Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire - Chapter 87

Chapter 87: Varroa destructor
“Nobody wanted to interrupt you in the first place, Father,” Tabletina muttered.

I barely heard her, excited by my findings.

“The Paleness had anemia-like symptoms, affected only pupae or bees without the thick skin gene… I *should’ve* put it together earlier that it was some sort of blood-sucking parasite! These mites were sucking the blood and nutrition out of their hosts!”

I looked at Ambrosia.

“When I heard about Worriesgone’s dream, it reminded me about mosquitoes, and they reminded me about lice and other parasites. Then, I realized that Paleness could be a parasite infestation as well.”

“I feared it might be some gut worm—because I have no idea how to deal with *that*—but the sick people didn’t have any digestion problems, and Worriesgone described being pricked, so I hoped for the easier option. An option we can try to drown, at least!”

“So these things were sucking blood out of our daughters, and we never noticed them?” Ambrosia looked at the half-dead mite dubiously.

I nodded.

“They have specialized camouflage and their bites are painless, or almost painless. I bet if one of these crawls between chitin plates on a bee’s tail, its fur will blend perfectly with hers. And these things don’t have a scent.”

“Write that all down, Writingdown,” Tabletina said. “So then, Father, we can’t treat the Paleness like a sickness? You used water already—does water work best? Can we drown all the mites?” Tabletina asked.

I bit my lip and looked away from all the bees, to the dense forest in the distance.

The rush of discovering the origin of the Paleness was fading quickly as my giga-brain told me all the facts that meant the war for the Bee Empire didn’t end—it only reached the next stage.

“From adult bees—yes. Besides, now that we know what to look for, we might just pick them out by hand. However…”

I trailed off, and Ambrosia continued my thought seamlessly.

“What about the pupae? How will we protect the pupae, when none of the Nurses noticed anything wrong with them until bees began emerging sick?”

I didn’t reply—my mind was deep in thinking.

Now that I had the system to guide me, I remembered some vague facts about those things. Varroa destructor, or varroa mites, existed in my old world. And my memory was pretty good, as long as I tried to recall facts that *weren’t* going to come up on the next exam.

In my world, varroa destructor was an enormous danger to bees worldwide. It was a parasitic mite whose life cycle was closely connected to the breeding cycles of bees in nature.

They laid their eggs in closed pupae cells, where no one could see them, and where they had a host to feed on. And from there, they spread all over until a hive’s brood became so weak, the entire colony died.

From the lifespan of the one still held up for demonstration, I could say that without new mites, their population will die off in a month.

If I told all our Queens to stop laying eggs for a month, then, say, in two months all the mites will die out.

Together with all the subjugated hives, which weren’t established enough to survive without fresh blood.

‘C’mon, Nectus… You carry that giga-brain Grand Strategist title for what? For nothing? Remember something good!’

I pulled on my chin and thought harder.

‘If bees could grow a beard, I could’ve pulled on it. Or I could’ve stroked it like a sage. Or… Oh! What about this fact—varroa mites enter a brood cell around a day before it closes. So…’

“We *can* catch the mites before too late,” I said with conviction. “We must inspect all cells before closing them with *extra* special care. In this hive, and all the others. I don’t care how many bees will be busy with this—we can take all the Foragers away from their duties to assist if necessary. But we *must* find those varroa assholes!”

There was silence as Ambrosia and Tabletina digested my words.

“Oh, Father!” a Forager Bee suddenly shouted from the lake. “One of these things fell off me, too! Can I come out now?”

“Yes! Keep the mite with you. Tabletina might vivisect it later.”

“What’s ‘vivisect’, Father?”

“It means cut it up and exact your cruel revenge on it, while trying to understand how that thing works from the inside.”

“Ooooh, I understand.” Tabletina nodded, smiling. “I like that word. It would make a good name, too—a pity that everybody is already used to ‘Tabletina’.”

I gave her a bright smile.

Yes, I was teaching her how to be a mad vivisectionist. And it was beautiful.

*Someone* had to do all sorts of evil scientific things to those ugly gnomes that dared to harm my daughters like that!

“Nectus,” Ambrosia called out, bringing me out of my reverie. “Those measures will protect older broods—but what about the larvae whose cells were already closed?”

I paused, unsure of what to say. The solution was there, but it was risky.

If we had modern technologies, sterilization and air quality control, then…

Ambrosia waited for my reply for a few seconds, but after hearing none, kept speaking.

“Although it’s risky for her, it *is* theoretically possible to open and close a brood cell without harming the pupa. Against all my instincts—but possible. There was no point in doing this before, but now things have changed. If we open the pupae cells and remove the mites, we can save them. Mitigate the damage the mites already dealt on them, at least.”

I shook my head immediately.

“But we don’t even know which cells are affected and which aren’t! And what if our daughters die because we interfere? Those affected by mites are already so fragile… At least if we let them emerge normally, they will definitely survive.”

“And spread more mites over our hives! Who knows how long it will take to get rid of them then? How many more of our daughters will be affected?” Ambrosia said with sudden vehemence. Then, she added more quietly, “Nectus, I trust your knowledge—but are you thinking with your reason, or with your emotions right now?”