As a child, I habitually re-read Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Quartet, and Diane Duane's Young Wizards series. As an adult, I re-read Anne Bishop. I have no idea what that says about me, but I think it probably says something.

The thing I remember most about Falonar is that in Queen of the Darkness, Lucivar had issues with him because of their past history. It was stated that Lucivar and Falonar were going after the same female (I'm presuming a Queen) and it was stated that Falonar won and became the ruling Warlord Prince, while Lucivar got sold into slavery. And although Falonar passed Jaenelle's screening into Kaeleer, there is a distinct taint about his character from the get-go (IMO).

with a literal genetic imperative to serve

I'm not sure I agree with you 100% on this. The way I see it, the Warlord Princes have an imperative to be a law-unto-themselves, but they will always (barring the crazy) respond to a strong Queen of whatever jewel-rank, and sometimes just a female in general. There's a bit where Lucivar is about to fly off the handle during a Jhinka attack, but he's redirected into pumping water for an injured female... which makes him comment to the woman that it was clear she'd been trained on how to handle dark-jeweled Blood males.

In QotD, too, Daemon makes the observation that when Lucivar is pissed, he's out chopping firewood; when, in another time and another place, he would've set off a fight that would've left corpses in his wake. So for me, they're not so much hard-wired to serve, it's that their power/aggression can be easily channeled into service (and service is the least-destructive outlet for them).

I haven't re-read any of the Cassidy novels, so my memory's a bit blurry on events in those books. But I agree that Cassidy is the perfect fit. From a writerly standpoint, Bishop's already done the cosmic-power-can-do-anything angle. Naturally, the next step is to write about someone with very little power and show how following Protocol and doing the Right Thing is just as important and useful as having a bunch of psychic strength.

Plus, too, unless the ruling Queen were one of Jaenelle's First Circle Queens, there just aren't that many dark-jeweled females. (Which was the reason why Dorothea came to power. Although, I forget which realm Dena Nehele/Shalador Nehele is in, but I think the same principle applies.) So naturally, any surviving queens who aren't already in Jaenelle's First Circle, are going to be weaker.

As for your theory about Bees.... :D Yes, I could definitely see the comparisons. However... as the BJT-verse has flowers, etc. I imagine those flowers also need pollinators. It is very possible that the BJT-verse already has bees. And, as we've seen with the wolves and Arcerian cats, spiders, some horses, and some dogs -- animals can be Blood too. So there may already be Blood bees in the world already. And what are they like, I wonder. Now, according to Saetan's theory, the Blood's powers are descended from the dragons. So, it is possible that the castes (Queen, Warlord Prince, Priestess, etc.) are a holdover from the castes of dragons. Which now begs the question, in our world, are bees descended from dragons?