Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire

Workharder jolted.

"Yes, Mother-Queen! The white-flower peas… We mostly grow them for nectar. There's plenty of food in our stores to replace the loss."

"But what about other plants? They might evolve just as suddenly," I said. "We must be ready for our own famines… In the past two years, our population has increased dramatically. If our food production suddenly tanks, for how long will all these girls live on existing stores of food?"

Workharder frowned and leafed through the documents lying in front of her, then looked me in the eye.

"This is… a hard question. Our population grows every day, Father. But give me a few hours, and I will make an estimate. Should not be a problem!"

"Yeah, do that. In the meanwhile…" I turned to Tabletina. "I want you to update the lists of dangerous plants. We also need to more thoroughly test every new batch of seeds we prepare for planting."

Tabletina nodded.

"I've prepared ahead of time the list of common defence mechanisms of plants compiled from observations of our scouts on this continent and in the Vardish Empire. But, Father, most of these only appear on mature plants. The testing—"

"If we test all of these seed batches before planting them, all our harvests will be delayed for several weeks at least. At worst—months!" Workharder exclaimed, pulling her nose out of the sheet she was writing calculations on. "This will mess up the farming schedule, which will affect the size of harvests."

'It will be especially bad for humans,' Agent Whisper added. "They are dependent on these crops more than we are."

I shook my head.

"Delays are bad, but only if we delay all crop plantings at once. I'm sure that if we implement this thorough testing more gradually, it will go smoother. At least, a new famine shouldn't begin because of our actions. If it begins because of plant evolution…" I sneered at the thought.

Fucking plants. Workharder was right—evolving like that was really ungrateful of them. I was under the impression that most gods of human farming crops were in alliance with the God of Humanity.

Perhaps they weren't. Perhaps the God of Humanity left their species no choice with humans' use of selective breeding. In this case, I would even understand the plants' desire for revenge.

But this won't stop me from burning all poisonous plants!

"We must also make sure that both we and humans have alternate food sources," Amby said, tapping her elegant claws on the table in thought. "Our borders always have plenty of meat from hostile creatures, but what about our inner territories?"

Workharder raised a hand and began listing, folding her fingers as she went:

"We breed several aphid and slug species for their products. It brings a lot of food, but they also eat plants, so if these get venomous, they will die. Then, we catch fish-beasts in several rivers. Those are massive and don't eat plants, but their catches are not very predictable. Humans have it better here. Finally, there are some mushrooms that we are growing in caves and former mines—are those plants?"

"They are," I confirmed. "Hm. This all sounds like we need to catch more fish… I wonder if it will be possible to survive on fish alone."

Bloodhero suddenly interjected, shaking her head.

"They are fish-beasts, Father. The Beemarine escorts of mechas who build and repair their traps get into fights with them all the time. These creatures evolved just like plants. Any day they can become venomous as well."

I sighed.

"Yeah, I thought so, too. And if it's not venom, they will come up with another way to become inedible. Even aphids and slugs can suddenly decide that they don't want to be our cattle anymore and evolve."

What a shitty situation to be in. It was really a wonder that nothing evolved so dramatically until today. Perhaps it was because the gods had a sense that if a single harvest of crops or a brood of cattle evolved, they would just get killed by bees!

"Do we *really* need to eat, though, Father?" Researchina asked. "Wouldn't it be possible for us as a species to evolve past this need? Hardbees and Beehounds already barely need to eat at all with their metabolism and Beehounds' photosynthesis gene."

"Food is still necessary for the growth of our larvae," Amby replied. "We can't avoid it entirely."

"She's right. Besides, eating is too good to just abandon… We also don't have the gene points for it right now, and even if we had, updated morphotypes won't change the existing bees. Instead, we must diversify our food sources as much as possible! This way, even if some species suddenly evolve, at least we will have spares."

Amby nodded.

"This is very sensible, Necty. Bees can eat so many things, but we avoid some of them… Like grass. It's not delicious, but it's abundant and there are countless kinds of it."

"Yes, and not just on the ground, but also growing on tops of the living mountains," I added.

The rest of the Empire Council was about complex calculations about diversifying our food supply—and that of humans, as much as possible.

Somewhere in the middle of this, Workharder delegated the food estimate calculations to one of her subordinates. Before the Council session ended, we got the answer.

If no food was produced in the Bee Empire from now on, then bees will be able to keep eating for six months, while humans will be able to keep eating for four. Assuming that they didn't touch each other's food supply.

This was less than I expected. Then again, even in the worst famines, people foraged for food in the wild, took it from someone else, or just died. These calculations were made with the thought that the population was growing, not shrinking.

I hoped that the program of food diversification prepared by the council would help prevent this catastrophe from happening.

In the next few months, I got more reports about plant evolutions…