I know The Bee was nerfed to limit it's (insane) effectiveness when used with multi-projectile weapons. I've heard conflicting reports on how this is implemented though; I've heard that damage is always spread evenly across all "pellets" from a single shot, rather than applied once per pellet (as it used to be) and I've also heard that it only affects shotguns, and I've heard some mutli-projectile weapons like the Sand Hawk still have insane bonuses from The Bee.
What I'm thinking is that The Bee's damage is only split between each pellet listed on the item card (i.e. the "x15" you see on Shotguns' damage), so when a single pellet is fired but splits into many, each might retain full amp damage from The Bee? Unfortunately I don't have a Sand Hawk to test with.
Can anyone confirm exactly how The Bee works in regards to "splitting" bullet weapons like that? Is the amp damage "split" or applied in full to each pellet when a gun fires a single (or multiple) pellets which then split into even more?
Best Answer
Since the 1.2.0 patch nerf The Bee works like you describe in your second paragraph. If the damage card lists multiple projectiles (as in a 3000x14 shotgun) then the amp damage boost is divided by the multiplier (14, in this example). If the weapon has a special effect where a single bullet ends up producing two or more projectiles, such as the Sand Hawk's 8 pellets per shot, then every projectile gets full amp damage.
I don't have an authoritative source for this but I've observed it myself and the Borderlands Wikia confirms this behavior: "Amp Shields have their Amp damage amount divided among the projectiles from multi-projectile weapons".
So post-1.2.0 patch, there are two ways to maximize amp damage from The Bee. Either get a weapon with a many-pellet special effect like the Sand Hawk so each trigger pull fires many fully amped bullets. Or else get a weapon with a very high fire rate so that it fires many fully amped bullets in a short period of time.