Bombardier Hive Beatles is a particularly troublesome pest. First discovered in a newly colonized world named Crully Prime by the Titian Empire. Settlements kept burning down on the planet, and when investigating the burnt houses and bodies they happened upon a beatle that exploded in one of the investigates hands killing them. They requested aid from the Green Mage Society to help with the new creatures and they were surprised by their existence. They were not there during the last planet survey. They did what they could to study them.
Description
Size
The smallest was 1/2 an inch and the biggest was 2 inches among the ordinary Beatles.
The Queen is about a foot long and fertile males are 6 inches long and more like a worm which becomes part of the Queen when fertilizing them.
Coloring
Queens seem to be Black with golden stripes and light tan underneath when fertilized
Workers are usually brown with golden dots
Soldiers are bright red with orange stripes
The fertile males are just light tan
Lifespan and Reproduction
The Queen on record can live for 30 years and can keep reproducing with only one absorbed male.
The Soldiers can live for 10 years if they don't explode and 5 for Workers if they don't explode either.
Fertile males can go for 40 years shrinking over time until they are too small to fuse with a queen and starve to death.
Once a queen is fertilized after leaving the hive, she will dig under a Rustwood tree (occasionally other plants it eats) and lay the first worker eggs, and survive on the roots until the hive has enough workers and soldiers to get her more food. The eggs hatch into larvae a are feed by the other hive workers. They go into a pupa state and form into the beatle form and start to produce the incendiary liquids that they use to explode.
Behavior
The Bombardier Hive Beatle acts similarly to ants and bees in terms of social behavior. They are very aggressive toward other creatures and will crawl and fly onto them and explode which is the cause of many forest fires. The main reason any area they are found to become non-populated due to extermination of them is difficult. They eat plants, their favorite being RustWood trees, and will eat any dead animals that were burned to death. They are immune to fire despite their exploding tendency. The main drive of the hive is to protect and feed the queen and expand the hive.
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