Tabletina, who brought this news, nodded. She was frowning deeply.
"Almost like that—over eighty percent of the workers from Hive Mountainhive showed typical symptoms of food poisoning. The aphids kept as cattle in the sub-hive were affected, too—but only a small part of them. The only ones who weren’t poisoned were Beemarines. The sick bees don’t appear to be in imdiate danger, but they are unable to work right now and won’t be for at least the next four days, by my estimate. So aphids have died, though."
I rubbed my forehead.
"Did you already tell the local Physicians to check the food supplies of the Mountainhive?"
From my recollection, it was a hive that specialised in rearing aphids and growing crops. Despite its na, it was standing on so very fertile ground, just under the roots of a living mountain—hence the na.
If the food produced by the hive was contaminated, then several sub-hives nearby will be affected, too. But bees didn’t just all eat from the sa pot! There were various sources of food and diet diversity!
Even without ntioning aphids that ate plant juices, an entire hive couldn’t get food poisoning at once from *food*.
Unless...
"And water. There are no toxic productions near Mountainhive, but perhaps there was sothing else that poisoned their water sources?"
Tabletina shook her head.
"The hive’s Queen gave this order even before the report about the health problems reached —when only several hundred bees showed the symptoms. This was a day ago. Within these sixteen hours, two hundred bees beca forty-five hundred thousand. The sub-hive went into an ergency mode due to the lack of able-bodied workers. Bees from the nearest sub-hives flew in to help... But I don’t know all the details, Father. I’m only here to tell you about the dical situation."
I nodded. The handling of ergencies was the responsibility of the hive’s or the region’s Queen.
"Are the larvae fine, at least?"
"Yes, thankfully. The Nurses from other hives care for them."
"Thankfully." I let out a sigh of relief. If even larvae were hard by this...
"The tests of food and water didn’t find any poisons, Father. It’s not a virus, either—many of the people who fell sick had immunising blood in them. It’s extrely puzzling... I hoped that your larger mind could find an answer to this. Here’s all the information gathered by Mountainhive’s Physicians."
Tabletina gave a paper folder. I leafed through it, but it mostly contained the things Tabletina said already.
This was extrely concerning!
An entire hive fell sick for seemingly no reason, within a single day!
What if they got worse later? Or another hive falls sick like that?
"I must investigate in detail. Mountainhive is in the range of my astral projection—I will look at it as such. Tabletina, keep investigations as well. Maybe the answer will co to you sooner than to ."
***
I feared that I would have to spend days on this investigation while my girls suffered and died from unknown causes... But in the end, Tabletina was right to believe in .
As soon as I appeared near Mountainhive, I noticed not only the increased activity of all the bees who ca to help, but also large white flowers that blood all over the forest.
This ant that this field of crops was in harvest ti, and even now, so bees were flying in and out with buckets to gather the sweet, sweet nectar.
And just by looking at the statuses of these bees, I saw that their health has gone down by a point!
This was a number too small for them to notice yet, but when I looked at the sick girls inside the hive, I found bees with much more declined health.
The ones least affected were the Queen, the most recent helpers from the nearby hives and the bees who had indoor jobs. And Beemarines, of course, who had a genetic immunity.
In other words, sothing outside the hive was slowly draining the health of bees and causing the symptoms that Physicians confused with food poisoning.
And just from the thoughts of bees working near the white flowers, I knew that they had gone in full bloom yesterday.
The flowers were the cause. I was almost sure of it even before I gave an order to test them.
As Physicians quickly found with my help (I could identify loss of health faster than any of them), the flowers, even after being cut, exuded airborne venom.
Their other parts were much more venomous and caused the deaths of the aphids ntioned earlier by Tabletina.
The problem was—the previous generation of these plants—so variation of peas, if I was right—wasn’t venomous at all!
They have evolved.
’System, tell again, why can’t I see the statuses of plants?’
I wasn’t even sure if the system was talking about plants’ genes or about why I couldn’t see them. One of my biggest cheats was gone! I would have to deal with everything the hard way.
Upon returning to my body, I gathered the Empire Council, shared with them the situation—the parts that they didn’t know already—and gave my orders:
"Find every field with these peas in the Bee Empire, cut them down and burn them. Burn every part of them. From now on, we must be twice as careful about every plant we eat. Turns out, so of them don’t want to be eaten!"
’Is this like what the Vardish Empire is going through?’ Adviser Whisper asked from her astral projection.
"What? We are protecting all these plants from being fully exterminated by beasts, and they repay us like that?!" Workharder exclaid. "How dare they? Yes, I will organise the mass burnings imdiately!"
"This will harm our food supply," Ambrosia noted. "Workharder, you should think first about mitigating that, not about revenge. Revenge is a matter of course. Tell us, will any sub-hives be in danger of running out of food?"
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