The main thing you should focus on is getting to 25 bees and reaching the Top Shop. The gear you buy before that realistically doesn’t matter; once you get to 25 bees, you can start buying items from the Top Shop within a few hours.

The first things you should buy once you reach the top shop are the Beekeeper’s Boots, the Beekeeper’s Mask, and the Mondo Belt Bag.

All 3 of these items are important and have a very similar cost. You should also get the Glider, considering it will quickly become a negligible expense.

After gear, get Hive Slots until the cost is 150M+. Buy the Porcelain Dipper after this.

Buy slots until the cost exceeds 250M+, then buy the Porcelain Port-O-Hive.

Having unlocked 35 Hive Slots, you should try getting the Honey and Bubble Masks.

The Bubble Mask is the best honeymaking mask at this stage, as it isn’t too expensive and grants a big bonus to capacity and Blue pollen
The Honey Mask will be better for White/Red pollen quests by a little.

Either way, it is recommended to get the Bubble Mask first, as you can still complete quests just fine with Bubble Mask, and it greatly increases your honey compared to Honey Mask, without too much of a loss to your quest speed.

Keep in mind, you can skip the Honey Mask if you choose.

If you mainly macro, this may be a good idea as you can make a lot more honey during macroing with Bubble Mask and save some materials.

The Bubble Mask is so much better during macroing because one of the main perks of Honey Mask, the passive ability, is essentially useless when macroing, as the macro struggles to collect the honey tokens.

It’s still occasionally used in Blue Hives, so you will still need to get it eventually.

The reason you shouldn’t get the Fire Mask is that it doesn’t really do much for you. The passive ability is bad compared to the other two, and the stats aren’t very redeeming either.

Moving on from that, you could also try getting the Crimson and Cobalt Guards.

The preferable order would be to get Cobalt Guard > Vicious Bee > Crimson Guard whenever you can afford to if you do this, don’t skip them for ages

It should be noted that Cobalt Guard is almost always prioritized over Crimson Guard as it buffs primarily Blue stats such as Blue Pollen or Blue Bomb Pollen.

The only exception to when you should prioritize Vicious Bee over the Cobalt and Crimson Guards is if you are Level 10-12 and cannot kill Coconut Crab without Vicious.

Your next focus after that should be four things:

Getting the Diamond Mask
Getting the Petal Belt
Getting the Coconut Canister
Unlocking more Hive Slots.

Why should you spend your first Spirit Petal on the Petal Belt? The main reason is that the other two items you could get—the Windy Bee and the Petal Wand—aren’t worth the Spirit Petal at that time:

You get much more honey from bees than you do from tools at this point in the game, rendering the Petal Wand almost useless for this stage.

Capacity is crucial in the early-game stage
It (usually) takes a large amount of time to get the Windy Bee if you donate the Spirit Petal so early and even so it kills your haste and as such doesn’t benefit you as much as Petal Belt does.

Why should you get the Diamond Mask instead of the other two masks?

After SSA, you should be going Blue, as it is the cheapest color by far.
Diamond Mask also has the highest capacity buff of all the masks, making it generally better than Gummy Mask, even for mixed fields and especially red/blue fields.

This also makes having a blue-leaning hive more helpful, more explained in 2. Hive.

The stats of the Diamond Mask overall are better for Earlygame than the Demon Mask and the Gummy Mask.

Gummy Mask buffing white pollen is virtually useless, as red/blue pollen is MUCH better due to the Red and Blue Boost tokens.

The passive is also not that good at this stage, as it’s super infrequent since using Gumdrops often this early is not recommended, and because the Gummy Bee alone doesn’t charge it that fast.

Demon Mask isn’t as good because of the lack of capacity in comparison to the Diamond Mask, along with the passive being really mid for this stage.

You can find a more in-depth explanation of this in Why should you pick the Diamond Mask and Why the Petal Belt goes before the Petal Wand

After this, you should try to get the Coconut Canister. Go for the Coconut Clogs after the Canister.

You can potentially skip the Coconut Clogs to go straight for the Gummy Boots, but it’s not recommended.

The Coconut Canister is better to get first because of the capacity and convert rate buffs. Along with the fact that the Coconut Clogs aren’t that good.

You should spend your 2nd Spirit Petal on either the Windy Bee or the Petal Wand.

The Petal Wand will provide an immediate improvement over the Porcelain Dipper, although quite small.
Donating to get the Windy Bee is much more RNG, and you are unlikely to get it anytime soon.

