Next to me, Ambrosia winced. Attendants saw this and bowed their heads.
"Queen, should we have… not let him inside? We thought you won't be against more Drones…" an Attendant asked.
Ignoring them, I crackled all my knuckles one by one.
"Not only I was woken up *at least* half an hour earlier than I should have been, not only did you just *go past our guards*, you did this all to roll your balls toward *MY* wife…"
"Another Drone! You want to compete? I'll show that I'm stronger than you!" the Drone puffed his chest.
"And the worst part of all this… is that you are too stupid to even realize the depths of your mistakes! Being angry at you is like being angry at a retarded child. But you know what? I think once in a lifetime hitting children is okay!"
"Huh? Your shouting won't—"
I flew up to the Drone and punched him in the face with a viscerally satisfying crunch.
The blow threw the Drone down, to where other bees were already flying on their daily business. It could've been dangerous if not for their sharp reflexes.
It'd be a long way to the floor for the Drone if he didn't catch himself in the air a couple seconds later—just enough to have a decent landing.
'Aw, shit… I think I hit him so hard. He probably has a concussion. Well fuck him, those alpha-edition males don't have brains to be concussed!'
"AND KICK HIM OUT OF HERE!" I shouted for half of the hive to hear. "KICK THIS DRONE OUT OF HERE!"
I shook my fist, huffing. Because of that guy, not only have I lost sleep, now my fist was hurting…
"Are you alright, Nectus?" Ambrosia asked, flying close. "I don't remember Drone Bees being this irksome… But you got him good."
She smiled at me, and then kissed me gently on the cheek.
Her starting kisses was still rare enough that I was shocked for a moment. Then I smiled and kissed her back. The gestures were as sweet as Ambrosia's lips were soft.
"I'm good, Amby, I'm good… Do these Drones often just *come* to other hives ?"
"If they are lucky enough to find them. This one must've followed one of your scouts." She turned to Queen Attendants, "Pass the order to our guards—they shouldn't let any other 'ordinary' bees inside."
"Our security is really lacking, it seems! I shouldn't have assumed that our guards will realize that they shouldn't let some *bees* inside."
Someone could just walk into the hive! Perhaps stray Worker Bees might be kicked out, but virile Drone Bees? Well…
"At least this makes me feel more sure about my idea, Amby. I will prepare for the Council—and tell you all about it."
At noon, the Colony Council gathered in full attendance.
By then, my Commando Bees returned from preliminary scouting and danced their navigational dances. Afterward, I spent several hours drawing a vague map of our hive's surroundings on the wall of the Council Chamber.
Now I showed it to my councilors.
"This is our hive," I pointed at the circle with 'Hive Supremo' written on top. "I named it! Should've done this long ago. And this is Hive Hornet's Nest… I asked Polly if she wanted to name it something else, but she said Hornet's Nest is fine."
"It's a very reasonable name," Researchina said.
"And those smaller circles are all other beehives, the Commando Bees found by tailing Drone Bees going to sleep there."
I pointed at the two dozen dots spread over the area. The closest other hive was an hour of flight away, and the farthest was three hours of flight away. The map wasn't in scale, so I drew arrows with distances.
There was a visible dent in the spread near to where hornets lived. They must've eradicated some hives before I destroyed theirs.
"Why did you look for these bees, Nectus? They aren't our enemies or our allies. We aren't even competing for flowers with them—they all are too far away for that."
I smiled at Ambrosia.
"You see… Our population grows, sure. But it doesn't grow fast enough. Even if we had a dozen Queens, just building cells for all the new bees would take a ton of resources."
I clenched my fist in front of my face.
"When the stage of peaceful exploration hits a roadblock called, 'too few resources', whether they are raw materials or manpower, there can be only one answer. Conquest! And today, I will tell you *how*."
Immediately, I saw questions on my Advisers' faces.
"Father, what does 'conquest' mean?" Researchina asked.
"That's what we did to the yellow meadow ants. Taking something that belongs to another nation, tribe, hive, anything—by force!"
"Destroying other beehives like that? This is not right…" She shook her head. "If there are no hives, where will more Drone Bees come from? No, that's not how it should be. It's… *bad*."
"Ah, no, that's not what I meant. Who do you take me for? I'm not some *villain*, really! My plan is going to actually make the lives of other hives better. We won't destroy them—we will take *everything* they have–the combs and the bees, and make it our own. We are going to… replace their Queens!"
I raised a pointing finger proudly, putting a flourish in my dramatic speech.
Now my Advisers looked less concerned and more curious.
"Replace the Queens? We replace the Queens when they are old or sick. But Queens in other hives are neither."
I lowered my finger in embarrassment and used to scratch my nose.
The next part of the plan didn't sit well with me. But the amount of victims it required was so minuscule compared to alternatives that I could easily squash my discomfort.
It was also more viable than the least-least bloody option. Theoretically, I could do the 'Horizontal Gene Transfer' with Queens in other hives. But that won't make them my allies. It took me a long time to achieve power and respect in my colony... Not to mention the logistics of all that!
Nope, there were just too many cons and too few pros.
"There will be a *bit* of political assassination involved. Just a bit… Our daughters will have to become assassins before they can become Queens!"