Plenty of Pokémon have slight differences that you might not notice at a glance, including visually based on gender. Combee is one such Pokémon, and you will need to get a female Combee in Pokémon Go at some point for your Pokédex—which might be more difficult than you think.
Combee is one of several Pokémon that operates using a distinct difference between its male and female variants. If you ever want to evolve your Combee into Vespiquen, you must catch a female Combee, which is no guarantee in any Pokémon game. For Pokémon Go, we have a breakdown of how likely you are to find a female Combee, so here is how you can up your odds at that encounter.
How rare is female Combee in Pokémon Go? Combee spawn rates explained
When Combee first joined Pokémon Go on Jan. 31, 2019, Niantic made female Combee a 100 percent encounter for two weeks. Male Combee was added on Feb. 15, and since then, the spawn rate favors the male variant just like in the main game.
To keep with the lore of female Combee becoming the queen bee of a hive, male Combee has an 87.5 percent spawn rate compared to its female counterpart. That means you have a 12.5 percent chance to encounter a female Combee in Pokémon Go, according to Bulbapedia. There’s no way to up these odds unless Niantic boosts the spawn rate of female Combee during an event.
The good news is you can check if a Combee is female right as it spawns by checking the lowest of its three honeycomb faces for a red crown. If it doesn’t have that defining trait, it’s a male Combee, and you can save your Poké Balls.