TL;DR: use this image as your general progression guide:

Credits:

Arrive - making the mini-guide

Alexgadukyanking - notifying us about the outdated stuff+helping with event bee gifting order and general gear progression

Please note that you should NOT follow this guide 1:1–it is a very generalized guide and people’s progression will vary.

If you are ever unsure of anything, feel free to ask in BSGH!!!!!

§1.2 Quest order

The most important things to get from quests are going to be Science Bear quests and Spirit Bear quests. While at the beginning you are going to go for Black Bear quests, over time your main focus should shift to Spirit Bear.

You should not ignore Black and Brown Bears - both of these can give you Diamond Eggs in their questline, which will be useful for the Diamond Mask (Brown Bear gives it after completing his 75th quest, so it may take too long to get his Diamond Egg).

A line of quests that is often overlooked is the dapper bear questline. It allows you to increase your beequip slots up to 12, which is very useful for Post-SSA, and gives a Diamond Egg at its 10th quest. Don’t forget to do these quests in the back, as a large part of them is just waiting.

Science Bear is also important, however, Science Bear’s quests should be done on the side and shouldn’t be your main focus. You should try to get to maximum Science Enhancement, as it is a permanent buff to Convert Rate, which will be very useful for any stage of the game.

Something people commonly ignore is Polar Bear quests. These are ridiculously important, as getting a good amount of Polar Power is extremely important if you don’t want your bees to sleep constantly. Since the pollen requirement for these quests is very small, just remember to constantly kill the mobs needed for these quests. You should always be doing these whenever you can, including letting your macro do them.

Aside from that, the quests that give Star Treats - Mother Bear, Panda Bear, and Onett - are also important to take care of. You should actively be doing the Ant Challenge whenever you get to Panda Bear’s Ants questline. Mother Bear’s quests are level-related, so you won’t have to put any real effort into completing them. Onett’s Star Journey quests are slow and time-consuming, but most of the time, you won’t have to put your main focus on them to finish them. Whenever you are done with the more time-consuming parts of the quests, do not forget to finish the field pollen parts of them as well.

§1.3 Translator order

This is quite simple, the standard order is:

Bucko Bee > Riley Bee > Stick Bug.

One of the Science Bear’s quests requires defeating Stick Bug, so either give your 2nd Translator to Stick Bug, or ask for others to spawn it.

Bucko is first because of the blue extracts and an easier path to Tide/Hydro.

Stick Bug is usually last because you will struggle to defeat the boss at this stage, making it less helpful overall.

§1.4 Which items should be saved?

There are some items you should not use in the early stages of the game. The reason for that is that the items grant much more value in later stages of the game, and as such, using them too early on is simply a waste.

Diamond Eggs

The main reason you should not use Diamond Eggs is the Diamond Mask - it requires 5 of them, and they are not worth using for mythics.

Star eggs

A Star Egg always gives you a gifted bee type you don’t have in your hive (except for event bees). That means that if you have all rare, epic, and legendary bee types (and a gifted basic bee), you are guaranteed a Gifted Mythic from it. Don’t use these unless you’re guaranteed Gifted Mythics from them.

Boosting materials

Boosting with major material usage like Loaded Dice or Super Smoothies is simply not worth it before getting the supreme star amulet. You fill your bag up so quickly, which causes it to be inefficient.

Additionally, these items are needed to craft other items later on, so you seriously shouldn’t use them up.

An exception is if you manage to somehow get 25/25 loaded (or more) and use a few for small boosts.

Fruits for bees

Fruits are very important to use for crafting things like Extracts, and later on, getting your hive fully gifted. Using them to gift bees that are legendary or below is simply not worth it. These bees are attainable via Royal Jelly, whereas Gifted Mythics are way too rare for this stage.

It’s okay to use fruits to gift mythics if needed, and you have all the gear you can get, although still not completely recommended.
This logic applies to both Star Treats and Gingerbread Bears as well.

This DOES include Bitterberries - you should save them up because they will be very important for mutating your hive after you get ssa, and using them before that is just going to be a waste and slow down your progress later on.

This is mainly because you won’t be keeping a lot of the bees from Early-game into post-ssa (midgame).
Another big reason is that the higher the level of the bee is, the easier it is to get good mutation percentages, so it’s worth waiting until you can afford high levels, or else you will have to re-mutate your bees.

