ALL NOVEL Chapter 5: The Forest Swift Bee
The appearance of the worker bee hadn't changed much. Its body was still predominantly yellow and black, but the colors had deepened, and its wings had become thicker, no longer transparent, with black lines covering them.
One could sense its vitality had greatly increased.
Most importantly, its wing flapping frequency was incredibly fast!
Hua Mi controlled it to fly in circles in the air, estimating its speed to be about twice as fast as a regular honeybee! Moreover, it showed no adverse characteristics.
Hua Mi usually assessed the strength of a bee species based on three main attributes.
First, their lifespan.
Second, their reproductive capabilities.
And third, their productivity.
The third attribute, productivity, was mainly related to the bee's structure and its ability to perform tasks.
Bees had a structure called a honey sac, which was where they stored nectar. The amount of nectar they could carry back to the hive in one trip depended on the size of their honey sac. The larger the sac, the more efficient they were.
There was no need to emphasize their mobility; the faster they could fly, the shorter the round trip time.
This mutant earth bee had doubled its speed, significantly increasing its honey collection efficiency.
"Although it's not an outstanding mutation, at least it's something presentable."
This mutant earth bee was probably the fastest bee in the world now. Unfortunately, there was only one.
Using mutation inducers to produce mutations was uncontrollable. The probability of evolving favorable traits was very low. In a group of 50 bees, evolving one new type of bee was considered beginner's luck. In normal circumstances, it might take the sacrifice of an entire bee colony to evolve a new bee species.
However, when Hua Mi had more bee colonies, he could set aside some for experiments.
With a variety of mutated bee species, he could attempt to create new bee species through hybridization.
If we considered mutation inducers as a chemical means, then hybridization was a biological means. Compared to mutation inducers, hybridization was safer and cheaper. It only required the bees to be in good condition. Furthermore, hybridization could reveal patterns, to some extent allowing him to control the direction of mutations and systematically create stronger bee species.
"Anyway, building more bee colonies is the top priority."
Hua Mi took out his alchemical notebook, flipped to a blank page, and wrote the title "Mutant Bee Species Compendium."
"The distinctive feature of this mutant earth bee is its speed. Since it was born in the forest, I'll simply call it the 'Forest Swift Bee.'"
Hua Mi wrote the words "Forest Swift Bee" on the paper.
"The Forest Swift Bee, derived from the Chinese honeybee, has a flying speed twice that of regular bees, with the same activity pattern. It is active during the day and rests at night. Its main color scheme is yellow and black, with colors deepening, thicker wings that are no longer transparent, and covered in black lines..."
Furthermore, there were three attributes for bee colonies: lifespan, productivity, and reproductive capability.
It was necessary to record them.
If we considered the Chinese honeybee as the standard, all three attributes were set to 1.
So, the productivity of the Forest Swift Bee could be set at 2. While the honey collection per trip hadn't increased, the advantage mainly lay in its speed...
Additionally, there were the aspects of lifespan and reproductive capability.
Hua Mi thought he would need to observe these to determine their values.
However, after he thoroughly examined this Forest Swift Bee, he found that he could clearly perceive the bee's physical condition and abstract it into attribute information.
By comparing this with a regular bee, he could roughly estimate how many times the lifespan and reproductive capability of a regular bee was.
[Lifespan: 0.5]
[Reproductive Capability: 3]
[Productivity: 2]
The lifespan was only half of a regular bee's. This was understandable since the swift bee's faster physiological activities burned through its lifespan faster.
The reproductive capability gave him a small surprise, as it was three times that of regular bee species.
This compensated for the shorter lifespan, as higher reproductive capability meant a shorter time required for raising a new generation of bees. It was similar to human populations where a higher birth rate than death rate led to a stronger overall population and increased resilience to risk. The number of individual bees in a bee colony would significantly increase, enhancing the colony's resistance to risk.
Not to mention the honey collection ability, which was probably more than twice that of a regular bee.
The more Hua Mi explored, the more excited he became. No beekeeper could resist the temptation of excellent new bee species.
Suddenly, Hua Mi felt a familiar sensation on the back of his hand—the same spot where he had been stung. It started to feel warm and tingly again.
