipotron] just teleported me to you."
  • Towards the end, Dr. Bees wished that he won't be killed at the end of the cartoon this time. Everybody laughed to his chagrin, then shortly afterward all of them except Dr. Bees got skeletonized, something the latter considered much worse.
• Bank Robbery: Subverted in Dr. Bees Returns!. Apparent supervillain The Comforter uses his Comfortizer to render the bank's guards too comfortable to stop him from... doing nothing else and leaving.
• Batman Parody: Dr. Bees Returns! gives Dr. Bees a Bee-Mobile, a Bee Cave (also called the Bat Hive), and sidekicks Bee Boy, Dr. Boy, and Boy Boy.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Dr. Bees wished for himself to not die at the end of Dr. Bees Returns! When he sees everyone around him had suddenly been skeletonized instead, he admits to this being worse.
• Bee-Bee Gun: Dr. Bees is a walking version of this trope, unleashing sting-happy swarms of bees on people in his ineffectual attempts to help them.
• Beyond the Impossible: Dr. Bees Returns ends with Omnipotron, a literally omnipotent character, suddenly dying along with everyone else in the room, except of course for Dr. Bees.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Dr. Bees ends Dr. Bees Returns the cartoon wishing for him not die at the end unlike the previous two episodes.
• Call-Back:
  • One of the many colorful characters seen at the Fortress of Multitudes in DR. BEES FOREVER is Christine, the blue midget cowboy and one of the organizers of Beecon '13 in the first short.
  • The "Handsome Family" son from the first short can be seen working in the "Jail-O-Gram" as a prison guard, even escorting The Comforter (from DR. BEES RETURNS) into a cell during Anachroname's "Talk-O-Gram" (phone) call.
• Calling Card: The Comforter leaves behind a folded napkin... with his real name and address inside, and only partially obscured by the fold. Dr. Bees needs a bee-powered supercomputer to realize he should try unfolding the napkin. As it turns out, the Comforter wanted to be found... and has his lair right next to him.
• Card-Carrying Villain: At the very least, The Comforter acts like he's a villain who enjoys his wicked reputation.
• Catchphrase: Dr. Bees always shows up to the scene while loudly proclaiming the following line, with small variations here and there.
  Dr. Bees: "WHAT'S THIS? *insert precisely detailed description of whatever is happening here* without any BEES!? My *insert increasingly random object here* full of BEES oughtta put a stop to that!."
• Complexity Addiction: In DR. BEES FOREVER, it’s revealed that Tina Tinklepants has been leading a global conspiracy to cover up the true meaning of “apiary” and exploit a bee shortage crisis in order to use the New Propolis Apiary’s profits to… line her underwear with dollar bills to prevent more wetting incidents. It's also implied that she has tried multiple apiary-related schemes before.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: Parodied in DR. BEES FOREVER, where Dr. Bees consults recently-incarcerated supervillain Anachroname to help him figure out the mystery behind the term "apiary" not actually having anything to do with apes. Anachroname initially refuses to help him, then immediately changes his mind and invites him into his evil lair, the entirety of which had recently been smuggled into his cell in a gigantic cake. All he uses the supercomputer inside for is to send an e-mail to every dictionary publisher on the planet.
• Couch Gag: A variation. Every new short appears to have Dr. Bees yelling his own name in the title for longer.
• Creepy Good: Omnipotron is a benevolent (if useless) superhero, who has extra forearms and hands, extra shins and feet, and an extra face on the back of his head, making for a seriously freaky character design.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Oversized Food Destroyer Man, who openly states the fact he can’t do anything to stop Anachroname due to him not being oversized food.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: As it turns out in DR. BEES FOREVER, there is indeed a worldwide conspiracy to hide the true meaning of the word "apiary" led by Tina Tinklepants. Later lampshaded by Dr. Bees himself, who calls her incredibly convoluted scheme "all too predictable".
• Cutting the Knot: After failing to unravel the mystery of the Comforter's evidence (read: he dropped the napkin down a crack and couldn't get it out), Dr. Bees consents to simply letting "Bee Boy" teleport them instantly to the villain's location.
• Dramatic Unmask: When Dr. Bees unmasks the Comforter, it turns out to be exactly the person he suspected: an individual he does not recognize.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: To his chagrin, nobody respects Omnipotron's unlimited reality-warping powers which could solve any problem (or non-problem) with ease. They're all way more impressed with Dr. Bees, whose solution to every problem is to add bees.