Using materials to gift your Basic bee

While the Basic bee provides one of the best gifted hive bonuses in the game (that being 1.2x pollen), it is not worth it to use Star Treats, Fruits, or Gingerbread Bears while trying to gift it. The reason for that is that the Basic Egg has a 1/287 chance to give you a gifted Basic bee, meaning you can just spend some honey instead of wasting precious materials to get it.

§2. Hive

There is a general trend you should try to follow when building your hive this early on. The visual of the ‘ideal’ hive will be in 2.3 45 bees.

The main kinds of bees you will need include:

Red Boost Producers.
Blue Boost Producers.
Focus Producers.
Haste Producers.
Music and Baby Bees.

Red and Blue Boost tokens are good because they stack up to x3 of their color pollen, increasing your pollen collection by an enormous amount.
Focus tokens give you a buff on your critical chance, which increases the amount of pollen you collect whenever you land a critical hit.

Haste allows you to travel faster to collect tokens, and in general, a nice quality of life ability.

You have many options for these bees. At the end, you should be aiming for at least:

Red Boost:

Gifted Rad Bee
Gifted Riley Bee
Gifted Shy Bee
A duplicate of the previous 3, ideally Shy Bee.

If you cannot afford the gifteds, your best option is an ungifted Shy Bee.

If your polar power is low, you may need a 5th to maintain x10 Red Boost 24/7. Shy is the best, as stated above.

Blue Boost:

Gifted Cool Bee
Gifted Bucko Bee
Gifted Frosty Bee
Gifted Diamond Bee

If you cannot afford the gifteds, your best option is an ungifted Frosty Bee.

If your polar power is low, you may need a 5th to maintain x10 Red Boost 24/7. Frosty is the best, as stated above.

Focus:

Gifted Looker Bee
Gifted Commander Bee
4 Gifted Music Bees (will explain exactly why later.)

If you cannot afford the gifteds, your best options are ungifted Music Bees.

Haste:

Gifted Hasty Bee
Gifted Shocked Bee
Gifted Ninja Bee
Gifted Photon Bee

If you cannot afford the gifteds, your best option is Ninja Bees.
Photon may be ungifted for a while if you can’t afford to gift it.

Why Music and Baby Bees?

Both bees produce super good abilities
Music produces Melody, Focus, and Token Links.

Melody gives +100% Critical Power, which is super helpful for both attack and pollen collection, as Critical Hits affect both.
Focus is one of the essential tokens, as stated above, so it’s a no-brainer that having more is better.
Token Link is more of a quality-of-life token, as it allows you to collect every token that belongs to you.

It allows you to stay around a central area so that your bees don’t go too far away, which can help with token upkeep as well.

Baby Bee produces Baby Love.

Baby Love is good for the x2 pollen, it should be self-explanatory why this is so good.

Another bee commonly incorporated in hives is the Carpenter Bee. There is one main reason they aren’t explicitly listed here like the other bees above:
Macro.

Due to Carpenter Bees being incorporated for the Marks, they aren’t that good when macroing, and the majority of players macro. If you primarily don’t macro/don’t honey macro, it may be worth getting a few Carpenters for the Marks.

§2.1 25 bees and below

Early on, it is difficult to make the honey for Royal Jellies to build your hive. You should start off by using reward codes to get started:

Roof
Wax
Bopmaster
38217
Beesbuzz123
Crawlers
Connoisseur
Nectar

Use the below codes once you are more situated and can potentially boost:

ClubBean

You can find all of the codes on the BSS Wiki.

You will not be able to afford much of the bees required, definitely not the gifted bees, and possibly not the legendaries either, at this stage.

Your goal is to keep those same producers but ungifted versions, as you want to still have the essential tokens.

This includes ungifted rad, riley, cool, bucko, looker, commander, etc.

Keep in mind: You may not be able to get the shy/ninja/music/baby bees, or very many, and that’s okay for now. As you make more honey, you should be able to get more and more of it until you can afford the recommended amount.

Please note: if you want to get far in this game, you MUST get the Bear Bee Voucher through trading or buying.

Convert Speed Voucher is also really good, get it right after BBV. It’s both really cheap and good.
Cub Buddy is a decent voucher to get, but not necessary.
Bee Gather Voucher is only good with a decent Digital, you can ignore this if you wish.

You should buy Tabby Bee as your first event bee, Cobalt being second.

