The humans of the old world used to remark that - given our size and mass - we shouldn’t be able to fly. 

That they uttered such nonsense when faced with our languid flightpaths says less about our relationship to physics than their inability to accept the limits of their own ignorance.

It was that inability that doomed both us and them in rapid succession. But in the wake of our extinction, the humans sought to build us anew.

But there are challenges in building artificial pollinators; humanity made great strides in miniaturisation in their fading years, but recreating the complex interplay of endocrinology and abstract communication which led to honeybee society was beyond them at such a minimal scale.

Instead, they fell back on wireless tech, constructing a gestalt awareness from individual workers.

It’s little surprise that the Hive outlasted them.