The Bee Dungeon

The First of the Fifth stood in her home. Her new, spacious home that she was certain was larger than any constructed by any bee in the Beyond. Her new home with rows upon rows of trays, more than her hive could ever fill, that were precisely placed to allow ideal airflow that could be adjusted on a per-tray basis for different processing needs. Her home with numerous entrances that the King had made on her suggestion, allowing her to precisely organize the flow of her workers so that not a single moment would be loss to confusion or traffic jams.

Before she knew it, she had started another happy dance. But she caught herself and stopped. While the new palace certainly deserved the celebration, she had another task at present. She was currently standing before her new children, a line of queens watching her with just a hint of confusion over her sudden outburst. She gathered herself with just the slightest twitch of her antennae before dancing.

“All daughters should focus on workers for now. Will provide honey to do so. Will assign brood tenders to help. Will also assign tasks, and workers. Queens should listen to workers and get used to tasks so can do once own workers ready. Understand?”

“Yes, Queen Mother!”

Once she was satisfied with their response, she turned to one of the queens.

“Second Daughter, build in sector one. Job is to arrange honey delivery to other hives. Need to grow and raise soldiers for this.”

The new queen saluted and then the First of the Fifth’s workers led her to her assigned trays while the First of the Fifth turned to the next.

“Third Daughter, build in sector five. Job is to investigate new honey processing methods. Will need to scout dangerous karnuq. Work with scouts, they will explain.”

Her third daughter danced an unsteady salute, apparently confused about the order. The First of the Fifth would follow up and explain in more detail. She would also need to determine if her daughters could connect to her scouts via communers, or if they would need scouts and communers of their own. In truth, the First of the Fifth was unsure about handing this task off. She currently only knew about the possibility of processing already finished honey, but had not made any progress on the details, so the only instruction she could give was to watch the dangerous karnuq for clues. However, there were, at present, just too many draws on the First of the Fifth’s attention, and this task would require a great deal of time and focus. It would require extensively monitoring the dangerous karnuq for clues, and then likely many failed attempts to map out new production methods from that knowledge. It, simply, required more attention and time than the First of the Fifth was willing to spend on it, though the possibilities were too great to simply pass up. So, she would have one of her daughters take up the mantle, and trust that her offspring would be up to the task.

“Fourth Daughter and Fifth Daughters, job is honey production for other hives. Goal is quantity, though expect thorough processing. Workers will teach methods.”

The two queens saluted. They had perhaps the most straightforward and natural task, but by no means the easy one. There was ever greater demand for the First of the Fifth’s honey these days. The Flower Meadow went without saying, the First of the Fifth shuddered when she thought of the Firstborn's honey-making…‘process,’ if it could be called such a thing. The bumblebee queens too, who seemed infuriatingly happy to just let their workers build their haphazard wax cells anywhere they pleased, without any attention to organization or hive flow, which only compounded their already lesser honey production. At this point, the First of the Fifth had largely resigned herself to providing for both those groups.

The Apiary hives themselves needed her help as well. Not all the queens had the reserves to raise new queens and drones, so the First of the Fifth’s stockpiles had taken a dip so that they all could participate. She would need to monitor their hives over the near future as well to ensure that all the new queens could grow without threatening their mothers’ honey balance. The digging and burning queens had just finished evolving their hives and were just working their operations back up to full. The new sedative queen was just starting the process of converting her workers to her own type, so her operations would take a dip as well. And the medicinal Second of the Sixth had and was still donating notable quantities of her own honey for the sake of the lancer bees’ recovery. Not to mention the karnuq, who apparently needed her honey to fight. She also had to ensure she had a sufficient stockpile of adequately mana-rich honey in case of another sudden attack that required the karnuq’s power.

And, of course, the First of the Fifth would allow none of this to cut into her donations to the King himself. The very best honey she could produce would always go to his table. That was one thing she refused to give up on, even knowing that the King himself would probably want the honey distributed among the bees.

So, her hive needed to produce more honey, and fast. Her fourth and fifth daughters had the most straightforward tasks, but they would be pushed the hardest to achieve the goals set forth. The First of the Fifth had learned her lesson after her first daughter, however, and would be closely monitoring them to ensure healthy brood growth. And since they would remain in her new palace, they shouldn’t be under any threat of hive collapse.

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And with that, all her daughters were now ready to begin their work. It would take them some time to get up and running, but once they did the demands on the First of the Fifth’s attention would lessen. It was not easy monitoring and supporting all the other hives like she was, but with the help of her daughters it should be possible. And, likewise, it should be possible to make progress on her next plans.

The First of the Fifth was finally ready to evolve some gardeners. It was a travesty that she hadn’t been able to do so for this long. They, after all, would support one of her main duties, the task that she insisted on keeping for herself.

