Winterbee

Scientific name: Nix Vesparum
Native to the The Black Forest. Winterbees are a very uncommon find. While their honey is worth its weight in gold, hunting their honey is one of the most dangerous professions in the world. Most hunters don't survive their first hunt. Still the promise of getting rich fast guarantees that there will always be those who would try their luck.

Description

Winterbees are winged insects closely related to regular bees and wasps. Their bodies are almost fully white with light blue strips and translucent eyes that give off a blue hue. Their bodies glow in the dark a faint blue light. The workers wingspan can grow up to 10 cm and the body can grow up to 4 cm, the soldiers grow 1.5 times bigger than that of the workers, and with the queen growing up to 2 times larger.
All winterbees have a large stinger, which is their most dangerous feature, despite the insect is not poisonous. Through its stinger, the bee can inject a super-cooled liquid from the puncture, freezing any liquids or tissue it comes in contact with. While one sting is not necessarily life threatening for a human, a swarm of winterbees can freeze a person to death in mere moments.
Winterbees produce a special honey with similar properties to the super-cooled liquid that they produce from their stinger. The honey is extremely resistant to temperature changes. The insect dies when exposed to temperatures above zero, however, they use the honey they make during winter months to survive through the hot summers.
Winterbees store their honey in hives that they erect from densely packed snow during the winter months. When temperatures begin to rise, they transfer the honey into underground burrows. If a hive uses all of its honey before next winter, they die out. This naturally occurs on colonies that reach age of 5 to 9 years, effectively preventing winterbees from becoming a dominant force in the ecosystem. The cold from a large colony of winterbees can cause serious damage to the roots and plants, near to its burrows. Therefore an inexplicable decay in the undergrowth of The Black Forest and low ambient temperature is a strong indicator that there are winterbees hibernating.

Reproduction

During spring the melting hives give birth to new adolescent queens that seek out honeybee males. After successfully cross-breeding with a regular bee species, the adolescent queen behaves like a regular honey bee, collecting pollen until late spring and then making a burrow for itself. The adolescent queen enters hibernation state and while most become adult queens by winter, there are cases where the adolescent queen can hibernate over a winter and wait up for a decade before becoming active. The exact mechanisms of this are an unknown, and it has made efforts to domesticate the bee an almost impossible task.

Snow-Honey

The honey produced by winterbees, also known as snow-honey is sought after by both nobility and alchemists throughout the realm. It has a much more refined taste compared to regular honey, and its ability to cool things down fascinates scholars. Over consumption of snow-honey may lead to hypothermia or even death. It is a popular cooling method among the nobility in arid hot regions. And its usage in alchemy is irreplaceable.
Snow-honey is often carefully extracted with the help of torches and flames. However, care is needed as if too much damage is dealt to the hive, the bees may overcome their aversion towards fire and sacrifice their lives to protect the hive. This often results in the deaths of the intruders.