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 Post Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 5:11 am 
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"Blood bees will certainly go after a human if one bothers them," says Sir Bevier. "And if honey is that disgusting to make, then I don't think I want to know about it."

--------------

The group heads back to the ship for suitable supplies, and Arkady goes to ask Zalasbra about blood bees while they're there.

"There are certain herbs," advises Zalasbra, "that, when burned, will produce a smoke that's lethal to small insects. Pile them up near the hives, burn them, and try not to breathe in the smoke yourselves. It might be safest to burn down any nearby trees as well, just to make sure you get them all."

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 Post Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 6:58 pm 
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"We'll be sure to kill or capture all of the ones in the area," Felix says as he packs everything that was prepared, including the space suits, a couple of clear plastic boxes for scooping hives up wholesale, smoke grenades, flares, poles and rope. Some other essentials as well, in case more is needed. "So it's a natural insecticide, or just poison in general? That plant must have interesting properties, we'll have to get a hold of some for study... Though for now we'll probably just set the hives on fire and burn them out."

If David or Vanderbilt are available, Felix will request they make some special containment units for insects in a lab so studies can be conducted on interesting specimens. If nothing else, learning how to efficiently repel or kill these creatures would be great but if they have any uses that would prove beneficial to the colony that'd also be great.

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 Post Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 7:07 pm 
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Nate walks by, a flamethrower on his back.

"I got you covered. Man, It's been ages since I got to use one of these things."

He pauses for a moment.

"Although, if you really want to use insecticides, I could probably mix something up. Part of my NBC training covered how chemical weapons are made so we could tell if a chemical plant was making them. You'd be surprised how easy it is to turn a ferilizer plant into a weapons factory.

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 Post Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 5:06 am 
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"It is mildly poisonous in general," says Zalasbra. "The smoke will not kill you, unless you deliberately breathe in a great amount of it, but it will make you ill for a few days. Blood bees are smaller, and thus require a significantly smaller dose to be lethal. Fire will also kill the swarms, but they will tend to flee it, and it may not reach the interiors of the hives; the herbal smoke will be more sure to kill the entire swarm."

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 Post Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 8:04 am 
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Arkady asks "You said 'burn the trees.' Do they often build hives in trees? And what do they normally eat? Do they go from flower to flower and make honey, live on blood, or both?"

It occurs to Arkady that they may need a listening device to hunt down hidden nests without burning down the neighborhood...

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 Post Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 9:51 am 
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"Trees and other vertical objects," says Zalasbra. "I have heard of a swarm building on the side of a house; in that case, the house was burnt down. They will visit flowers often, and they will kill and drain animals that wander too close, including humans. They do make a form of reddish honey - including in it blood, including human blood if they can get it - though I have never heard of anyone attempting to harvest it as one might with other bees. They are dangerous; it would be safest to destroy every known hive."

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 Post Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 7:40 pm 
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"Yeah, but it'll be easier to learn from them if we have an intact hive with live members to study. So long as we have special containment protocols in place it'll be fine."

Though it'll probably be better to ask permission, first... With that in mind, Felix approaches the Captain and asks his thoughts after explaining to him what the locals know about the creatures and the possible value in studying an intact hive.

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 Post Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 9:20 pm 
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To Zalasbra. "We should have a talk about plants after dinner. I'm an herbalist and a healer, and I've been meaning to track down someone who knows about the local flora. In the meantime, if you could describe that herb you were talking about, I'll see if I can find some on our way back out to the hives."

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 Post Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 1:17 pm 
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"I will admit," muses Zalasbra, "that blood bees are certainly very poorly studied, largely due to the danger... if they could be contained safely in some way..."

The Captain's comments on Felix's proposal are short and to the point. "How sure are you that this will be safe for our colony?"

Zalasbra is happy to provide Nate with a description of the herbs involved - apparently there are two or three of them necessary, and when burned together they produce a smoke that's particularly lethal to insects but only mildly lethal to mammals - and seems happy to have a long talk about herbs with Nate later, perhaps this evening after supper.

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 Post Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 11:48 pm 
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"I can't give any sort of 100% answer. This is a dangerous world and all of our prep work could be for naught," Felix says. "However, by all reports from our local Knight and Wizard, these insect are little more than Vampiric Killer Bees. Dangerous in a swarm, but still ordinary insects. The box I'll be catching them in will be airtight. All we'd have to do would be to wait for most of them to suffocate out, and the small handful of survivors can be stored and studied in refrigerated conditions where they will hibernate. Even if a small few get loose, without a queen they shouldn't pose any more of a problem than a mosquito with a particularly nasty bite. If I think they might be too dangerous to handle, though, I'll be sure to kill every last one of them and be done with it instead of just fooling around."

Felix continues.

"The economic, strategic, and preventative advantages we could gain by studying them likely outweigh the risks, though. If we can learn to domesticate them, a possible source of food if they store honey in a way that's sterile. Even if they don't, they could serve as a potential deterrent to other monsters such as the Manticore and the Cockatrice that were in the area before. If we can't domesticate them, we'll at least learn more about their physiology and behavior so we can more effectively find and kill them in the future."

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 Post Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 7:52 am 
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Arkady shakes his head. "If we are going to be considering domesticating them then we need entire hives to study. Unless their workers can lay eggs, once we kill the queen all we are doing is an autopsy. They did studies on poisonous or diseased insects back home, how they contained them should be in the computer. If we are taking basic care, and working away from the ship, then the greatest risk is to the one studying."

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 Post Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 3:56 pm 
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The Captain looks back and forth between Arkady and Felix for a moment before speaking. "I want the two of you to figure out suitable safety precautions," he says, "and don't come back to me until you both agree that the precautions are suitable."

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 Post Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 1:30 pm 
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Arkady turns to Felix. "One of us talks to the doctor and the locals, the other looks in the computer, and then we get together to design a secure hive for them?"

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 Post Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 7:02 pm 
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"Any hive we build to keep our colonists safe will be useless without knowing the exact measurements of the bees themselves. It'd be easier overall to just scoop up all the hives we can and suffocate them down to more manageable numbers, hoping a queen is one of the few that survive. We can make sure to gather data from the hives we do destroy so we know exactly how to build a hive that a queen can't escape from and propagate further. Though rather than trying to domesticate them right away it's probably best to find a way to control them and make them safe to handle over actually trying to use them, though that'd be a job for the scientists on the ship after we've contained them properly."

Felix sighs.

"But yeah. Someone can study the computers looking for proper insect containment methods while others look for mechanical solutions. That seems a good enough place to start."

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 Post Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 7:27 pm 
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"If the natives don't know how big they are, I can put on a suit and go collect a few of the dead ones from under the hive. It does not sound like the birds would be living long enough to eat them." He looks thoughtful and adds "I tended bees a few times when I was a boy, helping on a local farm for the harvest. Maybe it is making me more optimistic than I should be. But I think we should be taking a hive or two intact before we burn the rest."

If Felix doesn't object, Arkady will go question the locals about the size of these bees (and failing that, find some beekeeping gear or a vac suit in the ship and go collect a few dead ones).

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