See left for an example Early-game hive for 25 bees (please don’t copy this 1:1):

As stated above, if you can’t afford the more expensive bees in this hive (legendaries), substitute them for the cheaper variants (see above for what fits those places).

§2.2 35 bees

At 35 bees, you’re able to consistently get gifted rares and maybe even some epics. Keep any unique gifted bees you discover for Star Eggs and their Hive Bonuses.

At this stage, you should also have obtained a few star treats, so you can gift Events.

Epics don’t need to be gifted but it’s preferable they are, Cool, Rad, Looker, and Riley Bee should all be gifted (visual bug sorry), and an ungifted Frosty/Shy/Commander is better than any ungifted rare/epic, outside of Shocked for haste.

Note that if you’re running out of Hive Slots, you could replace a gifted Brave Bee if you have it, as it doesn’t do much outside of Attack, which is only needed for Ant Challenge in Early-game.

§2.3 45 bees

Pre-Star Eggs

At this point, you should stay Mixed until you’ve used both your Star Eggs. Your hive doesn’t have too much leeway here, as you should have at least 1 of every gifted Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary bee in your hive.

If you have any mythics already, it may be worth gifting them before using the star egg to avoid dupes (unless it’s a blue mythic).

(Frosties at the top should be replaced by Star Eggs)

Post-Star Eggs

You should still stay Mixed, and only switch to Early Blue once you meet these requirements:

at LEAST 20 Spirit Bear Quests done (belt and wand)
Supreme Saturator obtained
both Star Eggs used

The Mythics could be any, but Tadpole and Buoyant are preferred.

Carpenters are a trivial choice, and require more than 6 to work well together. You can remove most, if not all of them for other bees like Bubble and Frosty. Note that the Hive Bonus does NOT make it worth running, as Tool Pollen really isn’t that good at this stage of the game.

§2.4 Event Bee buying and gifting order

This is quite self-explanatory, but for the gifting order since event bees can only be gifted with Star Treats/Gingerbread Bears, you should prioritize gifting these bees before Mythics, as Mythics can also be gifted with fruits.

Buying order: Tabby → Cobalt → Festive → Star Treats until you’re missing a Bee to gift with them → the Bee + a Star Treat (to gift it).

Get Vicious and Gummy with ONLY their respective materials, as it is not worth it to buy Stingers/Gumdrops with your tickets.

Gifting order: Vicious → Tabby → Buoyant → Cobalt (if you macro)→ Bear → Cobalt (if you don’t macro) → Festive → Gummy→ Puppy (if you have Antlers)

Red text means gift it as soon as you obtain it.

The reasoning for this order is as follows:

Vicious is placed highly to emphasize to Gift the bee the moment you get it. Chances are this will not be the first bee you gift
Buoyant Bee has to be gifted for SSA anyways, so since the Hive Bonus and Abilities are so beneficial you might as well gift it if you’re lucky enough to get it early
Tabby/Bear are relatively similar in terms of fill. They can swap positions if needed for gifting
Festive is bought early for materials
Photon is completely skipped due to the 5% Instant Conversion being relatively weak, and not being used at all for blue
Cobalt is considered here since it is significantly more useful than Photon
If someone were to Gift 6 Event Bees + all bees Legendary and lower they will be at 35/40 bees for SSA. With Star Eggs they would be 37/40
It’s 36/40 and 38/40 respectively if one were to gift Puppy and Cobalt
They can Bugrun for the last 3 Star Treats worth of Tickets (about 300 tickets a day + 120 per day from Wealth Clock) and gift Mythic Bees which you so happen to see while rolling for more tads/bous.

§2.5 Beequips

Obviously, in Early-game you won’t have any Beequips; however, here are some good Beequips that will be used when you transition to a Blue Hive that aren’t too expensive:

Pinecones
Elf Caps
Candy Rings
Icicles
Snow Tiara
Beesmas Tree Hats

There are many other Beequips you can use, but aim for ones that buff Bee abilities, Capacity, or other crucial stats. Don’t worry about getting expensive Beequips as of now.

§3. Macro

§3.1 What is Macro, and which one should I use?

Macros are programs that repeat a task without a user present. There are a few Macros that people use to automate tasks in Bee Swarm. These include Natro Macro, and if you’re using a Mac, Existance Macro.

(Natro is used for the following screenshots below)

Macros are used to maintain Nectars, Balloon Blessing, the Wealth Clock buff, collect materials, and make honey. Macroing is incredibly useful for progressing.

