Bee People of Persephone IV Species in Athena Minerva | World Anvil
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Bee People of Persephone IV

The distant planet called by Earth people, Persephone IV, is teaming with life, just not as we know it.   Earthlings would describe most life on the planet as resembling a combination of Earth's Plant Kingdom and Fungus Kingdom. And most life reacts to movement around it in some way, like the famous Venus Flytrap plant of Earth. (Contrary to the name, it is a native of Earth, not the planet Venus.)   But there is a sentient specie on the planet looking nothing like plant nor fungus. They are the Bee People, and have a complex society inside an underground arcology fortified against a world in which nearly everything will try to kill you.   The bee people have three genders instead of Earth's usual two genders.   Worker Bees stand just under 2 meters tall, not counting their spikey hair and two sensitive antennas on their heads. They stand on two of their six limbs, leaving four as arms with fine manipulators. Workers have a barbed stinger on the end of their short tails. Their two pairs of wings consist of a larger pair for forceful flight and a smaller pair for stabilization and fine maneuvers.   Worker Bees born at the start of the planet's long summers spend their lives (after a brief stint nursing the younger bees from larva to adulthood) foraging in the hostile world and collecting reproductive materials from the plant-fungi similar to pollen and nectar and preserving them.   Those born at the start of the planet's long winter spend their lives shoring up their fortress's defenses against the cold, chasing vermin out, and sparingly eating from their preserved stored reserves. Each hears wondrous tales of how the world differed before they were born and how it will change back again after their deaths from old age.   Guardian Bees are roughly the equivalent of males on planet Earth. They stand slightly over 2 meters tall on average and otherwise match the description of the Worker Bees, aside from having a phallus in place of the Workers' barbed stingers. Guardian Bees provide moral support to the Workers, help to disseminate information and orders from the Queen, and assist in structural repairs. In the long springtime, the Guard Bees mate with Queen Bees and help manage splits of the community to send explorers out to find new prospectives homes.   But the Queen really takes the cake. Her primary body would stand almost three meters tall, but her extended abdomen (which grows and lays live larvae at a surprising speed) drags behind her another three meters, forcing her to travel on all six limbs as she makes her rounds in the neonatal sections of the fortress.   The Queen routinely lives for 10 of the planet's long years and becomes the sole authority on the history of the community, teaching the workers and guards as well as teaching the young Queen (who will replace her) the oral and written history of their people.   When the young Queen has undergone her rite of passage to adulthood, the old Queen takes half the Workers and Guards and sets out to find a new home to fortify. Then both work hard to lay enough young to replenish their communities to full strength. The Queen who has established a new home usually does not raise another young Queen until she is close to the end of her life.   As inhospitable as the planet is to its own lifeforms, these Bee People seem to have a sound strategy of securing a reasonably safe home and then improving it on the fly.

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