POBee 54.3 - The Child
The First Daughter of the First Queen of the First Dynasty of the Fifth Spawner, the Second of Her Line, lay flat against the floor with her antenna drooping, even as her mother’s worker repeated the dance. She had received a new command, she was to move her hive at once to an entirely new and unknown land, and lay claim to it in the name of her mother.
This…did not excite her. Her mother was the greatest and most productive of all the queens of the Apiary, and as such demanded excellence from all of her children. Her first daughter was no exception to that. Her mother had great expectations as to the growth of her hive, the quantity and quality of her honey, and the numbers of her workers.
But a queen was not a worker, and working as hard as she could was not a simple matter. A queen needed to carefully balance the growth of her hive against her currently available workforce. Her workers had many jobs to do: gathering nectar, processing honey, making wax, and tending the brood, all of which were necessary for the growth of the hive. If she tried to lay as many eggs as she possibly could, her worker force could end up overwhelmed by the extra tasks the new children created. Too many workers needing to build honeycomb could end up cutting their nectar gathering. Too many workers needing to gather nectar might leave the eggs and larva untended. And, of course, all of those workers required honey to sustain themselves, on top of the honey and mana required for the new brood to grow, as well as what the queen needed to replace her own reserves and keep up egg production.
The First of the Fifth’s expectations had driven her first daughter to the brink. Her hive had barely managed to balance honey production, hive expansion, and brood tending. She did not have the magical palace built by the King’s own hand her mother did, and so her workers just couldn’t produce honey as quickly as her mother’s could. Likewise, without access to the Mana Flowers her mother had, her workers had to work even harder to ensure the honey was fit for the larva.
Her mother was not unreasonable, however, and had sent her own workers and donations of her own reserves to help her daughter achieve the stated goals…at least at first. However, events elsewhere had interfered. A great battle had occurred, and her mother moved to support the King directly. She had, as a result, withdrawn her support for her daughter. Whether or not she had withdrawn her expectations as well never crossed her daughter’s mind. She had a job to do and she did her utmost to fulfill it.
Her hive came close to collapse in that time…but timely assistance by the Fourth of the Seventh’s hive had managed to carry her through. With that help, she managed to reach her mother’s expected goals for her growth. She was just stabilizing to the point she wouldn’t require assistance when her mother’s latest order came in.
This would be her greatest challenge yet. Her hive had been operating at the limits of its own production for all its history, and she thus had no reserves. Moving her hive would require her to send scouts to find locations, rebuild her entire hive, move all the honey and brood, and then locate and arrange for new foraging routes. All of that would take time and effort from all of her workers, time during which they couldn’t be making honey. And without any reserves to tide them over, that meant in the short term either her workers or her new brood would have to go hungry until the new hive was established and honey production stabilized.
She slowly crawled over to her brood, watching her workers tend the eggs and the larva lying within. Her antenna drooped once more.
She would have no choice. She could not starve her workers when they would be needed for the work of setting up the new hive and then gathering the next wave of honey. Her entire hive would starve if she did. So that meant…she would have to cut rations to her children that were not contributing.