Belissar nodded in approval as he watched the first karnuq beekeeper feed the bees and back off. Velebee’s lessons seemed to have worked, the First of the Ninth had been wary but not overly aggressive. Though, he wasn’t sure if that was due to Velebee’s teachings or the more cautious approach by the beekeeper, but either way she seemed to have a plan and it seemed to be working.

Satisfied he wouldn’t need to intervene, he moved to finish up Beero’s barracks.

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The First of the Fifth watched the first honeypots as they crawled out of their cells. They were roughly the size of a newly born queen, with large abdomens to match, though their abdomens featured several depressions ringed by large hairs. They didn’t cost quite as much as a soldier, but closer to that than to a worker. It was a notable expense, though one she could manage. And since she had workers on full-time honey processing, her hive already had suitable candidates for the evolution. She had been able to start evolving them immediately.

And now came the moment of truth. The First of the Fifth would not pass up any opportunity to improve her honey quality, but she still had her apprehensions. She was introducing an entirely new factor into her well-tuned processes, even giving up some of her most skilled and experienced workers to do so. Would these new bees fit into her process, or would she need to rework the entire method to accommodate them? If so, would it be worth disrupting her entire production line, especially at a time when the soldier bee army needed to replenish losses and new bees had joined the hive of hives?

Her eyes were glued to the honeypots as they crawled out of the nursery and towards the honey production lines. They were slower compared to before, unused to their greater size, which only increased the First of the Fifth’s worries, but they made it. They took up positions right in the intake lines, where the foragers would drop off the nectar and pollen. A moment later, foragers were passing them resources.

The First of the Fifth was taken aback as she felt the honeypots’ mana stir. She watched as the honeypots began the process of bubbling…but not solely with their mandibles. No, bubbles of nectar began to form in the depressions on the honeypots’ abdomens, held in place by their specialized hairs. They began to vibrate their bodies as well, increasing their own temperature to the precise level the First of the Fifth preferred for evaporation.

Then, the bubbles shrunk down as the honeypots pulled the nectar back inside…and formed again in another row of depressions after some time digesting. The First of the Fifth buzzed her wings. The honeypots could apparently perform multiple rounds of digestion, bubbling, and evaporation within their own bodies, a process that normally required several bees for each bit of honey. And, with each stage of the process, the mana density of the nectar grew as the honeypots’ own mana constantly circulated through it.

When it was done, she watched as the honeypots pooled the completed product in a cup of chitin where their stingers would normally be. Regular workers could lap up the honey with ease, and then transport it to the cells for to either raise brood, refill the long-term stores, or prepare deliveries for other hives.

Before any workers did, the First of the Fifth crawled to the nearest honeypot and sampled the honey herself. Her workers knew to wait for her to test the honey, only once she had determined its quality would she decide where it would go, and only then would they resume their work.

She dipped her proboscis into the honey…and immediately began buzzing her wings. The honey…was perfectly up to her standards. The viscosity and sugar content were at precisely the levels she desired, the honey perfectly digested and evaporated. The honeypots had lost none of their expertise for their evolution.

But that was not why her wings buzzed now. This honey brimmed with mana in excess of any honey she had tasted before. Long had the First of the Fifth determined the precise limit of how much honey her workers could infuse into each particular type of nectar. Even if she had all her workers line up and process a bit of nectar far beyond necessity, with each bee pushing all her mana into the mix, eventually the nectar would be filled. Any additional mana at that stage either failed to infused, pushed some of the existing mana out, or caused the honey to breakdown entirely. So, the First of the Fifth had determined the ideal point where additional mana infusing was no longer worth the effort and set that exact number of workers for each of her production lines. They subsequently improved the mana-density of their honey by foraging nectar from innately higher mana-density flowers.

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The honeypots had just blown that paradigm apart. Not only had a single honeypot infused the nectar past the density where diminishing returns set in, she had managed to infuse this nectar with more mana than its previously determined maximum limit, in a far more stable manner. The First of the Fifth immediately turned her attention on the honeypot, checking its mana reserves. To her shock, the honeypot was absolutely fine, having expended but a fraction of her mana. The circulation method the honeypot was using was naturally infusing the nectar overtime as the honeypot conducted multiple processing cycles on her own, resulting in far less wasted mana for the honeypot.

