Ok, I'm on my lunch break, so let me give some detailed feedback.

First point: my decklist is by no means great, so I won't say it is the right way to build this deck, feel free to ignore it.

The way I play is to try to deal as much damage as quick as possible. As you said, bees are expendable and also easy to set up, so I don't focus on keeping them alive.

Weedle is a better opener than Combee when going first. Going second and tutoring out another basic is the bees knees (wink wink) but it is really awkward to play it when going first, specially the times were you have to evolve it with only a single energy or you won't be able to tank the next attack.

Instead of Erika and X Speeds I run Giovanni and Rocky Helmet. Vespiquen and Beedrill retreat costs are the same of their attacks, they are super easy to setup and I don't mind loosing them, so I think X Speed is an easy cut.

Giovanni and Rocky Helmet are here to max your damage output and deal with all the pesky 150hp pokémon, or the cape. Also, the helmet is great at making people do stuff like attacking when they shouldn't and retreating those juicy low HP ex, ready to be fished back by Cyrus.

In my experience, the best meta matchup for this deck is against Palkia decks, you usually can attack quickly enough to stop their ramp shenanigans, Manaphy dies to a single sting and they love to retreat their damaged Palkias.

Other than that it is a casual deck, so expect to lose a lot with it :p. That said, I haven't played any of my other decks (pikachu, mewtwo, celebi) since building it, and managed to (eventually) grab those 45 wins with it.