One of the gigantic beetles received its tribute at a location that left it almost perfectly between the satellite nest and one of the lost bunkers. Having selected that particular one as an ideal target for capture, we waited for the next beetle raid on the berry bushes, offering some token resistance so as to throw off any suspicion. The raiders began making their escape, but lo and behold, the gigantic beetle was leaving the treeline and coming toward [i]them[/i] this time, chased by a host of our own warriors that had emerged from under that one bunker behind and moved to flank. They'd quickly overwhelmed and killed the bunker's occupants before rushing the giant beetle, who had no safe direction to flee. Moving into the berry bush clearing brought the beetle closer to the raiders that could protect it, but that maneuver also left it completely surrounded as the berry bushes' guards as well as reinforcements from inside the satellite hive now had the monstrous beetle completely surrounded.

Its monstrous size allowed it to kill or maim several warriors. Some worker drones on hand helped by spitting sticky globules at the giant beetle (as well as any others that got too close) and eventually the giant beetle succumbed to a combination of warriors pinning her down, adhesive spit awkwardly making her limbs clumsy as they stuck to one another and to the dirt and leaves around, and finally paralytic venom as a few warriors were able to find vulnerable spots in her armor. The now-helpless beetle was picked up and slowly carried back toward the hive as a prisoner, and as predicted, other beetles from the treeline saw this and tried to charge to her rescue. It was in that time, where they had fully exposed themselves and ran out of their spots in a disorganized scramble, that the warriors underneath all of the other bunkers and ambush points burrowed upward and struck.

Sure, there were enough of the beetles rushing to save the giant one that they managed to kill and drive off the warriors holding it captive, but it was still so thoroughly incapacitated that it couldn't even move, much less try to escape with the would-be rescuers. As more and more of our kind emerged from behind and from the nest and from hiding spots in the upper reaches of the berry bush, seemingly [i]everywhere[/i], the chaotic battlefield started to devolve into a massacre. At least two hundred of the beetles were slain or captured around the clearing. A few managed to escape, but the princes led the warriors in pursuit. We followed them back to their nesting site and continued pressing the attack there, storming the leaf pile and fallen log. We experienced much greater casualties there as we fought a cornered and determined foe and no longer had the advantage of surprise and overwhelmingly superior coordination that we'd had in the previous surprise attack, but in the end it was still a victory.

Upon raiding the beetles' nesting site, we discovered numerous hatching ideas filled with countless eggs and occupied by the giant beetles. It would seem that those large ones were simply the females, and the smaller beetles males that would try to curry favor by bringing offerings of food. Well, that was one mystery solved.

With dozens of males and a few females captive, studying the beetles was easier and we began to understand the basics of how they communicate. Maddeningly enough, they seem to be inferior organisms that lack a hivemind. Unlike the bees and us, each beetle runs around trying with its own thoughts trying further its own goals, and though they live together in communities and do care about the welfare of the collective, they don't truly become [i]one[/i] with the collective. They lack unity and coordination, and that was ultimately what left them so disorganized in their battles against us and ultimately caused their downfall.

Now some questions arise, like what we should do to all the live beetles and eggs that we captured, whether we should move into this newly opened territory that had been theirs, and whether we should try to search for the inevitable few that would have managed to escape.