Ideas in Form — Narrative
The leader. The superior. The monarch. The architect. The mother. She holds many roles and operates with a holistic mindset. During autumn, she secures a suitable mate (the drone). Fertilization commences. By winter, she seeks shelter and rests. It is during winter when true calm and leisure occurs. Come early spring, the queen scouts for the site. She drafts initial plans and sets intentions for the coming season. Expansion begins. The initial groundwork is laid out and she is ready to birth the offspring. Thirty days later, the first cohort of workers emerge...
The worker is vital to the community and contributes to the majority of the population. She is loyal, focused, meticulous, and relentless. In the early days, she sets out to forage raw materials for the project and food for the young. For a majority of her life, she is producing and expanding the project — using her body constantly to convert raw-material into end-product. As she ages, she graduates to the roles of caregiver and defender. Messaging and high-level communication are delivered through the interdependent relationship between the worker and the young. By early fall, the worker is no longer needed and reaches retirement.
The drone is supportive, emotional, a romantic. When the drone is young, he supports the workers as they expand, forage, and care. Once he becomes of age and reaches maturity, he embarks on his greatest task: the drone must leave the community and is deployed to find a new queen to mate with. After he matches and mates with a queen, his body and presence is no longer needed. He faces retirement.
The youth are the receivers and senders of food and information. They rely on the adult workers and drones to tend to their needs. In return, their bodies produce nutrient-rich byproducts and transfer announcements from the queen via pheromones and chemical-communication.