The Hive had regimented its society much as its symbol, the humble honeybee, had. The beehive emblem, stark and yellow, was emblazoned on every piece of Hive equipment, clothing, even pressed into the food. Each settlement had reproduction carefully controlled to allow only the fittest to form the nevt generation of workers, who then toiled endlessly in fields and factories to provide for their fellows, for the young, and most importantly for the Queen.

There was little time for any individual activity–save for dance–and even less for pleasure, but it gave the Hive a great advantage in dealing with less regimented societies, and there were those who predicted that its yellow emblem would soon be stamped across the whole of the world.

But that was before the buzzing began. Before reports–impossible, cataclysmic reports–becan to flow in from the sentries. Before the streams of wounded, their proud black uniforms and yellow emblems in disarray, their skin swollen with welts. Before the skies of Hive Central began to darken.

Bees, it seemed, had learned of the society built in their imitation, in their mockery. And they were not pleased. It did not give them a buzz. Rather, it stung.

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