Honey Comb

The bees only appear when something damages you, then peel off and chase whatever is nearby. That makes this defensive in the literal sense: it pays out on a build that expects to trade hits and contributes nothing at all on a clean no hit run. Each trigger also drips a short Honey buff onto you, which is a little extra regeneration while you recover. Only enemy damage and falling set it off now, so you cannot farm bees by parking yourself in lava.

They are projectiles, not minions. Each one flies at a target, punches through a couple of enemies or bounces off a couple of walls, then expires after a few seconds. They also pop the instant they touch water or lava, which is why the accessory does almost nothing in an Ocean fight and very little in the Underworld. You are never guaranteed a full swarm either: one bee is certain and the rest are separate rolls, so the payout on any given hit varies.

Wearing a Hive Pack adds another chance at an extra bee and, more usefully, upgrades roughly half of them into Giant Bees. Those fly noticeably faster, survive an extra bounce, hit harder and last a little longer. It is the one accessory that genuinely compounds with this one.

The swarm effect is shared rather than additive. Running this alongside a Honey Balloon, Bee Cloak, Stinger Necklace or Sweetheart Necklace gets you the same bees and the same buff you would get from any one of them on its own, so the second slot is wasted unless you want that item's other effect.

Armor whose set bonus also fires when you take damage doubles up nicely here, Palladium being the obvious partner, since a single hit pays for the healing and the swarm at once. Expert and Master raise the bees' own damage on top of that, so the accessory ages better in those modes than it does in Classic.