• Embarrassing Nickname: In DR. BEES FOREVER, Anachroname used one to his advantage when a woman tells him off, only to have a retort in the form of being called "Tina Tinklepants", sending her into a distraught state since she was called that in third grade. She eventually weaponizes this nickname, adopting it as a villainous alias to con people out of their money. She still nonetheless was sent crying when the homeless apes teased her with that nickname.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: When Dr. Bees wished that he doesn't die at the end of DR. BEES RETURNS, everybody except him (who was clearly in distress) had a hearty laugh before everyone else around him is suddenly dead. Dr. Bees thinks this is a much worse outcome.
• Expy: The superhero Omnipotron, an all-powerful naked blue person who experiences time non-linearly, is clearly a riff on Dr. Manhattan of Watchmen.
• Fish Eyes: Dr. Bees' eyes in their default state don't look in the same direction or straight for that matter, highlighting his loony nature.
• Funny Background Event: In DR. BEES FOREVER, as Dr. Bees made his appearance in the apiary to stop Tina Tinklepants and her henchmen, the old lady from DR. BEES RETURNS appears behind Dr. Bees, shoveling dirt to the mound of grass he was standing upon.
• Gainax Ending: The first short ends with Dr. Bees' rotting corpse being poked by a Boy Scout in the middle of a desert. None of this is explained.
• Harmless Villain:
  • The Comforter is one, since instead of actually doing evil things, he's doing the heinous crimes of giving relaxation to overworked security guards and grieving widows. Basically the only thing he has in common with a real villain is his gloating demeanor, and the fact that he never explicitly says he isn’t one.
  • Same thing with Anachroname. All he does is drive people mad by calling them and various other things by outdated names, such as Embarrassing Nicknames from school or calling the police "constabulary". He is being a Jerkass about it, but otherwise harmless and even accidentally helps another Hero with an F in Good find his true calling. He drops the "villain" part outright after having a Heel Realization.
• Heel Realization: In DR. BEES FOREVER, the supervillain Anachroname eventually realizes the error of his ways when Dr. Bees points out he wouldn't want to be called something that doesn't fit him and Anachroname admits that he used to go by the name "Deadnamer", but feels it doesn't describe who he is anymore. It is here that he realizes what he's been doing to people and uses his one phone call to make amends with Oversized Food Destroyer Man (now Oversized Food Creator Man), whom he had mocked earlier.
• Hero with an F in Good:
  • Dr. Bees seems to be genuinely convinced (most of the time) that his actions serve to help others, when what he primarily does is unleash his bees on people. They do eventually start to celebrate him as a real hero when it turns out that villains are just as vulnerable to bees as everyone else, though.
  • Oversized Food Destroyer Man, despite ostensibly having Super-Strength, has such Crippling Overspecialization that he is completely unable to do anything about the villain Anachroname harassing people. This leads to him getting rejected by the townsfolk and embracing villainy, which he's actually really competent in.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Comically exaggerated with Omnipotron, whom Dr. Bees recruits as his sidekick despite the former being an all-powerful Reality Warper and Dr. Bees having, well, bees.
• Inherently Funny Words: Much of the humour in the shorts is derived from the fact that "bees" (and its singular form, "bee") is an inherently funny word.
• Informed Attribute: Just about everything Dr. Bees says about himself in his introduction is quickly, if not immediately, shown to be nonsense. He doesn't wear a mask (at least as Dr. Bees), he doesn't operate at night, and he doesn't appear to care about saving mankind. He does have a load of bees, though.
• Informed Loner: Parodied in DR. BEES FOREVER. When Dr. Bees is confused by the fact that the word apiary means a home for bees (rather than apes), he retreats to "his sanctum of quiet reflection and study", the Fortress of Multitudes. Like the Fortress of Solitude from Superman it is an icy castle located in the polar wastes, but unlike Superman's version it contains a huge crowd of noisy, colorful characters with no clear relation to Dr. Bees himself (outside a few cameos from other Harry Partridge shows). It’s hard enough for Dr. Bees to study the dictionary without being distracted by the One-Man Band playing loudly next to him.
• Jail Bake: Parodied in DR. BEES FOREVER when the Anachroname has his whole Supervillain Lair smuggled into prison inside a giant cake (courtesy of Oversized Food Creator [neé Destroyer] Man). Later exaggerated with the whole state of Minnesota getting smuggled in as well.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Dr. Bees possesses a robust, manly chin complete with a cleft, befitting his old-fashioned superhero image.
• Large Ham: Dr. Bees always speaks in a bombastic manner, even when dealing with mundane situations.