§3.2 Gather

There are a few popular patterns used for Macroing at Pinetree. Start by trying Bowl or Pinedrift (The settings are attached).

For other fields, try E_Lol or SuperCat, and experiment with the settings to find what is best for your needs.

Keep Field Drift Compensation off if you don’t use the Supreme Saturator or aren’t macroing with people who have it.

§3.3 Collect/kill

Use this as a baseline for the Collect tab (ignore Beesmas settings if it’s not Beesmas).

You could optionally turn on Ant if you need it for a quest. You can also turn on the Memory Match, but it’s only recommended to turn on Extreme. Make sure to select whatever you don’t want for the Memory Matches; turn off basic materials that you don’t need.

For the Kill tab, it’s recommended to do bosses manually. You may want to enable Vicious Bee, but keep Pepper and Clover disabled as they have diminishing returns.

Note that you should probably atleast activate the only Daily Bonus on Stingers until you get Cobalt and Crimson Guards and Vicious.

Enable bug runs if you want materials from them and don’t mind the honey-making drop.

You should be bugrunning a lot, especially if you’re close to SSA.

§3.4 Boost

With the boost tab, you can utilize the field boosters to get a buff on fields without using any materials.

However, since you are supposed to have the Bubble/Diamond Masks, you’ll generally make more macroing in blue fields. For pure Honeymaking, it will most likely be better to only stick to blue fields:

It’s not recommended to use Sticker Stack at the Early-game stage. Leave all other settings for the Boost tab off as well–this is more for Late-Endgame Blues.

§3.5 Quest

In the Quests tab, enable Polar Bear quests; you really shouldn’t have access to the other quests, but keep them off either way.

If you cannot do Polar Quests, then just turn them off.

The Settings tab in Quests doesn't matter too much, just keep it at what it’s set to by default.

Keep in mind that the Black Bear tab is only if you have finished his main questline, so you really shouldn’t even get up to that point

§3.6 Planters

Planters are the main and only reliable source of nectars, which grant big buffs, such as Pollen or Convert Rate buffs. Additionally, Planters can give great loot if harvested when fully grown - extra Dice, Extracts, Glues, etc.

Because of this you should aim to get the Pesticide, Tacky, Candy and Clay planters as fast as you can - it is also good to mention that if planted in the Stump field 3 times in a row, the Candy Planter will give you 10 Glues (with a 1 week cooldown), which may be annoying to get at times.

Additionally, the Pesticide Planter at this point will be the Planter that grants you the most Pollen per harvest, and that can help you finish your quests much quicker.

Note that all Planters give a guaranteed Swirled/Caustic Wax monthly if you place it in a specific field. I recommend claiming these as early as possible to help you obtain the Lategame gear a bit quicker. The full list of what planters give what Waxes in which field can be found here.

§3.7 Status

It’s heavily recommended to set up a Webhook to monitor your Macro. It’ll help to be able to read your Hourly Reports once you become a Blue Hive (it doesn’t matter too much in Earlygame).

Use this guide to help you set it up.

You could also set up Remote Control, which enables you to do many things on another device, such as starting or stopping your Macro.

Use this guide to help you set it up.

§3.8 Settings

If you Bugrun, keep an eye on your Macro. For example, if you travel to kill a mob and your bees do not arrive to kill it, then lower the Bee Count. If you wait too long at your hive after reset, then make the bee count higher

If you can’t Bugrun for any reason, just don’t.

The “Add Key Delay” setting depends on how much you lag. If you have a good PC that doesn't lag, you can make this value lower, around 5ms. If you have a lower-end PC that's somewhat inconsistent on FPS or a laptop, you want to make it higher, something between 60- 100ms.

(Red = things you change depending on your own situation.)

However, I do recommend making everyone in the Private Server to rejoin at the same time to refresh the Server, preferably every 6, 8, 12, or 24 hours.

§3.9 Misc

The only thing you’re realistically going to care about is the Auto Basic Bee Hatcher, which makes it so that you don’t have to manually hatch eggs to get a gifted Basic bee. Before activating this, you should get a decent amount of Basic Eggs, it’s suggested to do around 50 at a time.

§4. Amulets

Note that all of these stats are only optimal if you macro in blue fields. Any stats not mentioned are guaranteed on the Amulet.

§4.1 Star Amulet

You shouldn’t waste your honey on Star amulets before the Supreme Star amulet, as the stat buffs they give are really negligible, especially taking into account how quickly you are going to be moving through them, as such you should not use your honey up on trying to get better Star amulets.

