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Lacunalithops dexter Size Variation Example — Description

An example of the range of sizes the bee people can come in. Size is a factor of whether they got full nutrition as grubs and how long they were fed royal jelly. Nine is at the extreme small end, effectively starved as a grub resulting in a much smaller adult. El and Threeda are at the large end of the spectrum for workers. If they'd been fed any more royal jelly they might have been small worker-like queens instead of merely large workers. Amber Rust is the natural extreme, an actual queen bee who received royal jelly throughout development. Seizy is the natural default size for workers.

These variations can be deliberate or accidental. Some hives create the larger workers to protect the hive for example, or during bad times they might raise the small workers to keep the population up rather than raise fewer but stronger normal sized workers. Or this could happen accidentally, through desperation in a hive where this isn't routine.

This often dates individuals to moments in time. Small individuals being walking remnants of a famine, the bulk of large warriors a reminder of lasting tension with another hive.

Originally drawn in 2017

Photoshop CC 2015