POBee 54.2 - A Whole New World
The Fourth of the Seventh stood with her eyes fixed upon the scouts before her. There were two groups giving their reports. One group was the first wave back from the new room, here to report the initial findings while more of their number combed the area in detail. The other was the group assigned to find the Flower Meadow, who had flown far and fast while trying to relocate the path. The tale the two groups danced together was truly astonishing.
The King had created an entirely new room in between the Apiary and the Flower Meadow. This room was filled to the brim not with small flowers, but with massive trees, their canopies filled with gorgeous flowers and ripe fruits. The Flower Meadow and the Apiary had the occasional tree, but the scouts reported the sight was unlike anything they had seen in the King’s domain before. A field of flowers not on the ground below but in the skies above.
The Fourth of the Seventh wanted to see it for herself but put her own desires aside. Her first soldiers had just hatched, and she now could put her plans into motion. She desired to participate in the weaving of plant strands she had seen the King perform, and now that she had bees large enough to gather and transport them. She needed, therefore, to focus on the management of her hive and ensure said project could proceed nicely and without disrupting normal work. She would need to work extra hard at this now, in fact. With a new room between her hive in the Apiary and the Flower Meadow flowers she was granted access to, her foragers had a much longer trip. She would need many more foragers to keep up the same honey surplus as she had before…
Suddenly, the Fourth of the Seventh’s thoughts stopped entirely.
She had an idea.
A simple, incredible idea.
Rather than adding a bunch of foragers to maintain a long gathering route, which would in turn require more honey themselves and thus require even more foragers to achieve the same honey surplus, why didn’t she just move the hive closer? She had already done so once before, and making the route shorter was far more efficient than trying to fix the extended supply line. For example…why didn’t she move her hive into the brand new, apparently amazing room the King had built? Wouldn’t that be the most efficient option of all? Not only would that shorten her foragers trip to the Flower Meadow, it would also give her hive access to an abundance of brand new flowers from the new room.
Her workers had grown worried at her lack of movement and were buzzing around her, trying to get her back to work when she suddenly exploded into a dance. She called for a general assembly of the hive. Her workers reluctantly began to gather.
Once they had, she began a passionate explanation of her plan to move the hive. And her workers…just stood still. One slowly began to dance.