TL;DR
Side with the Queen. Kill Broc Meala when she asks. It is the easier fight, it hands you the Sting sword, and it is the only path that opens the follow-up quest Gifts for the Queen, which is the entire honey subsystem. The killing-the-Queen route is a much harder boss fight that ends with ten Honey Jars and nothing more. Pick the Queen and you can still loot those jars later, so you lose nothing and gain the Queen's Protector Crown, a summon, and a steady honey supply.
Where to find the Queen Bee
The item:queen-bee lives in the hive kingdom of the Horns of the South, out in the Farlorns. You reach her through the quest Confrontation Looks Like Hope. Find Broc Meala standing at a bridge north of the Ruined Market Square and talk through everything he says. That unlocks his shop and lets the quest move forward.
Cross the bridge and a swarm of bees jumps you at the hive. Clear them and the Ghost of Broc Meala appears, handing you the Bee Queen Invitation. Past The All-Mother's Shrine, in a swampy stretch ringed by four stone obelisks, the glowing hive marks the lair. Return to Broc afterward and he asks you to kill the Queen. The Ghost then drops you into the Queen's realm, where the real decision waits inside the village's central building.
The choice: kill Broc, or kill the Queen
This is the whole page. Inside the Queen's realm you make one of two exclusive choices, and they fork the rewards hard.
Side with the Queen (kill Broc Meala). This is the route we recommend. The Queen wants a new knight-protector after her old one betrayed her, and she asks you to put down Broc. Do it. You get the Sting sword and you unlock Gifts for the Queen, the trading quest that runs the honey economy. Once that quest is done, you can go back and kill the Queen anyway for the same ten Honey Jars the other path gives. So this route gets you the crown, the summon, the recipe, the honey trickle, and the kill loot.
Side with Broc (kill the Queen). This is the hard road. The Queen is a real boss with a large health pool and hits harder than Broc does. You walk away with ten Honey Jars looted from her body plus the Sting sword from Broc, and that is the end of it. No Gifts for the Queen, no crown, no summon, no recipe. You trade a tougher fight for a worse haul.
| Path | Difficulty | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Side with the Queen (kill Broc) | Easier | Sting sword, Gifts for the Queen quest, and the kill loot later |
| Side with Broc (kill the Queen) | Harder | Sting sword, 10 Honey Jars, nothing else |
How to beat the Queen Bee boss
If you take the Broc path, the fight has one trick that decides everything. The Queen summons the Ghost of Broc Meala to fight at her side, and while that ghost is alive she takes no damage. Swinging at her is wasted effort until the ghost is down.
Kill the ghost first. Burn it down, ignore the Queen until it drops, then turn your full attention on her. Expect a longer fight than Broc gave you on his own, since her health pool is deep and she is the higher-level threat here. A poison weapon helps you stack chip damage between her openings, which is fitting given the Sting sword you are about to earn. A crit-and-poison setup like our Assassin build does exactly this kind of sustained pressure.
Build: fd1d37a9b5e3Gifts for the Queen: the honey subsystem
Take the Queen's side and Gifts for the Queen opens up. You feed the colony Ethereal Cobwebs in tiers, and the hive expands as you deliver. Note the type: these are Ethereal Cobwebs, not the regular cobwebs you pick up around the world. Each tier pays out, and the rewards climb steeply.
| Ethereal Cobwebs delivered | Reward |
|---|---|
| 50 | 3 Queen's Honey |
| 250 | 6 Queen's Honey |
| 500 | 2 Queen's Honey, plus the Ghost of Broc Meala summon |
| 1000 | Queen's Protector Crown, plus the Bee Nectar recipe |
Finishing every tier runs you roughly 1,800 Ethereal Cobwebs in total. That is a long-haul project, so treat it as a goal you chip away at across many Wyrd nights rather than one sitting.
The standout reward is the Queen's Protector Crown, a unique helmet worth the grind: 12 armor, +20% spell power, +20% physical damage, and +5% critical. That spread serves almost any build, which is why this is one of the better helmets you can chase mid-game. The 500-cobweb tier also grants the Ghost of Broc Meala as a combat summon, so the ally you fought against becomes one you call on. The top tier rounds things out with the Bee Nectar crafting recipe.
Farming Ethereal Cobwebs
Ethereal Cobwebs only drop during Wyrdness, the Wyrd hours of the night. You trigger it by resting at a bonfire until the in-game clock turns gold. You will know it the moment it lands: a gold spectral ring appears on the ground and the music shifts, even when no enemies are near. That is your signal to start clearing everything in sight.
Drop amounts scale with what you kill. Ordinary tainted creatures give a small handful. True Wyrd creatures, the Wyrdspawn, drop far more and tend to swarm in packs, which makes them the efficient target. For an early reliable spot, the Sunken Village at night is hard to beat: dense monster spawns and enough open ground for the Wyrdspawn to gather. Park there across a few Wyrd cycles and the cobweb count climbs fast.
The Sting sword
Both paths hand you the Sting, a sword that inflicts poison on hit. Enhance it and the damage-over-time grows, which pairs naturally with the bee theme and gives you a reliable source of sustained damage. It is a clean early reward for either choice, but only the Queen's path bundles it with everything else worth having. If you want to lean into that poison pressure across a whole character, our Dual-Wield build guide shows how to keep two weapons stacking damage-over-time at once.
Our verdict
Side with the Queen, kill Broc, then run Gifts for the Queen to the top tier for the Queen's Protector Crown. Grind your Ethereal Cobwebs at the Sunken Village during Wyrdness, lean on Wyrdspawn for the bulk drops, and circle back to kill the Queen once the quest is finished if you want those ten Honey Jars too. The Broc path exists, but it costs you a harder fight and most of the best loot. There is no real contest here. For where this boss sits among the rest of the campaign, see our walkthrough.