Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 218 Bee. What's it good for?

Isn't it kinda like a 22 Hornet? 100yd coyote rifle? What do you do with the Bee in a model 65 levergun?

Coyotes and rabbits.

I have an encore bbl chambered in the Bee. I like zapping woodchucks with it.

Same thing you do with a .219 Zipper in a Marlin lever gun.

I have one of the Browning 65s. With a Marbles tang sight it is a tack driver at 50 yards and definitely coyote/fox/lynx/bobcat/woodchuck worthy at 100.

My first handgun kill on a turkey was with a Contender in .218 Bee. Did a perfect job.

I use it in a #1 to kill sage rats, badgers and coyotes now and then.

I have a Marlin 62 that was rebarreled to 218 Bee. It is a nice walking varmint hunting rig. 218 Bee is a nice little varmint hunting cartridge, no more and no less. Winchester cataloged the models 43 and 65 in 218 Bee, but neither must have sold well and had short production runs. The most useful rifle chambered in 218 Bee was probably the Marlin 1894CL, since you could install a scope on it and squeeze the accuracy potential out of both the rifle and the cartridge. Factory ammo and component brass is uncommon and generally expensive, but so are the rifle chambereed for it.

If you have one and reload for it, it is a fun little cartridge. If you're just looking to get into one, I'd recommend against it due to the hassles involved in feed it. That said, loonies often enjoy taking a different and more difficult path.

I had a Marlin 1894CL in Bee for quite a few years. It was a great pest and coyote rifle out to 125yds or so.

Very easy on powder, and good accuracy with the Hornady and Speer FN bullets. I got tired of having to scrounge for flat noses for it, though, and sold it several years back.

Years ago I had a Winchester low wall.chambered in .218 bee....short time later the cool factor wore off and I sold it.

I have a Martini Cadet in 218 engraved with Prairie Dogs. It should have litttle gravestones on it too!

Not to highjack the 218 but I always wondered the same thing about the 25-20.
My buddy’s dad had a 92 cambered in it. If I can remember correctly every time we shot it the brass cases would crack. I think the last time a case got separated in the chamber.

I keep mine handy for shooting pests around the house. Works very well on coon.

Ancient brass most likely. I recently bought a Savage 23 in 25-20. It amazes me how accurate it is. Using new brass and have not seen any brass cracking or separation. I see it as a great little small game and calling rifle. And could even see pressing it into service for deer should the need arise. The 75 grain Speer FP is supposed to be a pretty tough bullet.

The first time I fired a .218 Bee was during a prairie dog shoot years ago. It was a "guided" deal, sponsored by a scope company, and the outfitter was a Montana wheat farmer, gun shop owner and rifle loony named Dave who owned a Ruger No. 1B in .218 Bee, which he urged me to try out on PDs. It worked great, because his handloads used 40-grain Ballistic Tips at around 3200 fps, making 300-yard shots quite practical. I kind of wanted one, but after researching the availability of Bee brass got a No. 1B in .22 Hornet instead. It "only" got 3100 fps with Li'l Gun and 40 BTs, which made no discernible difference in the field, but Hornet brass was far more common and generally lower-priced.

Have also helped some friends who owned .218s requiring flat-nosed bullets to find bullets and brass, but never really wanted the hassle of feeding one myself. Apparently there are some limits to my loonyism--though I do take the trouble to handload 2-1/2" 12-gauge ammo for one of my old side-by-side shotguns...

Could have had bad headspace or an oversized chamber. Excess headspace usually leads to head splits or separations if it's bad enough. I had a 300 Savage (since rebarrled to 250) that had terrible headspace, and it would split cases on the first firing sometimes, and pretty much always after 2-3 loadings.

Overdiameter toward the shoulder and mouth can lead lengthwise splits if the brass is sized to factory spec.

On another note regarding Savage 23s. I always thought it odd that they chambered it in 32-20 and 25-20 but switched to the 22 Hornet for a 22 caliber centerfire offering. I would have thought the 218 Bee would have been the natural choice.

Mule Deer, can you shed any light on that?

The 23D was introduced in 1932 and I believe was the first production rifle to be chambered in 22 Hornet. 218 Bee didn't come out until 1937.

I never understood the high prices on winchester model 43s

Savage was making the 19H before the 23B/C/D Sporters were introduced. Since they were already making rifles in 22 Hornet, they probably saw the 218 Bee as redundancy without any meaningful performance difference. The 218 Bee ran straight into The Great Depression, WW2, and the 222, nothing that helped it and nothing that they had any control over.

Most of the 22 Hornets that I've owned have been Savages; 19H, 23Ds, 342S, and 24F. The nicest was the 342S that sold to one of the guy on this site before cancer took him.