The Bee Dungeon

POBee 57.1 - The Burdens of Command

The next morning, the First Queen of the First Dynasty of the Second Spawner, the first of her line, did not proceed to laying eggs as she normally would. Instead, she made her way outside of her hive and flew up into the sky. There, she found the joint soldier bee army waiting for her. Yes, waiting. Not immediately conducting their practice runs and training as they normally would.

She would admit she had doubts about the Firstborn’s idea. She knew that the Firstborn was correct about the benefits of having a queen on the field. Yet, she also knew that said benefits came at great cost. Even one day of a queen not laying eggs would impact the future growth of her hive, all the more so for the Flower Meadow queens who already operated at the edge of sustainability. And putting aside that, the very benefits of a queen commanding the soldier bees also applied to the operation of the hive. A queen’s presence boosted efficiency all around, identifying inefficiencies such as traffic jams within the hive, over- or under-allocation of workers to given tasks, or changes in the honey making process due to climate, temperature, nectar source, or any number of other factors. So, time spent commanding the soldier bees meant time that her hive would run less efficiently than normal, with no one around to identify and resolve issues. Her workers would be left on their own.

But, ultimately, the First of the Second could not object, not after the failure of their army. The Firstborn had come up with an idea to address some their demonstrated weaknesses, which was more than she could say, so here she was, ready to take her agreed-upon turn at command. Without many ideas of her own, she simply followed the Firstborn’s own proposals. She separated her own hive’s soldiers into a smaller force and set the others as a reserved force. She then set about practicing as the Firstborn had, having her hive practice attack runs while she moved the reserved force around.

Only half an hour later and her antenna were twitching, and she was constantly shaking herself. This…was not going well. Oh, she found she could command her soldiers as easily as her workers, and they were performing marvelously. But not so with the rest of the army. As the Firstborn had informed them during yesterday’s celebrations, her command did not extend beyond the reach of her children. Her orders had to passed through the army one bee at a time, which led to delays in execution. Anytime she wanted to conduct quick movements in succession, the soldiers closest to her would respond immediately while the ones further away would continue on with the previous order. This led to delays as the soldiers had to slow down to avoid collision, or else started to separate from one another as the distant soldiers continued on too far. She was having to slow down and wait before issuing new commands, an inefficient use of her time on a task that was already dropping the efficiency of her hive.

She couldn’t help but be a little frustrated at this. How could this be more beneficial than managing her hive? And she would have to do this on a regular basis?

But she was a bee and this was her assigned task for the day, so she would not abandon it no matter how frustrating or inefficient it seemed. She paused the exercise and told the soldiers to return to normal training. Since the command situation was not acceptable to her, she needed to think on how she could improve it…

Another agonizing half-hour passed before she came up with anything. She gathered up the bees again, and separated her hive and the reserved force once again. This time though, she gathered several of her own soldiers into the reserved force, splitting up the force into sections and assigning one of her own soldiers to each one. She tasked each of these soldiers with passing her commands to their respective groups, while informing the other hives’ soldiers to pay attention to hers.

She then, reluctantly, took command once again. She ordered the reserved force to fly forward, then suddenly turn to the right. Her soldiers received her command immediately and began passing it along without delay. The whole formation turned with only a minimal gap in time, and with significantly less collisions.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The First of the Second noted the improvements and began the exercises in earnest, conducting as many maneuvers she could think of. There…was still a lag in the execution of her commands that grated on her, but it was significantly less than before, just enough to be tolerable to her. And, even with the command delay, splitting the reserved force into several groups appeared to have other benefits. Since they were not all in one solid mass, the group did not get as easily tangled when the bees closer to her responded more quickly than those at the edge, cutting down on the chaos from earlier.

It was a start, at least. And it meant she could get comfortable enough with commanding to take on the intruder coming later today. That, ultimately, was the most important priority. That was the duty and the purpose of the First of the Second, of every bee within the Flower Meadow.

That, at least, all the Flower Meadow queens agreed upon. Not one intruder would ever make it past them again, not while there was anything they could do to stop it.

Back in the First of the Second’s hive, the disaster she had foreseen was coming to pass. Well, ultimately the hive was still functioning, unlike her worst fears, but all was not well. A group of foragers dropping of nectar tried to enter the same area as a group just about to leave. The two groups ran into each other and had to confer and decide who would move out of the way. Then, once the arriving group was able to enter the area, they found all the cells already full and being processed. They had to leave and then search the hive for a vacant area…only to be told by a group on brood-tending duty that the first such area they found was slated for the queen to lay more eggs later, and so sending them to search once more.

Individually, none of this took very long, mostly just a few seconds for each incident. But altogether, those seconds added up. This was especially true for a hive that always operated under the command of their queen. Where once they used to just receive and immediately execute commands from their queen, now they had to identify and solve issues on their own, which led to further hesitation whenever an obstacle was encountered. And all of this was compounded by a general sense of unease and anxiety due to the queen being absent…and potentially exposed to danger.

As the day moved along, the drop in efficiency was growing noticeable to the entire hive. The workers started to grow agitated and began moving hastily to pick up the slack. But moving hastily was not enough without the queen to allocate the effort effectively, and so the inefficiency only grew.

It was then that the hive received visitors. A small handful of foragers from the Fourth of the Seventh’s hive landed at their entrance to rest their wings and exchange news. At first, the workers of the First of the Second’s hive had been wary of the intruders, but the newcomers had received permission from the Firstborn to operate in the Flower Meadow and the exchange of information from the Apiary proved useful to the queen, so the workers soon considered this as just another task.

…without the queen to assign workers to greet them, however, it took a moment before some of the First of the Second’s workers acknowledged the waiting bees, which the newcomers took note of.

“Problem with hive?”

The greeting worker couldn’t help but begin a frustrated dance.

“Queen gone, hive not working well.”

The newcomers burst into motion.

“What?! Queen gone?!”

The greeting worker paused before realizing her mistake.

“Queen ok, with soldiers. But not here, hard to work without.”

The newcomers stopped their dance.

“Oh, good! Really? Work without queen all the time, not too hard.”

The greeting worker nearly lunged at them.

“You…work without queen?! Know how?!”

The newcomers simply confirmed.

“Yes!”

The greeting worker nearly tripped over her own legs in her haste to dance.

“How?! Please tell!”

The Fourth of the Seventh’s workers back up a bit at the aggression, but in the name of exchanging information to bring back to their curious queen they went ahead and explained how things worked in their hive. Particularly, how the hive had organized itself when their queen had to (or wanted to) fly off and handle a task outside, including a single worker taking up the queen’s tasks regarding keeping track of the state of the hive as a whole and issuing commands to the other workers. Tasks said worker continued to do…even when their queen was present…

The greeting worker was completely still as she stared at them, before she raced back into her hive to spread what she had learned. The newcomers, now left alone, glanced at each other.

“So, no news?”

“First of the Second not at home, working with army? That news?”

“Yes, guess so. Let’s go!”

And so the newcomers flew off as word of their hive’s unique organization spread throughout the First of the Second’s workers…