Cross-pollination and testing new nectar types was the first direct collaboration between herself and the King. Additionally, he had directly asked her to help coordinate the specialization of the hives. So, on that regard, her most important tasks were to keep track of the hive of hives and the status of all the hives within it, to raise and identify new flower types, and then to allocate flowers suitable for specialization to the queens ready to convert their hives. Additionally, now that gardeners could directly assist the spread of flowers, she could start raising more flower patches to ensure all queens had sufficient resources, taking some of the burden of that duty off of the King.

So, raising gardeners was now her top priority, and she arranged for as many workers as she could to evolve without excessively interrupting production.

Once that was completed, she turned to her other priority task: testing the new honey types. She had two trays that were nearly empty save for a small group of cells in the corner of each. She shuttered a bit as she approached one as she suddenly dropped to the floor one moment, and then felt like she was floating away the next despite her wings remaining still. Her foragers hadn’t enjoyed collecting the nectar of this one, but they had pressed on and now had a sample. The inefficiency of gathering nearly had her call off the effort…but the sheer mana density of the flower in question was too tempting.

The processing had been difficult as well. The nectar had constantly shifted its own viscosity, density, and even volume. Her workers struggled to measure its water content and determine how to fan it for the drying stage. The First of the Fifth had to intervene directly to determine the process, and even then she had to resort to watching the mana rather than the physical honey itself. She was, therefore, not at all confident in the quality and consistency of this batch and would not be serving any of it to even another hive, much less the King.

But they had managed to make some…gravity honey. She believe that was what the King had named this type of flower, so that is what she would call it.

She would taste it herself, however, to analyze it and determine what to do with it. As she expected, each cell of gravity honey varied wildly in quality and consistency. She would have been ashamed of such an effort had she not known the difficulties involved in getting it to even this state. The gravity honey itself did not taste all that different from the usual dandelion honey…but as during its processing the honey continued to vary its consistency within her proboscis and her stomach. One moment it was a dense, almost solid sticky mass that nearly got stuck in place. The next it was a thin and runny liquid she might have mistaken for raw nectar…that had been diluted by rain. She…didn’t think she enjoyed the experience.

And the gravity honey had other effects besides consistency. The same weight-shifting effect the flower had applied to the honey as well. With the honey inside of her stomach, one moment she would feel so heavy she wanted to lie on the ground. The next she felt she would float away if she didn’t latch onto the honeycomb.

And this…was why she decided to lay an egg in the cell with the densest mana-concentration.

These gravity flowers and the honey made from their nectar were clearly not normal, and their mana was excessively active even after being stabilized into mana-honey. It was to the point that, like the burning honey from the flame radishes, she didn’t want to gather too much of it lest it impact the rest of her hive. And that, in turn, made it a prime candidate for brood specialization. There was little doubt in her mind that this honey would certainly affect a bee growing within it. The only question was would the egg and larvae survive to adulthood under those conditions…and what sort of bee might result. Maybe, if it was like the burning honey, a worker raised on the honey might prove more suitable to producing more?

Well, she didn’t envy the queen that tried to evolve on such a honey type. Her task was complete, however, so she crawled to the next tray. That is, when the gravity honey finally decided to stop making her feel so heavy.

The next honey was…curious. The nectar started extremely viscous, nearly at a honey-like level before any processing at all. It was also highly mana-dense, on par with a mana flower, or perhaps even more. She couldn’t say exactly because of a curious effect of the nectar, and the honey made from it. This honey, despite being so mana-dense already, acted like a mana sponge and absorbed as much mana as was pushed into it. Normally, she had her workers fill up any nectar with as much mana as it could take, but this nectar did not seem to have a reasonable limit. She might try to find it later, but for this first batch she ended up telling her workers to move on to the drying stage before that point. Additionally, as more cells filled up, the honey seemed to…gravitate towards itself. It was like it was trying to link up and then condense down even further.

This was strange behavior, not least of which because honey wasn’t supposed to have a behavior. This honey was active in a way no other had been. The burning honey had simply raised the temperature around it, but that was just a side effect of the mana within it. Even the gravity honey, for all of its constant changes, was still just honey. She could follow the flow of its mana and see the effects that resulted. This honey…was different. Its mana flowed in…unexpected ways, without a clear reason for doing so. There was something different to its movements, something the other honeys lacked.

So, of course, she laid an egg in the center cell, where the honey was trying to concentrate. Between the honey’s unique behavior and its ability to absorb an unheard of quantity of mana, she couldn’t wait to see if a bee could be raised on it…and what might result. Even now, she watched as the honey now tried to condense itself and found an egg in the way. And then…the egg began to absorb the honey, and the honey began flowing faster, its mana condensing and merging with the egg’s.

The First of the Fifth was satisfied, and assigned brood tenders to watch the two eggs, then left to check on her daughters and further explain their tasks. A bee’s work was never done.

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