Bee-Having

Bee-Having (もぐれ！ クラッシュ lit. Dive! Crash in Japanese) is the twentieth level and is the final level of the fourth warp room in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. It is similar to Diggin' It, featuring the same enemies, but this time, the bees attack Crash in swarms. As it is almost impossible to take out an entire swarm with one attack, Crash will have to take advantage of his ability to spin into the magenta patches of soil throughout the level. If Crash succeeds in taking out an entire swarm with one single spin, he gets a 1-up, but not if he spins the swarm while underground, nor if the attempt costs him an Aku-Aku mask.

Crash can find the purple gem here, in one of the more unusual secrets in the series. Players will encounter a staircase fashioned from nitro crates, but they do not actually make the player lose a life upon contact and are unbreakable. Instead, they warp the player to a secret route. The secret path is quite dangerous; like in Un-Bearable, the route is compact with hunter lab assistants, metal-plated armadillos, and active nitro crates. However, the purple gem is oddly situated early on in the route, and the route has no crates, meaning the player can die and retain the purple gem and thus avoid traversing the entire route without consequence. The clear gem is simple and straightforward to obtain, unlike in the other bee level, Diggin' It.

Types of crates

 * Aku Aku Crate
 * Basic Crate
 * Bounce Crate (bonus round only)
 * Checkpoint Crate
 * Crash Crate
 * Iron Crate
 * Nitro Crate
 * Nitro Switch Crate
 * ? Crate

Translation of Aku Aku Hints in the Japanese Version

 * After you escape from Papa Bear, and after you're thrown out, look behind you. Isn't White Bear waiting for you?

Trivia

 * This level's title is a pun on the words "behaving" and "beehive".
 * In any non-retail version of the game, this level's name is "Bee Haven".
 * This is one of five levels in this game where, after completing the bonus round, it is possible to die before the game is finished adding the bonus round crates to the crate total. This causes a glitch where it is possible to get credited with breaking more crates than there are in the level. The other levels in this game where this is possible are Snow Biz, Diggin' It, Cold Hard Crash, and Night Fight. In Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, this is possible in Sphynxinator and Flaming Passion.
 * Like Diggin' It, the soil was grey instead of magenta in a beta version of the game.
 * In earlier versions of the game, the Nitro staircase was composed of real Nitros that were set to not bounce and to be walkable so that the player could stand on, however, this still can cause them to explode by spinning, sliding or body slamming.
 * Additionally, there was a wumpa fruit at the top, albeit not seen during gameplay.
 * This level and Un-bearable's secret routes are the only two secret routes in this game which have the same theme setting but have different musics.
 * This is the only level in the game that has more nitro crates than normal crates in the level.