It was finally time.

[Select:

- Simple Worker: A worker with no unique capabilities. (Min Mind Tap: 0.33%)

- Simple Warrior: A warrior built for combat. (Min Mind Tap: 0.5%)

- Gathering Drone: A drone that specializes in gathering. (Min Mind Tap: 0.5833%)

- Construction Drone: A drone that specializes in construction. (Min Mind Tap: 0.5833%)

]

I had planned with Beatrice what exactly to do with this next batch of bees. This was monumental, a completely different situation from the other clutches of eggs. We had practically no limitations this time - we had abundant food, time, and Mind. There were no threats to consider, so only one thing remained.

Space.

In theory, the only thing preventing us from making hundreds upon hundreds of eggs was the fact that we only had a limited number of ‘nooks’ for them to stay in. Without those wax containers similar to the one that had contained Bedivere, the egg-laying conditions wouldn’t be ideal.

And so I was actually not too upset that I had to wait to make eggs due to the mysterious limit. It gave Bess ample time to make a preliminary nursery. No longer would bees be born in bad conditions.

There were only seventy cells. While this wasn’t a lot by bee standards, it was truly mind-boggling in our case.

Beatrice and I had agreed that a good chunk of the new clutch should be specialized workers. While experimenting with specific subtypes was one goal, our main intention was focus. The diversity of the simple workers, while amazingly helpful, would have diminishing returns as our numbers grew.

What we needed was to expand. For that, bees that specialize in construction would be very helpful. We decided that over half of the new brood would be Construction Drones; specifically, I would make thirty Construction Drone eggs.

Next, Gathering Drones. More bees meant more food was needed, but our food stores were already so vast with the vulture corpses that I felt gathering was less alarming of a requirement. Regardless, I would make ten gatherers to help Bella collect burned corpses. Those corpses wouldn’t last forever, and competition with other creatures like squirrels would surely become fierce, so it would be best to clean the forest out.

The remaining thirty eggs were a bit more dubious. Beatrice and Bedivere both recommended sixteen warriors to create an even perimeter, which seemed reasonable to me. However, Bedivere also wanted me to make four extra warriors using extra Mind.

“I would like to create an elite force to most effectively protect the hive,” was his reasoning. I had the Mind to spare, so why not? The remaining ten could be Simple Workers with whatever Mind remained.

[Create Egg:

30 Construction Drone - 17.499%

16 Simple Warrior - 8%

10 Gathering Drone - 5.833%

10 Simple Worker - 30%

4 Simple Warrior - 20%

]

The handy little screen that popped up when I had decided on all the values laid everything out. All in all, I would be using over 80% of my Mind to create seventy eggs. None were quite as extreme as Bedivere, but it was still a risk to use so much Mind; if the same limit was hit that prevented me from making eggs, it would no longer be an emergency, but it would be pretty inconvenient and a waste of time. I had decided to leave myself a bit of a buffer just in case.

The big idea would be expansion. As for the Simple Workers, Beatrice was hoping for more explorers to improve Ben’s expeditions, while the others wanted bees that shared their interests.

As I activated the Ability and began to throw up on the white orbs as they formed, I thought back to the discussion about leadership.

Beatrice was surprised when I suggested that the current workers should be the leaders of their respective professions. So Bess would command the workers, Bella would command the gatherers, and so on.

It seemed pretty obvious to me. Delegate those jobs to the experts. Beatrice had been both appalled and intrigued.

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“Why give power to the workers? Would it not be more efficient for you to command all of the bees yourself?”

Of course not! Who did you think I was, some sort of psychic queen with the capability to have complete control over my subjects? No way!

In all seriousness, there was every reason to portion out the work as I had. It gave me more time to spend doing other things, like working with Queen to find a way to free her. Honestly, I might have been able to do as Beatrice suggested, but it just felt inefficient.

I could see Beatrice grapple with those two sides of herself - the instinct to surrender all power to the queen versus her desire for maximum efficiency. Ultimately, her reasoning won over, and she even asked me to give her more details about this… ‘delegation’ idea.

Oh, Beatrice.

Considering the number of eggs, I decided not to try to finish all at once. Instead, I completed one egg, then moved on to the next, then rinse and repeat.

As I finished applying mass to an egg, Belle used her Mind to gently levitate the orange sphere and carefully set it inside a cell. We sat in the dimly lit nursery, working on our endless task. As the process became more and more effortless and robotic, I turned my thoughts to the other bees.

What were they up to? I could only see out of Ben’s eyes, and he was exploring. The forest was not a particularly exciting locale. Maybe if it were still alive, it would be, but in its current state, the forest was a monotonous wasteland.

“Anything new, Ben?”

“Nopadoo momaroo! Forest looks the same as always. Nothing new to report.”

He paused to dart in and out of a series of trees, occasionally stabbing some of the charred wood. In one trunk, he noticed a burned husk hidden by the tree’s hollow, so he stopped for a moment to mark it.

I hadn’t seen this before. I knew he was excreting some pheromone so Bella could more easily find the food, but this was my first time seeing it in action.

It kinda looked like Ben was farting on a corpse.

“Are you practicing some fighting?”

“Yup! Next time something bad happens, I wanna protect you guys for real. Vulch knew about us ’cause I messed up, so that won’t happen again.”

