Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire - Chapter 48

Chapter 48: Inventing work camps
Instead of moving toward us, the badger turned around and scuttled away!

In seconds, all we could see left was a wide path of broken trees and the badger’s disappearing back.

“Huh?”

I looked around us dumbly. Maybe the beast noticed something even bigger around?

Maybe it just had a sudden craving for whatever was in the opposite direction.

No way it could’ve spotted us from this distance *and* become so afraid that it immediately ran away! Or… could it have?

A smile spread over my face. Maybe my daughters left the badger a mental trauma for the rest of its life! As the beast deserved.

“Want us to follow it, Father?” the Sergeant Commando of my squad asked.

I shook my head, still smiling.

“No, let’s just go home. We can brag about it to others—no, wait, we shouldn’t. The last thing I want is for them to get a wrong idea and get smashed by this kaiju.”

***

Back in the hive, I gathered my Colony Council in the Council Chamber.

On the wax wall, I drew the yellow meadow ant anthill, and a life-sized ant nearby. Now I pointed at them with my pointing stick.

“This is what they look like. See how small these ants are? We can stomp one of them easily. They are half-blind, dumb, and mostly just sniff at everything. And we want inside their hive, where it’s dark and our fighters will have to crawl. It’s like attacking Vietnamese partisans in their bunker… Any suggestions on what to do about it?”

“We can set this place on fire, Father!” the Industry Adviser chirped.

“You said that this is all for aphids… Can we simply find aphids elsewhere? There are a lot living in the forest,” the Economy Adviser said.

Ambrosia nodded.

“Bees won’t be able to even swing their weapons inside. Some creatures just shouldn’t be messed with, especially in their homes. We might try, and we might win, but how many bees will die for it? Our daughter Queen is half-way to maturity, and she will need those bees for her swarm.”

I frowned.

“I ask now *exactly* because I don’t want the bees to die. Hm. Science Adviser, do you have any ideas?”

She had the Research Bee title—she was the smartest of us all, with 110 intelligence! And she was the one who thought hardest after I asked the question.

“Yes… Do we *need* to go inside? Do these ants and their aphids really *never* go outside?”

I blinked.

Then I leaped to the Science Adviser and rubbed her cheeks. She squeaked and recoiled, but my excitement was impossible to contain.

“This is brilliant! B581, you are brilliant! Yes, it’s like Sun Tzu said: ‘Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across, and then set their fortress on fire!’.”

“So we burn it, after all?” the Military Adviser asked.

I went to the sketching wall and began drawing a stream of water falling over the anthill.

“No. We flood it. Water goes down, ants go up, and they carry their precious aphids with them. We won’t have to step a foot inside their underground maze!”

“We will have to wait for the next storm, then,” Ambrosia said.

I shook my head.

“Ant colonies have drainage that protects them from ordinary rain. Unless the storm is much heavier than ordinary—even by this world’s standards!—the ants won’t flee their home. Besides, we will be as debilitated by the storm as the ants. No, we will have to drown these ants ourselves—find a water source and make the water flow toward the ants through a bee-made channel.”

I pitied the yellow meadow ants a little. These gremlins, unlike red wood ants, did nothing to me. But their size and looks aside, they were still just insects.

“Economics Adviser, Industry Adviser! You two need to work together on the next task. There’s work to do!”

***

Step one of the grand project I dubbed “Project Great Flood”—scouting the area—was already complete while my Commando Bees searched for the ant hives.

They remembered the nearest large enough source of water. It was a wide, shallow and slow river, four hours of flight away from our hive.

Inconveniently far, but we could make it.

Step two was preparing tools.

We needed a lot of shovels, but Craftsmen Bees could work really fast. The area of the hive they claimed for their sweatshops was constantly full of rock smashing sounds.

In a single day, the Material Foragers have picked even more of the forest clean, and Craftsmen Bees made 8000 digging sticks—a stone tool between a pickaxe, a shovel and a hoe.

Step two and a half was assuring we can work this far from the hive.

For this, I invented a new technology!

〔Work Camps〕

Brainpower requirement: 110

Logistics: +3 per 1 thousand affected workers.

〔〕〔〕〔〕

The camp near the Great Flooding site would be a shelter from the elements for all the workers on this project. This way, they won’t have to fly all the way from the hive and back, wasting half a day and tiring themselves before they even start working.

Half of our Foremen Bees and Builder Bees, flew to the river to build a temporary work camp. I was with them at first, giving instructions—but they understood quickly what to do.

The camp site was a cave in a nearby pillar mountain—too small for a full-sized hive, but big enough for us. The materials were brought from our hive—80 entire units of building materials, mostly wax.

The speed at which the bees worked was incredible. I estimated that only a week was necessary for them to finish the entire camp, fit for 8000 diggers and 2000 more Cleaner, Builder Forager and Commando Bees that will maintain the work operations.

***

Four days passed. The campsite was still in progress, but a much more special day had arrived.

Within the hive’s nursery, a dozen Nurse Bees, Ambrosia and myself gathered around a large pod, built vertically on the honeycomb, as opposed to the usual horizontal cell direction. All of us were full of anticipation–even Ambrosia looked agitated.

It was the time for our daughter Queen to emerge. And I’ve already been thinking about baby names!