If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, mystery is in the identity of the beekeeper. The symbol on the back of his uniform appearing to be the logo for S.W.O.R.D. is one thing, and the bees buzzing around the unidentified man are another. They’re beyond buzzing, in fact — they’re swarming. In the Marvel comics, there’s actually a supervillain named Swarm, a former Nazi scientist and beekeeper who combined his consciousness with a colony of mutant bees. He first appeared in 1977’s Champions #14.
Swarm has yet to appear in the MCU, but in the comics and in several animated television series, he’s a known enemy of Spider-Man. As such, if Swarm is an established Spider-Man baddie, Sony Pictures ostensibly holds the live-action screen rights to the character — but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of the WandaVision beekeeper being Swarm himself. Marvel and Sony struck a deal to co-produce the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man movies and make his inclusion in crossover films a possibility, so there’s precedent for this. Plus, with the two studios’ brief tiff about Spider-Man ownership long behind them, there’s a chance that Sony allowed for Marvel to bring Swarm into the MCU via WandaVision.
Another potential — and probably more plausible — explanation for the appearance of the mysterious beekeeper in WandaVision is that he’s somehow related to A.I.M., the criminal organization also known as Advanced Idea Mechanics. A.I.M., which first showed up in 1966’s Strange Tales #146, was an off-shoot of HYDRA, and its leaders include the android Super-Adaptoid, Bruce Banner’s former flame (in the comics) Monica Rappaccini, and M.O.D.O.K., who is set to appear in his own series on Hulu. Other noteworthy members of A.I.M. are Yelena Belova and Taskmaster, two characters who will appear in the upcoming Black Widow solo movie. Of course, Baron von Strucker was a part of A.I.M. as well. In the comics, he’s the founder of the organization, but in the MCU, Iron Man 3 establishes that Aldrich Killian — aka the Mandarin — created A.I.M. In May 2019, Marvel boss Kevin Feige teased that the MCU would bring the “real Mandarin” into the mix in the future, and we all know how much Marvel loves to link together all its properties through subtle details, so perhaps there’s some sort of connection here.
Now, while leaders of the organization dress in business attire, other A.I.M. operatives and technicians sport uniforms and helmets that resemble beekeepers’ gear, much like the anonymous man’s uniform as seen at the end of WandaVision‘s second episode. In the comics, A.I.M. members wear yellow uniforms, but in Iron Man 3, they don’t — another piece of evidence to back up the idea of the WandaVision beekeeper being an A.I.M. member. On top of that, with the reference to HYDRA in the Strücker Watches commercial, it appears that HYDRA could be influencing Wanda and Vision’s life in some way. Thus, it makes more sense that the beekeeper could be a member of the HYDRA branch A.I.M. rather than an unrelated supervillain, despite their bee-centric similarities. All in all, we are buzzing with confusion.
