"So the bear tribe rules this valley?" He repeated, just to be sure he understood the explanation correctly.

"The black bears, yes. Every large village of black bears has its own bee kingdom. We are not ruled by them though, we're independent." the very boring teacher turned out to be very intelligent and interested in questions. Teaching small children who really didn't care about history or politics had to be tiring, so on second thought he didn't hold her monotone lectures against her quite as much.

Hence, he was more than happy to keep the conversation on topic and interesting instead of returning to official lessons.

"I saw a big stone hall with huge pots when I went to that marriage interview...that was the honey, right? We trade honey against...protection?" He guessed. It sounded a bit like slave labour like that though. Maybe they weren't quite as free as the teacher wanted him to think. Thus his tone was full of doubts.

A displeased look was the result of his doubts. "Oh, no! We trade with all kinds of peoples. The bears do give us protection and help our colonies spread with them, true, but we're not forced to give up our honey. No, we get all kinds of things, from goods like furs for carpets and such to iron and copper, jewels and other things that are too hard to mine for our people. Also, if you look around you may have noticed that we have a lot of silk everywhere. That's what we trade with the spiders."

At the thought that bees were essentially too small to hunt animals with fur and not strong enough for mining some things became very obvious to him. Ore was far too deep in the very hard stone of these mountains, so no bee could hope to do something like it efficiently. Neither could they really fight head on. for a well developed kingdom tools were essential though. Thus the smart thing to do was to find a race capable of providing such raw materials in for them small quantities and trade. As for the silk...well, there were spiders everywhere.

"But we can't just let the bears protect us!" He protested when it came to that though.

Unexpectedly the teacher smiled happily. "You're a rather aggressive one for a boy, aren't you? But yes, you're right. What we bees do in military operations is limited to three fields. First is scouting. Few large races have flying allies that can escape notice as well as bee spies and scouts. Around fifteen years ago some wolf tribes tried to invade the bears. Our spies found out their plans easily because they were only looking out for larger species and due to this information the bears could ambush the enemies and drive them away."

Thoughtfully the little bee prince chewed on his lips. It was not refined, but for once he wasn't scolded - the teacher was too interested in the discussion to interrupt.

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"I see. The large races tend to look down on the tiny ones, mostly at least. If the bears listen to our intelligence reports then they at least have a measure of confidence in our abilities, even though I doubt they see us as equals. Though...if the second thing we're good at, and this is just an assumption, if that second thing were related to assasination, then it would make sense if they took us seriously..." He concluded.

The teacher nodded, showing, if not satisfaction, then at least approval.

"But what is the third thing we're good at?" He asked.

"The third thing is magic. Let me explain it like this. If an ordinary worker bee can easily live to the ripe old age of ninety years and ministers live for hundreds of years, so how long do you think queens and drones can live? A queen can live up to 4 500 years, constantly laying eggs. A drone doesn't need to lay eggs and can live twice as long as a queen because of that. Queens who choose stay virgins and not to lay eggs also live for 9 to 10 thousand years. If a bee practices magic for such a long time they will reach their limits and become very powerful. The most talented can even extend their life even more."

"Eh?" The boy stared at his teacher, dumbfounded. "But..." Then, he remembered something. Worker bees, when they worked a lot, had little more than a month in summer. During other seasons they could live longer. And bee queens, while laying eggs, lived for about four years, until the drone's semen ran out and she didn't have any more female worker eggs. Then the workers let a new queen grow. Drones...nobody knew how long they lived since they were driven out and starved after the queens had all had that marriage flight. Here that obviously wasn't the case. Unexpectedly the life expectancies were roughly similar though...

In humans everybody knew that women who had one child after another didn't live all that long, so why would it be different with bee queens? Similarly people doing heavy labour aged sooner than those with cushy jobs, which in medieval times could mean that peasants died at 35 while nobles frequently lived to sixty. The ministers among bees obviously benefitted even more than humans in that case.

But still, to live for such a long time...

He was nodding quietly to himself.

The teacher, seeing that he had understood something, patted his head. "See, so when you told everyone that you asked the goddess for intelligence, the removal of all your limits and the ability to improve your affinities effectively you showed that you're the very best material for a future powerhouse. If what you said was true you won't be married off but sent to the great tower instead!"

"Tower?" He asked, dumbfounded.