How do bees make their honeycomb?
Why hexagons?
How
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They have closed dimensions that are able to support queen cells, which are irregular and lumpy in shape.
Hexagon shapes are easier to replicate and create so they don't waste time and energy.
This results in bees focusing in other tasks
they create beeswax from their glands and will bite it until it becomes soft
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What are the functions?
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after make the bees wax in a clay like composition bees will join quantities into the honeycombs cells
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They are able to store large quantities of their byproducts (like honey)
For create a safe temperature the bees join together
and having a climate control for the inner of the honey comb
Charles Darwin studies it in "The Origin of Species" and describes it as a work of engineering art in which labor and material are minimized and a demonstration of the principle of natural selection.
Honeycomb Theorem
“any partition of the plane into sections of equal area has a perimeter at least that of the regular hexagonal honeycomb tiling.(Playfair, Richard 2020)”
Beyond its undeniable beauty, what makes it so special? If it is a question of economizing perimeter to maximize area, it is well known that the solution is a circle, and to economize area to maximize volume a sphere.
worker bees will gather food and nectar and the nectar they gather becomes honey and the honey they eat will become wax and for making one ounce of wax they need to eat eight ounces of honey
This is known in mathematics as a tiling and in the periodic case it is the same geometric figure that is repeated over and over again to generate it.
the hexagonal shape makes easy the job of the bees so they can end faster
The shape of hexagonal prism to place their larvae and store honey
The construction of this pieces are perfectly assembled without lost spaces or overlap that cannot be achieved with circles and spheres.
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