A Skyrim player recently witnessed a surprising show of strength from one of the most unlikely creatures in the land of the Nords: the humble bee. Earlier this year, Skyrim's Anniversary Edition launched to celebrate the title's 10-year history while simultaneously bringing the open-world RPG to its third console generation.
There are many complicated and fantastical elements that Bethesda put into The Elder Scrolls V, yet somehow bees have proven to be a unique component of the game dating back prior to Skyrim's debut. At one point during development, there was a bug (pun intended) that made the insects ruin the opening cutscene. Whenever a bee touched Ulfric's transport, the cart would launch into the sky. This overpowering show of strength was cut from the final product for obvious reasons, yet it appears some small remnant of it still exists in-game after all these years.
Reddit user MaxNiEf recently posted some gameplay footage where a bee can be spotted carrying a bucket in the background. The insect manages to keep the bucket airborne for nearly 30-seconds before both end up on the ground, but it only appears to end because of the bee's flight path. Some of the comments on MaxNiEf's post jokingly suggested that the insect was attempting to pull off one of Skyrim's most notorious glitches where a player puts a bucket on an NPC's head before promptly stealing all of their stuff.
In Skyrim, bees are completely harmless to the player and only serve as an ingredient for alchemy purposes. Players can easily add one to their inventory by simply hitting the interact button when near one, which normally does not allow time to see how they interact with the environment. So many of Skyrim's alchemy ingredients have no real impact on the world around them, though it makes sense for bees considering they are moving entities.
When a game is as large and free as Skyrim, there are bound to be many bugs that end up overlooked as fixing them may end up causing more harm than good to the overall experience. Those that have survived over the years have become part of the game's DNA and something would be lost from the overall experience without them. For Elder Scrolls 6, the developers may want to consider doubling down on some of these strange bee behaviors and perhaps add to the already substantial list of funny Skyrim glitches.
Source: MaxNiEf/Reddit