§4.2 Ant Amulet

You should be able to obtain a Supreme Ant Amulet pretty easily, but even if you don’t the stats still apply.

Critical Chance > Critical Power > Pollen > Player Movement Speed > Attack (for the other stats), and
Blue Pollen > White Pollen > Red Pollen (for the pollen stats)

(2 out of 3 of the Coloured Pollen stats are guaranteed.)

§4.3 Moon Amulet

Keep in mind it’s more important to use your Moon Charms for Glitters for crafting, but after you get Petal Belt, Diamond Mask, and Bubble Mask, etc (any Early-game gear that requires Glitters), you should also remember to get a Decent Moon amulet. At the very least you should spend Moon Charms until you max out the capacity stat on it (250k). Keep in mind that after you get 250k capacity you can still roll the amulet ~10 times before the stats max out.

If you are already free to use Moon Charms on this amulet, the main stat you should be aiming for is Honey Per Pollen, Bond From Treats, and Instant Conversion.

§4.4 Stick Bug Amulet

It’s realistically not possible to get a good Stick Bug amulet before the Supreme Star Amulet. The stats on the Bronze/Silver ones are really low too, so you shouldn’t really care about it, just take whatever you get, though if you do have a keep or replace situation, Pollen and Bomb Pollen/Blue Pollen and Bomb Pollen are optimal.

§4.5 King Beetle Amulet

The only stat that really matters here is the Convert Rate and Bee Attack. If you can, get as high of a Convert Rate as you can. However, since you should 100% be going Blue in the future, it’s important to note that if you get an amulet with high amounts of both Blue Flower and Bamboo Field pollen (65%+), you should keep it if you plan on running Tad Alt Sync.

§4.6 Shell Amulet

You most likely shouldn’t have to kill Stump Snail once before SSA, and even if you do you most likely will only have to do it once.

§5. Switching Hives

§5.1 Early Blue

I HIGHLY recommend and I cannot stress enough to switch to early Blue and NOT early Red or White.

Explanation: Early Blue is far superior to early Red, as Red cannot function effectively or produce anything meaningful without at least a fully gifted level 18 hive and a Dark Scythe with a double passive. Boosting as Red is also extremely resource-intensive, requiring expensive items like Super Smoothies and Stingers, which are impractical to use casually during the early or midgame.

EVEN if you somehow manage to gather the necessary resources (which would be better spent crafting items like the Tide Popper or Dark Scythe rather than boosts), the returns are minimal compared to simply macroing as early Blue. Blue not only requires no materials to operate but can also run efficiently with minimal setups, such as a fully ungifted level 15 hive, and still generate comparable or even greater amounts of honey than early Red.

NOTE: Even if you don’t have access to Macros or AFK methods, going early Red is still not worth it. Early Blue is entirely viable without macros, and the reason for choosing early Blue isn’t just about avoiding the need to boost for honey: it’s also because it’s significantly more cost-effective.

You can find a more detailed version of this in the early Blue part in the Blue hive Guide 101.

§5.2 Full Blue

Full Blue is a direct continuation of Early Blue, and should be switched to at really any time you can Blue hive Guide 101 - Google Docs.

§6. Final Tips

Do NOT be scared/annoyed/confused if someone you know was or is making more honey than you, Early-game is very lenient, and what happens does not matter too much as long as you make it through.
Early-game will be different for everyone depending on their priorities, how long they Macro for, their RNG, etc, again do NOT be scared/annoyed/confused if someone you know is having or had a different progression order to you.
Do NOT take everything from this guide 1:1. This guide is extremely generalized, and again, not all things will be the same for everyone.
This is the real grindy part of BSS imo, doing the quests etc are boring as hell, as long as u can make it to Supreme Star Amulet it will most likely be smooth sailing from there (kinda just go Blue and press f1 until lvl 20). Well yes there is more grinding, it’s usually “fun” as you don’t really feel “limited” by the amount of resources e.g. grinding for Coco Belt and doing like 500 Sprouts.
The biggest tip: be dedicated. If you want your Bee Swarm Career to go anywhere, you need to be dedicated. If that just means leaving your PC on to Macro every day, or maybe spending 8 hrs a day doing drives ( ), you need to have motivation to play.

Credits

Sakurance - overlooking the guide and mentioning what to change/add

Groudon - checking the guide

And Lotus for being one of the main contributors for this guide before she quit </3