Myrm's Antobiography - Chapter 8

My dear friends, welcome back to my story. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my life. It has certainly been full of colourful events, some of them have been good, some of them have been terrible beyond imaginings, but here I am. Survival is not a given. Survival is about making the right choices and living with those choices if we made them in error. Life is full of ups and downs and it is up to each and everyone of us to make the very best of it.
After the last terrible happenings within the colony, where I was challenged by another queen who wanted to take over the colony as her own, I made a promise to Mantriba my long time faithful assistant as she lay dieing, to atone for her death by creating the biggest colony the world had ever seen. So this is the story of how I did it.
I made the decision to start laying again, and lay I did. With every ounce of the strength I had in me I laid and laid and laid. Over the months I laid thousands of eggs. It was a gamble sure enough. It's always a fine balance between the number of workers you have, the food available, and the speed in which you lay the eggs. I must have got the balance right because just before the winter arrived I had managed to grow the colony to its original size. It was hard work, and my worker daughters were all on the edge of their physical limits, as was I. It was a good job that it was now the winter hibernation period.
On waking from our slumber in the spring, the push for growth began again in Ernest. I began to lay eggs again, and also asked the searcher workers to find us foods with high sugar. I felt the need to energize my colony, and sugars are what gives us this energy. Thankfully the workers that had been out scouting for these sugars had found somewhere with a massive amount of sugars. It was probably some form of discarded human food, they are always full of sugar and very much cherished by us.
Once we had all fed from this store, we were all on a high. The nest was truly awake and fully active and we were then able to continue to build up our stores of protein foods. The growth of nest continued throughout that year until the winter came when we all hibernated again waiting for the spring.
The new spring came around and the colony was the largest it had ever been. It was time to lay a new batch of eggs, the ones that would become new Queens, and new Kings.
The time came once again for the Queens and Kings to fly the nest once more, but this was special. To our knowledge it was the largest number to ever have flown the nest. We had so many that it took 3 separate nuptial flights for them all to leave. After the flights had taken place, I finally succumbed to the huge amount of energy that had been required of me. All of us were tired, even exhausted, and rested for nearly a week.
Some time later I was in my chamber resting and finally I was able to inwardly smile to myself. At last my life long ambition had been realised, and my faithful daughter Mantriba's death had not been in vain. The colony was massive with a number of nuptial flights under our belt. We had survived floods, wars and even another queen trying to take my place. I was elated. I had led my colony to this position as I had been born to do.
Even though I knew that this was something that all colonies faced. The dangers of life itself are all around us, but the struggle for survival is not insurmountable. The struggle for survival can be overcome with sheer hard work, perseverance and dedication, dedication is what Mantriba had shown me, and even though she was gone, I knew that my losses had not been in vain. The colony was strong and continued to grow, and continued to create new colonies through its birth and survival of its Queens and Kings...my daughters and my sons.
That was the story of my life, I thank you all my friends for reading this my biography. I Hope you enjoyed it. Farewell.
The END