.218 Bee

The .218 Bee is a .22 caliber rifle cartridge created for varmint shooters by Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1938. The cartridge was originally chambered in lever-action rifles, which may have ultimately led to its lack of popularity.

History
Initially the cartridge was designed for Winchester's lever-action rifles, thus the rimmed case. It never really caught on, and later even though it was chambered in new bolt-action rifles, the larger faster .222 Remington overshadowed it when introduced. There was some question about the accuracy of the .218 Bee as compared to the .222, but that was likely due to the difference of inherent accuracy between the bolt-actions rifles commonly chambered for the .222 and the lever-actions commonly chambered for the .218 Bee. Although not in common use, it's still a very effective cartridge in its area, for example small to medium varmints out to about 200 yards (182.88 meters). Production ammunition and rifles are still available from a few manufacturers.

Performance
In terms of relative performance, the .218 Bee falls between the smaller .22 Hornet, and the larger .222 Remington and the more popular .223 Remington. It has velocities of over 3,000 ft/sec (914.4 m/s) with lighter bullets, and requires very little powder.

Categories
Cartridge:rifles