Poor guy. Did everyone in the hive blame themselves? Guess they take after their mother.

“You’ve been practicing with Bedivere, right? This could actually be an interesting experiment to see how good a worker could become at fighting. Do your best!”

That said, I was really hoping Ben would have found something new. Was this forest just empty besides trees and great beasts? Where were the mossy creatures Vulch had mentioned? I wasn’t sure why they hadn’t appeared yet.

I turned my attention to Beatrice’s map. The most notable difference was a circular divot carved in a radius around the hive’s center. With advice from Bess and under Beatrice’s instruction, Bedivere had rapidly carved a sort of border in the forest floor. That would mark where the first ‘wall’ would be created, which would eventually be the border of the hive until the next border was created.

Within that five-kilometer radius, there was just nothing of note.

“Hey Bella, how are things? Gathering going well?”

“Everything’s great. It’s been a bit tough, but I’ve almost cleaned out the inside of the border. I’ve noticed that some corpses have started to smell… off, though.”

Not great. The burned corpses of the animals had taken an exceptional amount of time to decompose, and Bella’s efforts in salting the meat have staved off rot to some degree.

Luckily, rotting meat was not much of an issue. The bees would eat anything - of that much, I was sure. Bella was the only one that may become unsatisfied, and I certainly wouldn’t be eating rotting meat, but the workers and the new clutch should be fine.

“How about your side project?”

“Aw, I’ve had to slow down a bunch. Beatrice got antsy last night when I showed her how much salt I gathered. She was all like, ‘And what of the new brood? We require much nourishment’ blah blah blah. I tried to tell her that you said it was a good idea, but she just wasn’t having it! Maybe you should scold her or something. Ha!”

Awkward. I was the one who encouraged Bella to gather salt without tipping Beatrice off too much. She just didn’t understand the importance of flavor! I can’t believe I had made the tactical error of exposing Bella’s hobby through the feast.

Although, it would be better for the barbecue to be gathered rather than left to the squirrels. Maybe Beatrice had a point.

“Don’t worry. With a team of gatherers under you, you’ll have way more time to get salt and stuff.”

I could see a bright future before Bella. The feast last night had been a pleasant surprise. If Bella had some sort of talent as a chef or at least had some respect for taste, then maybe my future food situation would be less dire than expected.

Of course, would that even matter if we had honey…?

For the first time in my new life, my thoughts drifted to that golden syrup. What exactly were bees known for? What else but their miracle food?

If we could make honey, we wouldn’t need to be eating meat. Eating Vulch’s family wouldn’t even be in consideration. Even further, we wouldn’t have to eventually kill or hunt for food; instead, we would be able to produce it through our own natural processes.

“Oh, you know of honey? Yes, it was our staple before the human attack.”

“So there were flowers in this forest?”

“Of course! We never had to leave the forest, and our food stores were abundant.”

Sadly, said flowers were no longer a viable option. If Ben’s scouting was accurate, then not a single living instance of plant life had survived the ravaging of the forest.

Could we make honey out of meat? I had no idea. I knew bees made honey from nectar, but how would we get it? We would most likely have to venture outside the forest’s bounds to find any sort of plant life. As if that weren’t enough, we would need to bring pollen and seeds here to the forest to repopulate the flora.

And that was all moot if the clouds continued their rain strike.

“Perhaps we could consult the twins. They are most knowledgeable of our available materials; they may have an idea of how to produce honey without the use of nectar.”

A fair guess. Though, I didn’t really care about that. I wanted honey because it was tasty. I doubted meat honey would be as sweet and delicious as actual honey.

“Bella, Belle. Do you guys have an idea of how you could make honey using meat?”

It felt odd to talk to two people at once - I was looking one person in the face, but the other was miles away, yet I spoke to them without missing a beat. Phones just couldn’t compete with bee magic.

“Honey…? I have no idea what that is. Belle?”

“Hm… Something about that seems important. I have felt that making wax only scratched the surface of what could be done with our food.”

“For some reason making this ‘honey’ with meat feels wrong, Mom! I can feel these images of sweetness just don’t fit with this meat. Mmmm… sweet…”

Bella seemed to be lost in thought. Had I sparked some epiphany?

Or was she just getting hungry?

“Belle! What do you think of ‘flower juice’? That feels right to me.”

“Ah…? That sounds very interesting, sister. Would you mind bringing me some of this juice you speak of? I would like to experiment.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, you two. I ask exactly because there are no flowers in sight. So far, everyone has been able to eat meat as is, so there’s been no need to create any sort of honey substance. Think on it - the idea of honey could be some interesting food for thought.”

Ha. Food. For thought. Honey.

“Will do, Mom! I’ll do my best to find some flower juice!”

Ah, honey. The idea was mouth-watering. For now, though, we had no good way of finding flowers. I guess we would just have to work double-time on the expansion so that the explorer parties could eventually find some flowers.

Speaking of, the last eggs were just about finished. Did I just space out for hours doing this? I think I was getting a bit too comfortable eating inordinate amounts of food and regurgitating the stuff onto magic bee balls.

Whatever. This labor would soon pay off. Within the next day or so, the population of hivelings would explode. Finally, prep time was over.

Time to beegin.