According to Jerry Seinfeld, while having lunch at Steven Spielberg's house, he first mentioned the idea for the movie as a joke, but Spielberg loved the idea.
In November 2016, this movie saw a surge in attention due to the rise in popularity of videos on YouTube that consisted of random edits to this movie (and sometimes the trailer). The most popular of these videos is one where this movie increases in speed every time the word "bee" is said.
The first two movie trailers had Jerry Seinfeld trying to make a live-action Bee Movie. After watching the disastrous results, Steven Spielberg asks, "Why don't you just make it a cartoon?"
(At around twenty-nine minutes) The scene with Barry B. Benson (Jerry Seinfeld) in the pool is a take-off on El graduado (1967). In both scenes, the title character's parents ask what they want to do with their lives. Both characters are unsure what the future will hold. Both are also having a secret affair.
Jerry Seinfeld was inspired to write the script for this movie after his wife took up the hobby of beekeeping. Seinfeld felt she was spending more time with the bees than with him, and wanted to imagine a world where this was taken to the extreme.