Star Bees

The Star honey from Terria is my favorite type of honey. Some say that it's magical. I just think that it tastes the best.

— A Station inhabitant

A Star Bee is a flying insect from the northern west hemisphere on the planet of Terria. Bees are a very common insect on the planet, and the Star Bees are the only bees in the clade that produce honey. The species spread over the northern west hemisphere of the planet naturally until the sapient species of the planet got a hold of them. Now domesticated, they exist over the whole planet with several subspecies and breeds.

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Anatomy

The Star Bees have a segmented body consisting of three main parts: the head, thorax, and abdomen. The head has sensory organs like compound eyes for keen vision and antennae for detecting pheromones and environmental cues. The thorax has powerful muscles that drive their wings, enabling agile flight and intricate maneuvers essential for foraging and hive maintenance. Additionally, the thorax has specialized structures, such as pollen baskets on the legs for collecting and transporting pollen. The digestive system, wax glands, and venom sacs lie within the abdomen, essential for honey production, hive construction, and defense.

Home Planet

Terria

Average Size

4cm

Average Lifespan

150 days

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Reproduction & Genetics

The queen is the only bee to reproduce in a Star Beehive. She will have one mating flight, during which she will store enough sperm to lay eggs throughout her 2-3 year life span. During her life, she lays around 2000 eggs per day. When a queen dies, the worker bees will pick a suitable larva and condition them to become the next queen.

An egg fertilized by the queen bee will become a female worker bee or the next queen, while an unfertilized egg will become a male drone. Whose only role is to mate with the next queen. When a new queen is needed, the larva chosen will continue to be fed royal jelly after the two days that all larvae are fed it. This will change how genes are developed as the larvae grow.

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Growth Stages

Like most insects on Terria, the star bees grow through four life stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult.
The queen will lay her eggs in cells prepared by the worker bees. The worker bees are the ones who decide the ratio of worker bees to drone bees depending on the sizes of the cells. The eggs will hatch into larvae. This stage takes 7-8 days for the drones, 6-7 days for the worker bees, and only 5-6 days for the new queen. As larvae they will still stay in their cells for around 6 days until the worker bees seal the cell as the larvae create a coocoon. The bee will stay in the pupa stage for about two weeks until it eats its way out of the pupa and becomes an adult.

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Star Honey

The Star Honey that the Star bees produce is a large export for this planet. The honey has tiny shining specks of light in it. Removing the shining lights from the honey is impossible, as the lights will go out when anyone tries. The red orange to sometimes green orange honey is shimmering and is usually stored in glass bottles for people to admire. It is said that star honey will prolong your life and make your physical body more healthy.