POBee 215.1 - Assem-Bee-ling Mobile Hives
The next day, Belissar began to set up the Death room Hesfalle had described. He made a new Flower Meadow on the karnuq floor connecting to door near the stairs to the other floors. He place a mana flower node and a basic poisonous herb node, then enabled rabbits in the room.
And after that…he was done.
For now, at least. He didn’t want to spawn the butcher bees until there were enough rabbits to feed them. Likewise, underworld phlox required death mana to even start growing, so he couldn’t plant those until they started hunting rabbits. Hesfalle did recommend adding poisonous plants…but besides the poisonous herbs none of the rest really fit. Subterranean deathcap were, well, subterranean, while the lava lotus needed lava, so neither of them were available. Vaporous hemlock could be planted if he added a pond…but Belissar was wary of filling the air with toxic mist. The karnuq and bees were supposed to hunt here, after all.
So, Belissar was done until the rabbits reached sufficient numbers to sustain butcher bee hives. He wondered how long that would take…
As Belissar went about his day, he noticed something peculiar. Worker bees constantly landed all over him, crawling over all parts of his body. They buzzed and hummed and occasionally bumped into and danced with one another. Belissar greatly enjoyed this, so he didn’t question it, content to watch the bees buzzing around him and occasionally offer them some magic honey.
The workers in question then went to report the nearest communer…
Back in the First of the Fifth’s bee apartment, the First of the Fifth’s Fourth Daughter’s antennae twitched as she felt a communer’s mana flow towards her. She spun about until she found the spot with the strongest mana flow to ensure she didn’t miss a single step of the communer’s mana dance. Once she had received the report in full, she began dancing and spreading her own mana.
“Leg too short, waist too wide. Bring closer!”
Before her, a buzzing cloud of workers shifted in response to her dance, piecing together bits of wax that they fused with their mana, cutting and trimming as instructed. Propolis sealed the gaps and reinforced potential weakpoints. Gardeners brought in as much pollen and resin as they could gather, which the honeypots converted to huge globs of mana-imbued wax and propolis for the workers to use. Communers and drones monitored the effort, the drones using their big eyes to identify inconsistencies with the desired measurements and the communers relaying the corrections.