Buzzer Species in Night City | World Anvil
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Buzzer

'Buzzer' is the endearing nickname for the latest Biotechnica wonder (or horror depending on who you ask the Spiderbee.   Bees went extinct sometime in the early 2010s, and while efforts were certainly made both at the time and since to revive and reintroduce them, no solution ever seemed to stick for long. The ecosystems around the globe had changed too radically, and climate disaster after climate disaster meant that things only became more inhospitable for the creatures, not less.   Thankfully, Biotechnica finally cracked it in 2042. Looking at one species that had only thrived through both war and fallout, the answer was obvious. Spiders. Their genomes were close enough to be compatible without needing too much of a scientific helping hand, it would help give the bees the fortitude they'd need to re-adapt, and if Biotechnica's theories proved correct, the bees might just be able to pull double-duty as some much-needed pest control for the agricultural areas they'd be released into. It was a perfect plan.   First splicing attempts went less than perfect. At first, they used the spider as their template; introduced a stinger, some basic wings, and the necessary DNA strands to emulate the pollination process. Spiders being, well, everywhere, just seemed the better option, certainly cheaper than rebuilding and cloning bees to do things the other way around. However, the researchers on the project kept ending up in therapy, and after a bit of digging it was found that the spiders were secreting a new and rather strong hallucinatory compound when pollinating. Time to scrap it all and do it the long way round - of course, after harvesting the hallucinogenic.   Nearly a year, and many failed iterations, later, the Spiderbee was born and ready to be shipped to Biotechnica's small park out in the Badlands that's used for all their biological field testing, along with a new kind of Digitalis plant designed specifically to stimulate the Spiderbee (Digitalis Nocturna). It proved a great success; this was, for all intents and purposes, a group of bees. They flew, carried pollen, built hives, produced honey, and, just as everyone had hoped, was able to spin crude webs to trap other more unwanted insects.   Okay, so the bees beginning to grow legs and actually eat what they catch a few generations into the project hadn't exactly been in the blueprints. And their interaction with the Digitalis Nocturna pollen is the suspected cause of "Sprouting", the latest Cyberdisease to appear in Night City, although at this point that is obviously pure conjecture, and not worth pulling the brakes for. The Buzzers have already been shipped to multiple farms across the country, along with multiple new and revived plant species. The bees are hard at work helping to stabilise agriculture and expand what's able to be planted and produced, and their presence might be exactly what kickstart the food-revolution that the kibble-weary world has been waiting for all these years.

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