All the eyes of all the honeypots and workers were fixed on her, the hive becoming unusually silent as they awaited her verdict, but she did not give the dance just yet. Instead, she crawled over to another honeypot, one who had joined a production line for a flower that not yet been cross-pollinated with mana flowers. She gave it a taste.

She stumbled back as she analyzed the mana density of the resulting honey…and its implications. It took her a moment before she remembered to dance.

“King quality, queen grade mana. One of every three honeypot lines for King until enough for daily tray, others for new nectars. All surplus to evolving honeypots.”

The First of the Fifth staggered back towards the nursery as her children all saluted and rushed back to work. Because if her calculations were correct…the honeypots could produce enough mana-dense honey for queen evolutions far sooner than she had planned.

Which meant that she had a lot of work to do, and a great opportunity to bring the King’s plans to fruition that much sooner…

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A gardener buzzed her wings as she landed on her target flower. She was a child of the First of the Fourth, one of the queens of the Flower Meadow and leaders of the soldier bee army. And she…had been born too early.

Her queen mother felt there was no higher calling nor greater joy than to defend the hive of hives. But she, unfortunately, had been born in the days when her queen was still young, and so she had been born a worker. She was simply too small and weak to join the fight. Oh, how she wished she had been born a soldier, so that she may join her queen in the grand battles and so fulfill her queen’s greatest desires.

But she was not. She intended to do the next best thing and worked as hard as she could to make as much honey as possible. If she could not be a soldier, than she would work to raise and support them!

This, too, failed. Try as she might, there was a limit to how much a honey a single worker could make. Worst, her queen’s workers even as a whole could not produce enough honey to raise the number of soldiers the queen wanted. And once the Apiary queens began donating their endlessly flowing honey…well, the worker’s efforts became a literal drop in the ocean.

But hope sprang anew. The King saw fit to grant workers evolutions. She had become a gardener, hoping her new size and insights would enable her to expand her honey production to unforeseen levels. Maybe even enough that she could support soldiers for her queen without the assistance of other hives!

This, too, was a failure. Her new insights not only did not produce more honey, they warned her that the Flower Meadow’s mana flowers were overworked. The Flower Meadow hives had to cut back their own honey production to ensure a healthy supply in the future. She was not only not doing more, she was doing less than before her evolution.

So, what then, could she do? How could she contribute to her queen’s great mission? How could she, a mere gardener, help to defend the hive of hives?

She had focused her attention on a certain set of flowers, flowers not particularly popular among the foragers. These flowers had spines like stingers, hardened by mana past what one might expect from a flower stem. The gardener thought that maybe they might improve the strength and penetration of soldier stingers…but the nectar of the flowers was as mundane as any other. This, too, was a failure.

At least until the karnuq joined the battle. Her queen’s communers enabled all the bees of the First of the Fourth’s hive to watch the daily battles, ensuring each of them could at least remain aware of their hive’s contributions to the grand mission. And so, she watched as the mighty intruders impaled themselves on a wall of giant spines held by the karnuq.

It was then that she had an idea. She imagined a hive covered in spiny flower stems, stabbing any intruder like a second army of bees. She thought it but a dream at first, just another fantasy…but her new instincts whispered to her that this was not the case. That these flowers held greater potential than had been realized.

So, she got to work. She gathered as much pollen from every different type of flower she could access, and brought them all to her thorny charges. The flowers as they were wouldn’t be much help, but she knew that flowers could change and grow if cross-pollinated.

And finally, today, she found new seeds amidst the flowers. Seeds with a slight glow to them.

She plucked one of the seeds, wrapping it in her legs, and set off towards the site of the battlefield. She could only hope that this would be the idea that would not fail. That her only hope of defending the hive of hives as a mere worker type would not fail…