• Latex Perfection: The Comforter outwardly appears to be a clean-shaven man with green hair and a Domino Mask, wearing a sleeping cap. Then, when Dr. Bees decides it's time to unmask him, we find out all of that is a rubber mask. Underneath is a man with receding brown hair, rounder cheeks, and a full beard. And he was somehow wearing glasses under the mask.
• Legacy Character: Dr. Bees is implied to bee one at the end of the first animation, though DR. BEES RETURNS shows that the new character became Boy Boy. As of DR. BEES FOREVER, this seems to not be the case, as Dr. Bees is commonly mistaken for his crass, similarly-dressed cousin Dead Dr. Bees.
• Limited Animation: As part of the throwback to extremely old superhero cartoons, the animation takes a lot of shortcuts. It's especially noticeable in the first short, which consists largely of static poses with only the eyes and mouth flaps animated. DR. BEES RETURNS gets more ambitious with its animation, but is still stiffer than is typical of Partridge's work.
• Ludicrous Precision: When Dr Bees wonders if an alliance between him and the Comforter would actually work, Omnipotron announces he has analyzed 8,912,642 possible outcomes… and they all involve bees.
• Milkman Conspiracy: In DR. BEES FOREVER, there's a global effort by Tina Tinklepants to lobby dictionary companies into hiding the real meaning of the word "apiary", all so Tina can fund her own apiary business during a convenient shortage of bees and houses for marginalized apes. Where does the apiary's money go? Literally down Tina and her henchmen's underwear, just to alleviate an embarassing case of urinary incontinence. The whole episode is dedicated to Dr. Bees uncovering this nonsense.
• Mind Screw: The titular character correctly identifies an object in the sky above him as a plane, noting that he himself is presently on the plane, and no matter where he is when he makes his entrance, he's always standing on a grassy hill dotted with flowers. Then there's the family at the picnic...
• Moment of Lucidity: Otherwise being a point of elevated insanity in an ocean of comparatively lesser insanity, in #CHANGETHEBEES Dr. Bees briefly pauses the insanity to defend the artistic merit of his bees against the pressure of censorship.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Omnipotron has four forearms sprouting from his two upper arms (same deal with his legs). He also has unlimited reality warping powers and can alter the state of the whole universe at will, though he's usually too irritated and petty to bother when people don't appreciate what he can do.
• Name-Tron: Omnipotron, of course, because how can you get any cooler than taking The Omnipotent and adding "tron" to it?
• Negated Moment of Awesome:
  • A problem arises that can actually be solved by Dr. Bees's supply of bees... but he's not there. Turns out he's long dead in the middle of some desert. Or it's actually Dead Dr. Bees taking a nap or something, but either way Dr. Bees is a no-show in a crisis that desperately needs his bees.
  • Every time Omnipotron points out that he can use his Reality Warper powers to instantly solve an issue (or alter reality so that it never occurred in the first place), he gets brushed aside.
• Neon Sign Hideout: The signs aren't neon but it's still notable:
  • Dr. Bees's secret base is located inside a mountain with a giant "BAT HIVE" sign above the entrance.
  • Later, we see that The Comforter's so-called "top-secret hideout" is inside a similar mountain with a giant sign saying "COMFORT BASE" and a giant sleeping cap on the mountain's tip.
  • Later again, we see that the the police's own "top-secret hideout" is also located in a mountain with a giant sign saying "COP CAVE" and a giant police cap on the mountain's tip. On top of that, all three "secret" bases are right next to each other.
• Nominal Hero: Dr. Bees, who, when not fighting crime with bees, is fighting the lack of bees with bees, or the overabundance of bees with more bees, oblivious to how much pain it causes others.
• Nominal Villain: The Comforter does nothing villainous, using his tech to induce a state of relaxation onto bank security before "leaving without causing any further inconvenience." It's even acknowledged to Dr. Bees and Omnipotron that a crime was never committed, but what kind of superheroes would they be if they didn't go after him anyway?
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • Dr. Bees's secret base has a huge sign with "Bat Hive" written on it, despite him not being a bat-themed superhero. Weirdly enough, the narration actually calls the base the "Bee Cave", which is a more fitting name.
  • Parodied in DR. BEES FOREVER, as the main conflict of the episode stems from Dr. Bees' inability to understand that the word "apiary" has nothing to do with "ape", even when explained the etymology behind it. Then it's subverted when it turns out Dr. Bees is indeed right all along.
• Not So Above It All: Omnipotron isn't willing at first to indulge Dr. Bees and his weirdness. By the end of the cartoon, he's nervously joining in with the doctor's application of bees to a situation, bashfully accepting praise for it, and wearing the ratty old "Bee Boy" sidekick costume without complaint.
