Theme and mechanics are super clear and concise! Would love to keep seeing em as they're developed!

Order of the hive could benefit from having either names of the moves boldened, or with a symbol for each move denoting that they are separate actions. Just so it's easy to choose from the "menu", right now it's kinda a text block in an otherwise very organized faction board. 

Great submission , look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

I love the theme, and you stuck with it very well, from the sting action to pollinating, the theme is prevalent and fun and affects the mechanics in a meaningful way. The mechanics are nice and easy to understand, with clear counterplay. The sacrifice theme was a little lost, though visible in sacrificing honey and stinging. It seems fairly balanced and I only have 3 concerns: 

Spending cards. At no point other than crafting, are cards truly spent, and yet they are gained freely at end of turn and with mason queen. I think turning pollinate into spending cards instead of just revealing them would easily fix this

Attacking? There is no formal attack action. While stinging does similar things to attacking, swarm a clearing and take out people, I think adding a queen that gives the ability to do a normal attack would be good, as you can ensure that higher roll against certain enemies, but avoid certain things if you want by only stinging (guerilla warfare from alliance for example). This would increase the flexibility of the faction in a positive way, allowing them to sting if it would be more convenient than battling, but with the option to get the higher dice roll if wanted, by feeding a queen, which would be rarely taken as it requires feeding the queen, but in the right situation.

Guard Bees. Maybe a little too strong, maybe rework it into being able to sting once during the ‘ambush’ time in each battle. This would discourage small bands from trying to attack you, and it would allow for more counterplay, still attached to give clearings only.

The second and third are just ideas to allow for more flexibility as a faction, while allowing more counterplay and aren’t necessary, the faction balance seems decent and they seem to be a medium to medium high strength faction that isn’t completely oppressive.

The first suggestion I think needs to be changed, but it is an easy change.

The good things: the theme is incredible and easily seen throughout. The clarity is good, it’s pretty clear how it works. The tradeoffs are good from honey to queen action, from making hive to having bees, from stinging instead of battling. I love adding a new ‘way’ to battle and it seems well done. The counterplay is clear, either attack the honey or the hive. My last concern would be the lack of choice in actions, without queen actions you can only move in the birdsong, so maybe add one free move in the middle of birdsong or make nomad queen power not require honey activation, just gives you it once per turn, and reduce it to one move.

I love the ideas and the theme!