A few worker drones maintained a cautious presence near the bee colony that had encountered the wasp. They started planting flower and berry seedlings in as nonthreatening a manner as possible, but the bees there seemed to pay them very little attention. In fact, they've started evacuating their hive and seem to be in the process of trying to find a new place to move. We spoke to our bee allies, and while they too expressed horror and apprehension at he prospects of a nearby wasp nest (it seems that the bees and wasps are ancient enemies) they're almost as concerned that they'll now be facing even more competition for the resources in their territory if these other bees move closer.

Meanwhile, a small council of princes were placed in charge of overseeing further expansion. They ordered the establishment of a small hive close to the river's edge. To protect against flooding they built it on a small rise and kept most of the space above-ground, with minimal tunnels underneath and (as of now) no underground connection to the other two hives. In order to get the materials to build this great hollow mound of a nest, they had to excavate a sizable sandy pit nearby. The hope was to just leave it there in order to create a pool, but that's been met with some obstacles. Small puddles have been forming in it after the rain, but the sand underneath is porous and most of the water sinks down before long. Building an artificial pond might take some more work and cleverness!

Numerous scouts have been sent out to the southwest to search deeper into the forest for the wasp nest; however, several have gone missing, and the others kept trekking through forest until they came across a great body of water where the trees finally come to an end. It's obviously natural to suspect that the wasps were the culprits behind our scouts' disappearance, but in fairness, we never saw that happen and to date neither we nor the bees have even so much as seen a second wasp scout. In any case, we could continue sending these small scouting forces and perhaps suffer even more attrition, or we could consider blindly sending in an entire army with orders to seek and destroy. They'd probably stop being picked off one by one if we sent an army, but having a couple hundreds bugs rummaging around in the forest will probably destroy any element of surprise that we might have been able to gain if we could find the wasps before launching our attack.

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