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DimeSpin β Lacunalithops dexter Size Variation Example
#bee #bug #insect #creaturedesign #worldbuilding
Published: 2019-05-03 12:12:04 +0000 UTC; Views: 8978; Favourites: 248; Downloads: 12
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Description
An example of the range of sizes the bee people can come in. Size is a factor of whether they got full nutrition as grubs and how long they were fed royal jelly. Nine is at the extreme small end, effectively starved as a grub resulting in a much smaller adult. El and Threeda are at the large end of the spectrum for workers. If they'd been fed any more royal jelly they might have been small worker-like queens instead of merely large workers. Amber Rust is the natural extreme, an actual queen bee who received royal jelly throughout development. Seizy is the natural default size for workers.
These variations can be deliberate or accidental. Some hives create the larger workers to protect the hive for example, or during bad times they might raise the small workers to keep the population up rather than raise fewer but stronger normal sized workers. Or this could happen accidentally, through desperation in a hive where this isn't routine.
This often dates individuals to moments in time. Small individuals being walking remnants of a famine, the bulk of large warriors a reminder of lasting tension with another hive.
Originally drawn in 2017
Photoshop CC 2015
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Comments: 14
They do need to be taught - they communicate with grubs using a tactile sign system - basically, they gently touch the grubs in certain little patterns of brushes and taps to associate the sign with whatever the grub might be experiencing (like being fed, or held, or kept warm), so after they metamorphose into adults, they can do some basic communication using that while they work on the language of the adults. It allows them to be sort of functional at basic tasks even thought they can't fully talk yet.
Their diets are somewhat similar, though they get nutrition from different sources. There's not enough nectar in a field of flowers for a few thousand mouse-sized critters, so they prefer fruits, nuts, and other vegetable matter, and sometimes hunt or scavenge like wasps if necessary. But similar to real bees, the adults mostly eat sugar while the grubs and queen get the protein and they process the food they collect into honey and bee bread for long term storage.
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The queen isn't a leader, and is somewhat emotionally distant compared to how we expect mothers to be toward their children. The queen loves her children but isn't a part of their upbringing or care and some workers may never talk to her during their whole lives. The way they feel toward her is kind of comparable to how you might feel about a doctor. There are specialist doctors saving lives and doing good who you may never talk to because what they do isn't relevant to you, but if you did happen to run into them, you'd feel pretty warmly toward them, maybe even admiring them or being starstruck and humbled by their work. This is how the workers feel. They don't feel deprived of her love in their daily lives, but feel very warm and admiring towards her in her presence.
The queen also produces a pheromone that makes bees around her compulsively want to dote on her. Workers are often especially overwhelmed by this smell, and can even come away from interactions with her with some of it on them, so THEY get compulsively doted on. The workers take this as a kind of indirect affection, like being given a chemical coupon for a spa day just for being near her.
Normally a hive has no leader or hierarchy. Sometimes leaders emerge when a bee decides a thing needs to happen and advocates for it in order to garner enough support to make it happen, but these coalitions generally dissolve when they are no longer needed. Often even these coalitions of bees that want a thing done don't have a clear leader. Worker bees are bad at hierarchies and leadership and following orders, they tend to just do whatever they want. The hive works because each bee's individual "whatever I want" tends toward addressing needs that they see around the hive.
The queen may support or not any given action, but her opinion is considered only slightly more than the others, and only the way you might consider the advice of an elder. She's mom, she knows a lot and has seen a lot so they might follow her guidance, but she's not always right and not every queen is wise, so sometimes they disregard her input.
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She spends a lot of time talking to and listening to workers - the queen lives a great deal longer than the workers do so she can be an invaluable reservoir of information about the past. She also often acts as a kind of inspector - she has high standards of cleanliness for example and will refuse to lay eggs in comb that doesn't meet her standards, and similarly fails to cooperate if she doesn't feel like her nurses are managing the brood well enough. Some are definitely just living very bored lives though, especially if her hive has developed a culture of devaluing or dismissing her.
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You do know the mβth meme right?
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Awesome! Glad to see you uploading here again!
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Really enjoying this bee info! It's so unusual to see anthropomorphic insects, and you've made them so appealing. I love that they have unique patterns on their "nose" area and their "hair" also sets them apart - consider extending that uniqueness to the fluff on their chests, as right now each bee's chest fluff is pretty much identical, no matter which way they are turned even. If you can't see the full bee or their height in a scene, colour and marking variations and/or difference in fluff texture on their bodies will help identify them.
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Thanks, that's a good point.
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