--
The hum of the hive mind thrummed at the back of her head like a buzzing sound.
She could hear everything from the loudest to the faintest buzz of her children. The intricate web of the hive, the way it connects them to her and vice versa, and the way it connects them to each other.
All of it flows through her. She sits at the absolute center of it all. So long as she's there, the hive exists.
But the hive mind, as powerful as it is, has its own limitations too. Distance being one of them.
The further away her children were from her, the fainter their voices became. If they went far enough, it's even possible for them to be disconnected entirely from the hive. And for simple-minded bugs, that's no different from certain death.
One of the ways they could remedy this is by deliberately expanding their network by stationing bugs whose sole purpose of existence was to relay messages.
