A quick view at the Bees of Flatland
here depicted: a Square man looking at a few bees, among them a Queen (the largest) and a drone (curved beak/stinger). There is also a wasp (maybe more appropiately a hornet? not sure on the name) which is larger and has three spikes at its back. On the far side is a Linear Woman for size reference.
Bees and wasps are the main pollinators in Flatland. Though their acute stingers seem dangerous, their main purpose is actually to be narrow enough to fit inside of a flower.
here depicted: A flower, characterized by a stem supporting two petals. Each petal (though it can't be seen sorry) has little hairs with pollen. Inside of the flower is a chamber with nectar. A bee is sipping up the nectar! Some nectar drops can be seen inside of its two stomachs.
Bees are the main focus of this post.
In Flatland, they are mistakenly referred to as being mainly male, with the queen instead called the king, the juvenile reproductive members who travel away from the hive being called princes, and the drones being referred to as the females, etc. This is actually wrong, and similarly to Spaceland and Planiturth bees, these are a mostly female species, with males only being useful for fertilizing the queens.
Drones or male bees are characterized by their extremely thin (line-thin) probo-stinger (mix of proboscis and stinger!), which is also curved. This is because of the Queen's reproductive organ's structure. It also helps them get rid of dead drones- after mating, a drone will instantly or near-instantly die, and another drone will stab him with his probostinger, pull him out and then get his own business done.
The queen can store huge amounts of sperm, as you can see the storage organ takes around a fourth of her body. She is also, unlike other bees, able to digest the perimeter of other animals. This is generally restricted to eating her dead mates.
On the note of digesting things, all bees have two stomachs. One is the private stomach, which is the one that synthesizes their meals for themselves, and the other is a public stomach, where they store nectar either to bring back to the hive to store in a cell, or to feed other workers, the queen, or the brood through a process called trophallaxis.
Well, there is an exception to this, and it is drones. Drones are useless for everything that doesn't involve mating, and only have their private stomach. They don't even have more than a tiny fragment of a brain.
Bees, like those in our world, have their caste system based on the reproductive role of an individual, along with a division of labor among the sterile workers, usually dependent on their age. Some clean up the cells and hive, some collect nectar, and some build the cells. They can manage to do all of this with nearly no brain!
The way bees navigate the world is based on highly developed sense of smell and Feeling, like a vast majority of animals.
Other than Irregularity and dimness, another characteristic of most animals in Flatland is the lack of eye. Their facial organ is instead usually just a mouth or also packed with extremely smell-sensitive cells. In my interpretation of Flatland, there are no hairs or cilia, except for in some animals.
More will be said soon, especially focusing on wasps, their relationship to bees, and some other dangerous beings.