• Orgy of Evidence: In the third short, The Comforter only leaves behind one clue at the crime scene: a folded napkin with his real name and address written on it. Dr. Bees, naturally, still manages to screw this up: first by requiring the use of a bee-based supercomputer to consider the idea of unfolding the napkin and reading the name, then by dropping the napkin and losing it before he can do so, forcing him to simply ask "Bee Boy" to teleport them to The Comforter's lair.
• Poke the Poodle: Apparent supervillain The Comforter takes this to its logical conclusion. He uses his Comfortizer to zap all the guards at the bank, rendering them too comfortable to stop him from... doing nothing else and leaving. In his hideout, he uses his nefarious machines to do things like ease the distress of grieving widows. Each time he gloats as if he were getting away with something dastardly. The heroes outright admit that The Comforter hasn’t committed any crimes, yet they are determined to stop him anyway.
• Poking Dead Things with a Stick: The first animated short in this series ends with the title character revealed to have died in a desert, where a chubby Boy Scout discovers his body and pokes at it with a stick.
• Political Overcorrectness: #CHANGETHEBEES has Dr. Bees being pressured into changing the cover of his comic because it depicts a woman getting stung by bees. What's more, we never see if any women actually took offense to the first cover, so there's no way of knowing if his editor's concern was out of sincerity or if he just wanted to maximise profits. He eventually has to create a cover where a woman is stabbing a bee. The editor approves, ignoring the bee-people who are clearly distressed at this decision. Dr. Bees later commits suicide over this.
• Real Vehicle Reveal: When the police chief announces the arrival of Dr. Bees in the Beemobile, the camera cuts to a shiny bee-themed Cool Car... which then drives away, with Dr. Bees being dragged into frame atop a creaky mattress pulled by an elderly woman at a speed slightly slower than walking.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Omnipotron, who is omnipotent, is put to work stopping criminals and never uses his powers for anything else. At one point, he suggests that he simply eliminate the very concept of crime from the universe, but he gets interrupted before he can do so.
• Retcon: DR. BEES FOREVER reveals that Dr. Bees never actually died in his first two videos; that was actually his cousin Dead Dr. Bees, a more immature doppelgänger that just so happens to be an undead corpse.
• Retraux: All the Dr. Bees shorts are done in the style of an old-timey shoestring-budget superhero cartoon. There is a grainy, stuttery cel filter over everything, and Limited Animation and Stock Footage are used liberally.
• Reused Character Design: The chief of police in DR. BEES RETURNS has the same appearance and voice as the comic company executive from #CHANGETHEBEES, just with a different outfit.
• Rule of Funny: All of it.
• Rule of Three: The "highly visible secret base" joke is done three times in DR. BEES RETURNS.
• Scenery Censor: Any time we get a full frontal shot of Omnipotron, a character's limb conveniently moves to cover anything sensitive. There's a few frames where the police chief's pointing hand moves away, revealing Omnipotron has Barbie Doll Anatomy.
• Secret Identity:
  • Parodied with Dr. Bees. His secret identity is another superhero. It's a strange case as what might be his civilian name ("Dr. Miles Manners") is on his office door, but his alternate superhero name ("The Striped Stinger") is on his desk name plate.
  • The Comforter wears a domino mask as if to conceal his identity, yet leaves a folded napkin behind that has his real name and address written in it. Dr. Bees proceeds to unfold it, giving us a partial view of the name "GREGO—" but then Dr. Bees accidentally loses the napkin down a crack in the floor. When Dr. Bees unmasks the comforter at the end he does not recognize the guy's face.
• Serial Escalation: The objects from which Dr. Bees unleashes his bees get more and more ridiculous with each installment. The first short starts out logically enough with a jar and a briefcase, but in DR. BEES RETURNS we get, in order, a taxidermy sea cow, an old-timey fotoplayer, an illustrated manuscript, Russian nesting bees that unleash smaller and smaller bees, and a GoBots Command Center playset. DR. BEES FOREVER then manages to top all that with a Clint Howard piñata and the tomb of Æthelstan.
• Shout-Out:
  • Starting with ''DR. BEES RETURNS", the shorts take place in New Propolis, a reference to Metropolis from Superman as well as New York City (home of Spider-Man and others).
  • DR. BEES FOREVER:
    • The thumbnail is an obvious riff on the poster for, well, Batman Forever.
    • The ending of the episode involves an "Everybody Laughs" Ending then a cow vocalizing "Da-bah-dee-boh-dah!" after the camera pans out. This is a reference to the ending of the Beetlejuice pilot "Critter Sitters".
