The next day, Belissar received a special report from Niobee during breakfast.
“Oh, the bees are going to coordinate gathering?”
Niobee danced the affirmative.
“Yes! First of the Fifth says with shortcuts, all bees can gather from all flowers now, so going to work together!”
Belissar smiled and nodded.
“That’s a good idea.”
Indeed, Belissar had some vague ideas about that sort of thing when he set up the shortcut, but to think his bees had already come together and worked it out. They really were the best.
Belissar then crossed his arms and hummed. If the bees were going to be coordinating to that degree, then he should decide how he was going to support them. Previously, he had just gone and made one of every flower type in every room that held bees, so that all bees would have access to all flowers. He had already stopped doing that after speaking with the First of the Fifth about specializing certain hives and then sharing honey, and it seemed that shortcuts would take that idea to the next level. Now, all the bees could share a single patch of flowers no matter where in the Tower it was located…and the gardeners could help spread those flowers if more of them were necessary.
Belissar nodded and then turned to Niobee.
“Once they’ve met and figured out their gathering, they should let me know what they think about the flower numbers. Um, specifically, if we need more of a certain flower type I can make more patches. But if we have too many of certain type, I could also remove some patches and get some mana back to use for others. So, um…”
Belissar paused to think for a second.
“…yeah, let me know once they know how many of each type of flower patch they need.”
Niobee danced the salute.
“Ok! Will!”
Belissar nodded at that. While he didn’t want to remove any flowers, it would be silly to spend mana on flowers the bees didn’t need now that they were going to share all of them. Reclaiming some of the redundant patches, if any, could allow him to afford more of the expensive types, like the new soaring beeblossom.
Speaking of which, Belissar had initially planned to create two more soaring beeblossom patches. One would go in the bumblebee meadow for the bumblebee and Apiary queens. The second would go in the Lava Field…mostly because Belissar was curious as to why he could put them in the Lava Field. But now, he decided to wait until the queens met and reported before making anymore. The bumblebees and Apiary hives could now reach the battle meadow’s flowers as easily as their own. And as for his curiosity…well, he could always ask the gardeners to spread the soaring beeblossom to the Lava Field and so avoid spending mana just to sate his curiosity. All he needed was a bit of patience.
So, after receiving the rest of the reports for the day, Belissar put aside the beeblossoms and focused on the other two features. He created two alum patches, one for the karnuq and one for the bees. He had no idea if either party could actually use them, but they were fairly cheap at three mana each so it wasn’t a major concern if no one could figure out what to do with them for now.
Following that, he placed a bunch of beeswax candles in two of the three Dirt Tunnel rooms, the one on the karnuq’s floor and the one on the Apiary floor. Hopefully, that would make it easier for the bees and the karnuq to gather the materials, plants, and mushrooms within. He did place a few in the first floor Dirt Tunnels, which he decided to tentatively call the battle tunnels. He lined them on the final tunnel leading to the battle meadow, so the bees could see any shades about to exit. He also asked Niobee to ask the bees to start providing wax, normal wax to the Apiary floor’s tunnels, and then wax from the specialized bee queens for the battle tunnels. Just to see what, if anything, different types of wax would do.
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He considered whether or not to ask the bees to provide wax for the karnuq’s tunnels…but figured he could ask the karnuq to do it themselves now that they had regular access to honeycomb. In fact, he could work that into beekeeping lessons on the various uses of beeswax. He nodded as he made his decision, maybe one day the bees would take over if they moved into the karnuq’s beehouse, but for now the karnuq would help maintain that feature themselves.
With the new features addressed, Belissar set out about the rest of his day, excited to hear what his bees would come up with.
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The First of the Fifth was spinning about in circles. She was surrounded on all sides by gardeners and communers, with her own daughters and communers dancing about to try and help out.
In preparation for her task, the First of the Fifth decided first to compile reports from the gardeners. She could not efficiently allocate flowers to foragers unless she knew the status of those flowers, after all. So, she had requested all the hives with gardeners send reports on the flowers they had visited, so she could compile them all into an overall picture of the King’s domain.
As it turned out, the reports were staggering. The King had recreated an entire flower ecosystem for each of the rooms that had been settled by hives, owing to a time when each hive treated its own resources as separate from the others. There were, therefore, a vast number of flowers to report on…and with them, a vast number of issues and opportunities to address.
The mana flowers were, as a rule, overworked, receiving entirely too much attention from the hives. On the other hand, most of the mundane flowers had been neglected to various degrees. Cloudberries and sweetvetch had produced a special honey type especially suited for winter, but then had been neglected as unnecessary since the King’s realm maintained a constant climate. The floating flowers the King had planted in the ponds had been written off and ignored after they were found to possess no special compounds. The flowers the King and Fourth of the Seventh used to weave stems together had not received any cross-pollination since the only visitors were harvesting entire plants rather than nectar and pollen and hadn’t been visiting any other flowers on the way there. The mushrooms and plants in the Dirt Tunnels besides the Ground mana flowers had also gone neglected as most of the bees had trouble foraging in the darkness and the digging beehive had only recently hit its stride. There was a vine and a mushroom both with noticeable mana density, neither of which had never been foraged, even! Additionally, there was a mushroom the dangerous one had stated possessed a deadly poison; a fact confirmed by the Conduit herself! As for the Orchard, the trees there had been receiving some visits, but the gardeners indicated they needed far more cross-pollination before they’d show results like seen in the mundane flowers. And then there was the question of the flowers in the karnuq hives, which the gardeners pointed out had seen few to no visits by bees whatsoever. Their status as of now was entirely unknown but was assumed to be neglected as a result.
Additionally, only her hive had been focused on cross-pollination in the first place. The Flower Meadow queens had been too focused to spare the effort, while the Orchard queens only had mana flowers and the apple trees and so hadn’t seen any results. As for the Apiary, she herself had actively prevented the other queens from gathering from what she had considered her flowers, preventing any sort of cross-pollination efforts by anyone other than her. Even now that she was no longer doing so, the Apiary’s focus on specializing queens meant she still hadn’t introduced cross-pollination methods to the Apiary as a whole. As a result of all these things, the gardeners now reported that the rate of cross-pollination was far lower than it could have been.
This…was entirely intolerable to the First of the Fifth. The narrow focus of the hive of hives and her own misguided perceptions had combined to produce the worst result she could possibly imagine: staggering inefficiency. Countless opportunities had been overlooked, vast resources had gone unutilized, and favored flowers had been pushed beyond their limits.
The First of the Fifth decided this would change. She decided that this must change. If it did not, honey production would drop across the board for all hives while the quality of the honey served at the King’s table would diminish. And that could not be allowed, no matter the cost. So, the First of the Fifth received the reports with renewed fervor. The King and the hive of hives both had asked her to manage foraging for maximum efficiency. And this she would do; whatever efforts were required of her to see it done.