This peculiar sensation spread from his hand to his forehead.
He once again had a vision of the small, blue bee, and its apparition appeared in the center of his vision.
"Is there more to it?"
Hua Mi's vision blurred momentarily, and then he saw a blurry blue light extending from the blue bee, connecting to the Forest Swift Bee.
The entire process lasted for less than a minute, and then the connection was severed.
Hua Mi hurriedly examined the Forest Swift Bee, and to his relief, there were no issues with the individual bee.
However, in his field of vision, another bee's apparition appeared below, and it looked exactly like the Forest Swift Bee!
This was what he visually observed, and he almost instantly understood its meaning.
The blue bee he had just seen, or rather, the version of himself that had been endowed with abilities by the blue bee, had replicated the excellent traits of the Forest Swift Bee!
Furthermore, he could transfer these traits back to the evolving mother bee, which was the regular Chinese honeybee, and turn it into a Forest Swift Bee!
"Let's give it a try."
Hua Mi controlled a regular worker bee to fly over.
He concentrated his attention and injected the Forest Swift Bee template into the regular worker bee's body.
Soon, there was a noticeable change in the worker bee. It radiated a powerful force, just like the state the Forest Swift Bee was in before it mutated.
The worker bee returned to the hive and started to secrete wax for a cocoon.
"But converting one by one will be quite troublesome."
After all, a bee colony typically consisted of several thousand individuals, and transforming them one by one would be a daunting task.
Hua Mi commanded a group of bees to stop honey collection and fly back. This included the worker bees inside the hive, and they all lined up neatly above the hive.
He then focused his attention not on a single individual but on the entire bee colony.
He spread the Forest Swift Bee template across the entire bee colony.
Although this took a bit longer, about two minutes, it was still a success!
The entire bee colony underwent a transformation and returned to the hive to secrete wax for their cocoons.
"This is great!"
With this ability, he no longer needed to spend a lot of time and effort considering how to propagate and expand the population of new bee species.
In just one night, he could create an entire new bee colony!
Hua Mi took a deep breath to calm himself down.
"In other words, as long as I evolve new bee species, I can record them and rapidly expand their colonies."
Hua Mi continued with two more tasks.
First, he took 50 drones and 50 worker bees from the remaining 29 hives. On average, each hive had three to four of each. He had them consume mutation inducers to attempt evolution.
The structure of a bee colony was quite simple. Besides worker bees, each hive had a queen bee and several dozen drones.
The primary role of drones was to provide the queen with male reproductive cells. In general, a queen bee only mated with several drones in a short period and stored the male reproductive cells for her lifetime.
During her peak, a queen bee could lay over a thousand eggs in 24 hours, with at least seven to eight hundred eggs being a reasonable estimate.
The majority developed into worker bees, and a small fraction became drones. The ratio depended on the number of worker bee cells and drone cells in the hive.
After mating, the drones were no longer needed because the queen bee had their reproductive organs inside her, and their internal organs had been torn out. Their fate was to die. Even if they managed to survive, the worker bees would eventually drive them away, and they would starve to death.
Hua Mi didn't experiment on the queen bee because each bee colony had only one queen, and losing her would lead to significant problems. There was a possibility of rescuing her, but the probability was high that the entire colony would perish.
"I hope there will be at least one successful evolution, even just one."
This way, he could replicate the template and create entire colonies.
Hua Mi silently prayed for success, although he thought that praying to ancestors in another world might not work.
Never mind, let's not rely on superstition. Following the objective laws of science is the key to success.
"We are going to use a scientific method to cultivate magic bees and brew magic honey."
The second task was to convert all his regular bee colonies into Forest Swift Bee colonies.
Of course, during the evolution process, the bees would have to stop collecting honey for a while.
But having bee species with double the collection capacity meant that the time required to produce a batch of honey would be halved. Which beekeeper could resist such temptation?
However, when he was converting the tenth bee colony, he felt his mind starting to wander, making it harder to concentrate.
"Template transformation isn't without its costs; it consumes mental energy..."
Hua Mi had to stop, as his brain felt as if he had been doing advanced math problems for three hours straight, leaving it in tatters.
He lay back on his recliner, tilted his head, and fell into a peaceful sleep.