• Stock Footage: As would have been done for classic superhero cartoons to stretch the budget farther, there are a few shots that are reused multiple times across all the shorts. The most consistent is the low-angle shot of the title character's face, which is used nigh-constantly whenever he talks. The behind-leg shot of Dr. Bees crashing the picnic is also reused whenever he enters a scene and feels the urge to release bees, but the 'cel' with his body also includes the grassy knoll he was standing on at the time, so the grass carries over too.
• Stranger Behind the Mask: The Comforter, once unmasked is revealed to be an individual Dr. Bees does not recognize.
• Super Zeroes:
  • Dr. Bees, who's more concerned with fighting the lack of bees than crime.
  • At least the use of bees did work now and then. DR. BEES FOREVER has Oversized Food Destroyer Man, whose special ability is... destroying oversized food, completely useless against the terror Anachroname wrought on New Propolis. However, when Anachroname called him Oversized Food Creator Man, he was given pause. He eventually adopts the alias, and put that into better use, namely in baking oversized cakes to fit Anachroname's secret headquarters, then the entire state of Minnesota.
• Take That!: #CHANGETHEBEES was a response to #ChangeTheCover.
• Theme Mobile: Dr. Bees has the Bee Mobile, a bee-themed Cool Car... which immediately drives away. The actual "Bee Mobile" is a shabby mattress being dragged around by an elderly woman.
• They Killed Kenny Again:
  • Dr. Bees ends up dead in some fashion in his first two appearances. At the end of the third installment he wishes not to die at the end of this one, after which everybody except him dies instead, an outcome he considers to be even worse.
  • Also defied in DR. BEES FOREVER. Oversized Food Creator Man was pointing out that the end of every Dr. Bees adventure ends in an unexpected and tragic death, only for Dr. Bees himself to point out that he does get confused with his cousin Dead Dr. Bees, a similarly-dressed corpse with a different mannerism.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman!: Parodied in the first cartoon, where, after making things much worse with his bees on various occasions, an absolutely perfect scenario for Dr. Bees shows up: Beecon 2013 is suffering from an empty convention center devoid of bees, and the organizers wish for someone to help them... but unfortunately Dr. Bees has been Killed Offscreen.
• Took a Level in Badass: In his first appearance, Dr. Bees seems to be literally just a guy in a beekeeping-themed costume who carries containers filled with bees. In DR. BEES RETURNS, he still doesn't have any explicit superpowers himself, but he has a machine that uses a swarm of bees as a Wetware CPU and outputs data via nectar, he can fly by flapping the wings of his bee hat, and his arsenal includes the clearly-abnormal Russian Doll bees, which open up to release a series of smaller bees. That's a bit more impressive for a superhero than just throwing bees at people.
• Useless Superpowers: Omnipotron is remarked multiple times to be all-powerful, so naturally, every time he would use his powers to actually help solve a problem, he is interrupted. The only times he uses his powers are to teleport him and Dr. Bees to the villain's lair (which was only a short distance away and was only necessary because Dr. Bees dropped the napkin that would have told them to go there) and to summon a box containing a single bee. As he previously suggested the idea of rewriting the entire universe so that the concept of crime did not exist, this is probably for the best.
• Villainy-Free Villain: Parodied with the Comforter, who uses his patented Comfortizer to zap physical and emotional comfort to those who need it, such as overworked security guards and grieving widows. Even the police chief admits that he doesn't commit any actual crime. Yet the Comforter still talks like—and is treated as—a supervillain.
• Vocal Evolution: Harry's voice for Dr. Bees gets deeper and hammier with each installment.
• We Can Rule Together: When Dr. Bees is teleported to the Comforter's hideout, the latter makes this proposition to address all comfort and lack-of-bees related problems. After consulting Omnipotron about the feasibility, Dr. Bees is so ecstatic with the offer that he accepts... with an enormous number of bees.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?:
  • Dr. Bees' only power seems to be(e) that he carries around a lot of bees. And no, he can't control them.
  • Oversized Food Destroyer Man literally can only do what his name implies. Ends up deconstructed as he feels humiliated by the overly situational nature of his powers and decides to embrace his new identity as Oversized Food Creator Man (whose powers turn out to be genuinely effective).
• You and What Army?: In DR. BEES FOREVER, Tina Tinklepants asked Dr. Bees — or rather, Dr. Homeless Apes — this verbatim, only for the Doctor to reply that he has an army of homeless apes (all with some degree of hard luck, substance abuse, and inability to readjust to society) at his beck and call, driving her away as they tease her.