At a modest yet reasonable pace, the princes [i]were[/i] growing more mentally capable, and with that increased brainpower came something very unusual for insects...boredom. When faced with little to contemplate or do, they started to find things to occupy their time. Often this took the form of strange hobbies, like having the worker drones organize gathered sticks and pebbles by size or scour the riverside for pebbles of unusual colors. Sometimes it acted as a much more productive driving force, though. The thought of exploring the lands east of the forest and the central hive arose, and no sooner did it reach one restless prince's mind than he was rallying dozens of drones. Within an hour that prince was had launched the scouting expedition. To ensure that this group did not vanish into thin air as had that fateful group that ventured the other way into the grasslands, the prince was accompanied by mostly warrior drones and had made plans to send back small groups of messengers back at regular intervals.

Meanwhile, the prince that had been assigned to treat with the bees began attempting to explain the Hivemind's role in the creation of those new berry bushes, but the bee queen seemed to be well aware. Perhaps the drones that served her weren't as oblivious as they seemed. She brushed past the topic and kept pointing at the new bushes as well as their surrounding area, though the prince wasn't sure what to make of that. He in turn tried to express a receptiveness towards allowing the bees to drink the berry bushes' nectar (though he [i]did[/i] also at least try to solicit some sort of favor in return) but communication was difficult and after the better part of a day, the queen grew tired of the talk and retreated back into the beehive. The prince was brought back onto the ground where his bodyguards waited, and then he made his way back to the central hive.

A period of some heavy rains followed. Flooding killed many drones and damaged parts of both hives, as well as made it quite difficult for the drones to leave the hive in search of food or to patrol the borders. The bees were not seen either, and seemingly were waiting out the bad weather in their nests and consuming stored food. On the other side were the beetles, who didn't seem so disturbed by the rain at all. They maintained an active presence patrolling in the forest even as our own hivemind's warriors hunkered down in their small outposts or retreated back to the nests for shelter.

The newly mutated worker drones that possessed the capability to make the papery material proved quite valuable. By coating the most vital tunnels and chambers in the nests with their biological building material, they were able to stop large parts of the nests from caving in. Still, large parts of both nests [i]did[/i] collapse. That was the folly of living inside of dirt mounds.

The rain probably also explained why no word had come from the prince leading the eastward-bound scouting expedition; they too were likely rendered immobile by flooding, but unfortunately they probably had even less shelter than everyone else.