Chapter 178: Chapter 178

The First of the Fifth stood in her home. Her new, spacious home that she was certain was larger than any constructed by any bee in the Beyond. Her new home with rows upon rows of trays, more than her hive could ever fill, that were precisely placed to allow ideal airflow that could be adjusted on a per-tray basis for different processing needs. Her home with numerous entrances that the King had made on her suggestion, allowing her to precisely organize the flow of her workers so that not a single moment would be loss to confusion or traffic jams.

Before she knew it, she had started another happy dance. But she caught herself and stopped. While the new palace certainly deserved the celebration, she had another task at present. She was currently standing before her new children, a line of queens watching her with just a hint of confusion over her sudden outburst. She gathered herself with just the slightest twitch of her antennae before dancing.

“All daughters should focus on workers for now. Will provide honey to do so. Will assign brood tenders to help. Will also assign tasks, and workers. Queens should listen to workers and get used to tasks so can do once own workers ready. Understand?”

Once she was satisfied with their response, she turned to one of the queens.

“Second Daughter, build in sector one. Job is to arrange honey delivery to other hives. Need to grow and raise soldiers for this.”

The new queen saluted and then the First of the Fifth’s workers led her to her assigned trays while the First of the Fifth turned to the next.

“Third Daughter, build in sector five. Job is to investigate new honey processing methods. Will need to scout dangerous karnuq. Work with scouts, they will explain.”

Her third daughter danced an unsteady salute, apparently confused about the order. The First of the Fifth would follow up and explain in more detail. She would also need to determine if her daughters could connect to her scouts via communers, or if they would need scouts and communers of their own. In truth, the First of the Fifth was unsure about handing this task off. She currently only knew about the possibility of processing already finished honey, but had not made any progress on the details, so the only instruction she could give was to watch the dangerous karnuq for clues. However, there were, at present, just too many draws on the First of the Fifth’s attention, and this task would require a great deal of time and focus. It would require extensively monitoring the dangerous karnuq for clues, and then likely many failed attempts to map out new production methods from that knowledge. It, simply, required more attention and time than the First of the Fifth was willing to spend on it, though the possibilities were too great to simply pass up. So, she would have one of her daughters take up the mantle, and trust that her offspring would be up to the task.

The First of the Fifth was finally ready to evolve some gardeners. It was a travesty that she hadn’t been able to do so for this long. They, after all, would Enjoy reading on NovelHub - your free online novel platform.

Cross-pollination and testing new nectar types was the first direct collaboration between herself and the King. Additionally, he had directly asked her to help coordinate the specialization of the hives. So, on that regard, her most important tasks were to keep track of the hive of hives and the status of all the hives within it, to raise and identify new flower types, and then to allocate flowers suitable for specialization to the queens ready to convert their hives. Additionally, now that gardeners could directly assist the spread of flowers, she could start raising more flower patches to ensure all queens had sufficient resources, taking some of the burden of that duty off of the King.

So, raising gardeners was now her top priority, and she arranged for as many workers as she could to evolve without excessively interrupting production. 𝘳а𝐍ỒＢËṧ

Once that was completed, she turned to her other priority task: testing the new honey types. She had two trays that were nearly empty save for a small group of cells in the corner of each. She shuttered a bit as she approached one as she suddenly dropped to the floor one moment, and then felt like she was floating away the next despite her wings remaining still. Her foragers hadn’t enjoyed collecting the nectar of this one, but they had pressed on and now had a sample. The inefficiency of gathering nearly had her call off the effort…but the sheer mana density of the flower in question was too tempting.

The processing had been difficult as well. The nectar had constantly shifted its own viscosity, density, and even volume. Her workers struggled to measure its water content and determine how to fan it for the drying stage. The First of the Fifth had to intervene directly to determine the process, and even then she had to resort to watching the mana rather than the physical honey itself. She was, therefore, not at all confident in the quality and consistency of this batch and would not be serving any of it to even another hive, much less the King.

But they had managed to make some…gravity honey. She believe that was what the King had named this type of flower, so that is what she would call it.

She would taste it herself, however, to analyze it and determine what to do with it. As she expected, each cell of gravity honey varied wildly in quality and consistency. She would have been ashamed of such an effort had she not known the difficulties involved in getting it to even this state. The gravity honey itself did not taste all that different from the usual dandelion honey…but as during its processing the honey continued to vary its consistency within her proboscis and her stomach. One moment it was a dense, almost solid sticky mass that nearly got stuck in place. The next it was a thin and runny liquid she might have mistaken for raw nectar…that had been diluted by rain. She…didn’t think she enjoyed the experience.

And the gravity honey had other effects besides consistency. The same weight-shifting effect the flower had applied to the honey as well. With the honey inside of her stomach, one moment she would feel so heavy she wanted to lie on the ground. The next she felt she would float away if she didn’t latch onto the honeycomb.

And this…was why she decided to lay an egg in the cell with the densest mana-concentration.

These gravity flowers and the honey made from their nectar were clearly not normal, and their mana was excessively active even after being stabilized into mana-honey. It was to the point that, like the burning honey from the flame radishes, she didn’t want to gather too much of it lest it impact the rest of her hive. And that, in turn, made it a prime candidate for brood specialization. There was little doubt in her mind that this honey would certainly affect a bee growing within it. The only question was would the egg and larvae survive to adulthood under those conditions…and what sort of bee might result. Maybe, if it was like the burning honey, a worker raised on the honey might prove more suitable to producing more?