Saturday, November 12, 2016

Honeycombs are actually built round

Honeycombs are made ROUND not hexagon.  It's the pressure of the adjoining cells that give it the hexagon shape.  Try it yourself with a soap bubble - it'll be round but when there's many soap bubbles they become hexagon shaped,: It's true.  We love the hexagon shape of combs but the bees don't build them in that shape.

It's the pressure of the adjacent cells that cause the round cells to become hexagon. You can test the method yourself by creating one soap bubble on your hand.

Then make many soap bubbles. You'll see that a single soap bubble is round but when there are many they become hexagon shaped.

Source book: The Buzz About Bees - Biology of a Superorganisim by Jurgen Tautz
The Buzz about Bees

This book is amazing and gives many facts about bees that I had never read about in other books and is well worth a read.

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