The Hive slot review

Released in mid-2020, The Hive is a unique, fun-filled bumblebee themed slot by award-winning studio Betsoft. Incorporating a mix of spreading wilds, free spins and helpful little bumblebees, this slot is a winner for anyone looking for a good time.

Theme and Graphics

Betsoft has on multiple occasions, created slots with a graphic that appears to be older than it is. However, in the case of The Hive, this characteristic has been thrown out of the window.

Set against the backdrop of peaceful woodland, The Hive comes to life with an innovative honeycomb-style grid that’s unconventional yet extremely engaging. The graphics are sharp and the acoustic soundtrack had me feeling super relaxed. I’d go as far as saying it is the perfect sonic depiction of the environment that Betsoft has created for this slot. Whilst playing the game I noticed a variety of helpful little animated bees that appeared around the reels and helped me secure bigger wins - I’ll get to why/how further down.

The combination of the vibrant scenery, brilliantly designed hive grid and charming soundtrack create a truly entertaining slot - this is before I get to the features!

Features

There are some cool features available in The Hive that had me buzzing like the bees. With each spin, you have a chance to randomly enlist one of the three types of bees from the hive to help maximise those wins. When they appear they will begin to move around clockwise one position as you continue to spin the reels.

Each bee carries its own special ability and can appear at one of the 18 designated spots around the hexagonal hive grid. I managed to enlist every type of bee at least once during my time spinning The Hive’s reels and so got to properly experience the benefits of each.

Here’s what special ability each bee brings to the reels:

• The Queen bee: As you could probably guess, this is the Bee that will help you out the most. The Queen’s special feature is her ability to summon followers (including other Queen bees) To the reels. Seeing as the two other bees carry their own specific qualities, the more of them the Queen brings, the faster you’ll rack up wins. At one point I had two Queens around the reels who summoned multiple Drone bees which meant the honey meter filled up faster. The bees will continue to appear for 5, 6 or 7 consecutive spins before disappearing.
• The Drone bee: This bee’s purpose is to fill the honey meter on the left side of the screen that will ultimately trigger the Sticky Sweet Free Spins. With each new drone bee that appears, the faster the honey will fill the meter. The faster you fill the meter, the quicker the free spins are triggered.
• The Worker bee: These bees apply stacking multipliers to when they are aligned with any winning paylines around the hive grid. The value of which is dependent on the total number of Worker bees summoned to the reels.

NOTE: The bees flying around the hive grid can/will fly away after a random number of spins between 3 and 18. Furthermore, Drone and Worker bees can appear an unlimited number of times whilst you’re spinning the reels - so it is not over if you trigger them once early on!

Sticky Sweet Free Spins: The honey jar situated to the left of the hive grid is steadily filled with every spawn of a Drone bee. These bees will fill the honey metre by one level for every Drone bee that is buzzing around the reels. The total number of levels on the honey meter is 12 and when the drone bees have finally filled the jar, five free spins will be awarded. It took me a while to trigger this as I wasn’t able to summon enough Drone bees until I had two Queens. When I did, the reward of 5 free spins didn’t feel particularly worth it. I did manage to win an extra £14 during the round though which was nice.

Honey Burst Spreading Wilds: These are only found during the Sticky Sweet Free Spins round. When this feature triggers, it will start with either 1, 2 or 3 honey burst spreading wilds. They will then begin to spread across the hive grid with every spin and continue to do so until the free spins end. The Honey Burst Spreading Wilds definitely helped me in my free spins round by increasing the multipliers.

Bets and payouts

Regardless of this slot’s unique hexagonal grid (3-4-5-4-3) design, it manages to incorporate an impressive 30 paylines across its 5 rows. The hive pays out left to right and vice versa, both horizontally and diagonally across the honeycomb reels.

This slot has a very impressive RTP of 96.97%. However, as this is a lower volatility game, the payouts players will receive will be respectively small. That’s not to say the payouts aren’t good though. If you’re not a high-roller slots player who bets big, then this game is a bit of a winner.

Max win on The Hive is 378x the bet, therefore, playing with a Max bet of 90 would see a return of 34,020. Let’s be honest, to most people that would be amazing. However, in comparison to some other higher volatility slots, this is chicken feed.

As expected, the Queen bee tops the list of highest paying symbols with up to 10x max bet. This is closely followed by the ladybug which comes in at 5x max bet. Red, purple and white flowers all pay out a max of 5x up to 75. Finally, the lowest paying symbols are honey covered letters A, K, Q and J.

Summary

I really enjoyed my time playing The Hive. It’s well designed, fun and has cool features. There are some things that could be improved, such as the number of free spins awarded in the bonus round. However, this game isn’t about loads of extras, the frequency of wins in the base game is extremely satisfying in itself. My recommendation is not to expect massive wins, but more frequent smaller ones. If you’re a high roller, I’d say there are better games out there for you. But if you like a little bit of light-hearted fun with a charming slot, then The Hive is the place to bee.