Wasps

Wasps — from standard paper wasps to yellow jackets, lacewings, and scorpion hornets — are found throughout Odo Kas, but they occupy a unique spot in Moru Kel. Aside from the invasive wasps responsible for the infestation of the Scars, wasps help drive the agricultural engine of the orchards.

The most common, and most important, wasps in the city are the bronze-bellied wasps that pollinate the majority of the city’s orchards. Sent by Pashan, they ensure that the trees are productive and fruitful, and that young saplings sprout to replace those that grow old and exhausted. Each grove of trees has its own recognizable strain of wasps who live symbiotically with it: skilled Orcharders can often identify which kinds of trees a particular wasp cohabitates with based solely on the patterns of the insect’s stripes and wing lacing.

Perhaps unique among fauna, bronze-bellies engage in pupal copulation. A larva will emerge from the fruit it was born in pregnant and ready to repeat the cycle immediately. They are careful not to mate with sibling insects, and almost universally move from one tree to another before depositing their eggs in fallen fruit.

Bronze-bellies are non-predatory; their sting can be painful but is only life-threatening to a few unfortunate individuals who have a weakness to bee venom. Predicting who will have this weakness seems impossible: it appears at random, with no discernable familial pattern. Dwarves seem to lack this weakness completely, but otherwise it appears across all the sentient peoples of the continent. The sting is otherwise moderately painful, less so than that of the northern honey bee, but like all wasps they can sting repeatedly.

Honey Production

The most notable distinction between the bronze-bellies and many other wasps is their production of large quantities of honey. This honey is harvested by Orcharders and others, providing a nutritious source of food as well as allowing the production of the city’s signature meads. The wasp’s honey — much like their bellies — is a rich reddish-bronze in color, and has a slightly spicy hint compared to the blander sweetness of bee honey.

Each grove’s wasps have different flavors, which often take on subtle characteristics of the fruit the wasps are born to. The resulting variations are of great importance to the city’s mead makers, who mix carefully-guarded blends of different honey strains to produce a signature flavor of mead.

They prefer large, flat areas to build their nests, so wooden platforms are constructed by keepers to encourage colonies to settle near them. Even a slightly elevated platform substantially protects a colony from unseasonal flooding, thereby lestening the impact of floods on food production in the city.