Vespiquen (Combee)
Overview
Vespiquen are more often found on farms than on the battlefield or trail. The species' instinct is to claim a stationary territory and slowly take command of it. Traveling does not mesh well with these desires. Vespiquen are also the de facto leaders of their hive and are not used to taking orders or cooperating with other species. Getting them to battle regularly is a lengthy process that requires regular maintenance of the hive.
Traveling trainers are encouraged to use another bug with easier care requirements; forretress is bulkier and araquanid is a stronger special attacker. Hobbyists with a fair amount of land may find vespiquen to be a good source of honey and a strange companion. Those looking to own vespiquen should know that stationary hives are only allowed on Akala.
Physiology
Combee and vespiquen are classified as dual bug- and flying-types. They were formerly classified as bug- and psychic-types before it became clear that the so-called hive mind is not based on telepathy.
Combee are a combination of three warrior drones. Workers construct solid layers of honeycomb armor around them. This process triggers a flash evolution that results in two warriors losing their stingers and the wings moving to the side of the combee. They use weak aerokinesis to keep their heavy armor and three bodies aloft with one set of wings.
Vespiquen's head is covered in a thick layer of chitin armor. Large mandibles extend from the mouth. A single pair of relatively thick and powerful limbs is used for holding onto trees and carrying objects. Vespiquen's lower body segment is roughly conical. Like the rest of the body it is coated in black and yellow stripes. The lower body contains an elaborate honeycomb structure with several different chambers. These are used for nursing the next generation of combee.
Vespiquen can grow up to two meters tall and weigh up to thirty kilograms.
Behavior
It was once believed that vespiquen dominated combee by either fear or telepathy. Neither is true. Instead, vespiquen use powerful pheromones to gain the obedience of their subjects. This obedience is not absolute, either. All drones are loyal to the hive. If the vespiquen is badly injured and her pheromones begin to weaken the combee will not hesitate to kill her and repurpose her body mass into a new vespiquen (see Evolution). The vespiquen will make no move to resist as she also wants the best for the hive, whether or not she leads it.
Vespiquen find a central, easily defensible location. They will then latch onto a tree limb and stay there for weeks at a time. The bulk of the hive's work is done by drones. The largest drones are combee and there can be up to 1000 in a hive. Hundreds or thousands of larvae and small drones also inhabit the vespiquen's lower body. Builder drones build new vespiquen and maintain or improve the structures in the vespiquen's lower segment. Nurse drones make royal jelly and distribute honey, pollen, and jelly to the larvae. Worker drones organize the collected resources and create honey.
Combee scout the area and collect pollen, nectar, and water to make honey with. They will also defend their territory against any threats to the hive, real or perceived. Individual combee are not particularly strong; a fit human can power through their bites and stings and kill them easily enough. A swarm of several hundred combee falling upon a single target is usually enough to down it. If this seems unlikely to work the combee can form a tight wall, stingers facing towards the enemy. This deters most would-be attackers. Vespiquen are the final line of defense.
Combee are not particularly intelligent or long-lived, but the hive still has a long memory. Long-lasting chemical markers are used to send signals to future combee, old combee mentor younger ones on the surrounding land, and vespiquen can provide instructions when more complex thought or deep memory is required.
The hierarchy and division of labor in a hive is very rigid. Every unit has a single purpose they fulfill. Deviation is extremely rare and immediately punished.
Husbandry
Vespiquen are best suited to life in a meadow of flowers with one or two large trees. The combee will patrol the area and harvest pollen and nectar before bringing it back to the vespiquen. Humans and pokémon that do not compete for resources or disturb the hive are tolerated.
Honey is best harvested under a cloud of sleep spores. Doing otherwise invites disaster, even with protective gear. Vespiquen usually have the good sense to hang tight or drop to the ground when they get drowsy.
Trainers seeking a friendship with their vespiquen are better off offering honey than taking it. After coming to associate a human with food the vespiquen may become curious about or protective of them. Vespiquen have above average intelligence for bugs and can be taught to play simple games. Continuous honey donations will be required or the combee may decide that their queen's eccentricities are a threat to the hive.
Traveling trainers wishing to use a vespiquen are advised to use a queen removed from her hive. Vespiquen only needs builder, nurse, and worker drones as well as a few combee. More combee are unnecessary and likely to cause more problems than they solve. Unfortunately, vespiquen will continuously attempt to make combee until it becomes clear that only a certain number are allowed. This can take months to settle in. Vespiquen are surprisingly curious and thoughtful creatures when freed from the constraints of running a full hive. It must be reinforced that the best way to get food is to socialize with and battle for their trainer.
Water, pollen, and nectar can be provided directly. Providing royal jelly and honey instead allows the vespiquen to shift drone production away from workers and towards builders and warriors.
Training of combee without a vespiquen is not advised. It can be done if the trainer is willing to use a perfume made with vespiquen pheromones, but combee tend not to understand the desires of their "queen." Their primitive thought processes can lead them to attack anything that gets close or dart away for hours or even days at a time while they map out the surrounding area. If there is ever a lapse in the perfume coverage the combee may decide that their queen is defective and must be put down.
Vespiquen are not well suited for pokéballs as they tend to exclude the many weak pokémon and non-pokémon that live within them. Bee balls can be used to store and transport vespiquen for short periods of time, but they are rather expensive and difficult to come by.
Combee stings can be fatal to trainers with a strong allergic reaction. It is recommended that prospective vespiquen owners make sure they do not have a severe allergy beforehand.
