POBee 115.2 - The Last of Bees
The next day, Belissar spoke with the First of the Fifth and the Apiary queens on upgrading their beehouses into bee apartments. While they decided the general structure was fine, the First of the Fifth pointed out numerous small optimizations that would assist with better honey production. Multiple entrances so that foragers coming and going wouldn’t get in each other’s way, isolated trays for honey that could impact its surroundings like burning mana honey, slight rearrangements for better airflow, and other such improvements. Belissar took all of this into account and, once the structure had been fully planned out, began the construction work.
He actually had the DP to just upgrade the beehouses outright but decided to build them himself. Since they had wood trees in the Orchard and the Flower Meadow queens wanted to help with construction anyways, there was not point in spending extra DP cutting down on resources and effort. Besides, he also enjoyed having a personal hand in the bees’ abode. It made them happy and it was the least he could do given all they were doing for him.
There was a question on the digging queen and burning queen’s hives, seeing as they were dug into the ground instead of wooden structures, but the digging queen herself provided the solution. Her workers, as per their name, were quite good at digging, so they could easily expand the subterranean hives. Belissar would just need to provide them with additional frames and maybe an extra entrance or two and they could handle the rest. The queen offered to do so for the Third of the Sixth’s hive as well but both Belissar and the Third of the Sixth decided to wait. After all, he had plans for the future regarding her abode, so they both agreed to wait until Belissar could build his envisioned volcano room before making major expansions to her hive.
And so, Belissar set off on his task for the coming days or weeks until his Tower would be ready for the next expansion…
It was not so, however, for one of the queens at the meeting with him. The Fourth Queen of the First Dynasty of the Eight Spawner, the first of her line, had the dubious distinction of being the last queen spawned in the Apiary. She had even been the lastborn in all of the King’s realm until the King had raised the bumblebee queens.
But that had been little comfort for her. The bumblebee queens were an entirely different species from the rest of them…and even now, they had begun to grow at a rapid pace. They were already larger than her at this point and showed no signs of slowing down. They, unlike her, appeared to possess a unique advantage.
Which left her, once again, as the least remarkable of the King’s queens. Born last, the slowest to grow, the slowest to expand. The queen who lived furthest from the King in the Apiary, born too late to even participate when the prime territory was claimed. The queen least likely to receive a magical palace. The queen who, even after receiving a magical palace, still lagged behind the others.
And that was a problem, for she was about to be left behind once again.
The First of the Fifth went without saying, an existence beyond anything she could ever hope to achieve. The Fourth of the Seventh had set out and claimed an entire room to her name. The Second of the Sixth and others had now set themselves apart by evolving on the honey of special flowers, and received entire patches of flowers to themselves from the King as a result. The Third of the Sixth was going to receive an entire room like the Fourth of the Seventh.