Illness
Combee are not built to last long. The average combee dies within a year. There is very little research into helping combee recover from more-than-superficial injuries. Pokémon Center nurses may decline to try anything more than a chansey egg offering. Even private specialists may not be able to do much.
Vespiquen injuries are better understood. It is important to treat them at the first sign of trouble, as there is a very real risk that the hive will turn on their queen during this time. Even with the best medicine vespiquen still age and their pheromones weaken. They will be killed and their biomass repurposed to form the next vespiquen. This is how vespiquen die in both the wild and captivity: it can only be delayed, not prevented.
Evolution
A few larvae are fed exclusively royal jelly. These go on to be princesses. Princess drones regularly seek out and kill competitors for the throne; it is rare that more than one or two are active at a given time. When the vespiquen dies the strongest princess will eat its way into the brain through the old queen's eyes. Once inside a flash evolution will occur that "resurrects" the vespiquen. Damage is healed proportional to the number of drones sacrificed.
On very rare occasions a combee will evolve without matricide. An aging vespiquen with a very large swarm may send a princess and a large company of combee and other drones out to a new territory. Many of the combee will be sacrificed and their energy used to fuel a flash evolution.
Evolving combee in captivity requires either sacrificing a vespiquen or owning one with a massive hive. Trainers are encouraged to start with a vespiquen rather than a combee.
Battling
Vespiquen are best off battling as they would in the wild: with hundreds of combee at their size. This is rarely allowed. On one notable occasion a ranked trainer's prize aggron was killed after an amateur with a vespiquen sent a small army of drones into her windpipe and caused her to choke to death. The Brockton Incident, as it is called in competitive circles, is widely cited when limiting vespiquen to only non-combee drones in battle.
Without a full swarm vespiquen function as bulky zoning fighters. Vespiquen can take a hit and use the sacrifices of drones to heal themselves. In the meantime they can strike back with either energy attacks or the rest of the hive. This tends to be a very hit or miss strategy: some pokémon can't cope with small attacks from dozens of angles. Others can light themselves on fire to kill all surrounding bugs instantly. Some are functionally invulnerable to combee bites. These matches are a struggle for vespiquen, but crafty play with utility moves and energy attacks can turn them into victories.
Combee should not be battled with outside of very low stakes matches against the likes of newborn pokémon and caterpie.
Curiously, salazzle has been found to hard counter vespiquen. The amphibian's pheromones are more potent than the vespiquen's own and can confuse the combee, even driving them to attack their queen. Some trainers have taken to applying salazzle or vespiquen pheromones to their pokémon before battling a known vespiquen trainer. The tactic is currently legal but frowned upon as unsporting.
Acquisition
Vespiquen have a habit of killing competing pollinators in their range. The few vespiquen that have managed to escape from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century honey farms have mostly been eradicated. The remaining ones are designated as high priority for removal by the DNR. For decades a group of amateur and professional insect keepers lobbied for the right to import more vespiquen, or at least to capture and own the ones already in Alola. The DNR agreed under pressure from the Governor. Vespiquen farms can only be located on Akala, where the local ribombee population is already nearly eradicated and what remains of Akala Meadow needs pollinators.
There are a handful of wild vespiquen in Alola but wild capture is not recommended. Captive specimens can be purchased from insect breeders and larger farm supply stores. Ownership requires a Class IV license. Combee require a Class I license to own individually. Acquisition of individual combee is not recommended.
Breeding
Vespiquen can reproduce sexually or asexually. Asexual reproduction produces halploid male drones. These drones are fed royal jelly for the first three days of life and then moved on to honey and pollen. Males will grow up to serve as builders and combee. Females are diploid. Most are weened off of royal jelly after three days, causing them to become sterile. These become nurse and worker drones. A small proportion of females are kept on a diet of royal jelly, keeping their sterility and putting them in line for evolution. Vespiquen are constantly mating and producing eggs. If breeding were to ever stop it would spell disaster for the hive. Selectively breeding vespiquen is not currently possible.
Subspecies
Standard, or continental, vespiquen are native to temperate Eurasia. These are the vespiquen found in Alola.
Desert vespiquen live in North Africa, the Arabian Penninsula, and portions of the Gobi Desert and Hindu Kush. They have also been introduced to Australia. These vespiquen build underground tunnel systems, complete with a large chamber for the queen. The queen clings to the top of this chamber. She is usually hibernating. When rain falls and the chamber starts to fill with water, the queen will use her relatively great strength to climb to the surface. She will bring her nurse drones out of stasis and begin to rapidly breed. Her offspring will pollinate the plants growing in the temporary bloom. When the desert again begins to dry they will rebuild the tunnel system, gather all of the plant matter they can find as food for the vespiquen during the dry months or years, and then the drones will die. The vespiquen will go back into hibernation underground.
The dynamax vespiquen is less a species and more a single individual with an interesting niche. The high concentration of Galar Particles on a small island near the Isle of Armor allows for a vespiquen to stay near constantly dynamaxed. Her many, many combee pollinate all of the plants on the Isle of Armor and bring back pollen and nectar. The honey the vespiquen produces has strange properties related to dynamax and gigantamax. It can only be obtained by killing the vespiquen and causing it to revert to a normal size. The hive goes dormant during this time. A princess will become queen within a few hours. She will immediately dynamax and the cycle will continue. Killing the vespiquen is perfectly legal with the permission of the local government.
The dynamax vespiquen technically goes extinct while its honey is harvested. This makes it one of the only pokémon subspecies to not only revive itself from extinction, but to do it regularly.