Construction of Cells

Abstract

Honeybee nests result from interactions among numerous bees performing different comb-building operations ranging from construction of new cells, shaving and thickening edges of cells, capping brood, and capping removals. The single major construction is comb-building. At the onset of comb-building, nascent cells are circular but soon after acquire a more crystalline structure; regular hexagons appear that are products of the physical properties of wax, equal pressure from adjacent cells, and the flow of the visco-elastic wax. The structure and formation of cells result from wax being a thermoplastic material while, the hexagonal structure is the result of the wax reaching a liquid equilibrium, changing from a crystalline state to an amorphous state at nest temperatures. The building ‘instincts’ of bees are labile and are supported by several possible subroutines in their total building programme; but the rather wide tolerances seen among cells show that bees cannot make precise measurements. In commercial beeswax foundation, both the cell base and the hexagonal rims of the cells have a pronounced taper to them. However, the natural outermost limits of cell patterns, and not the cell base, determine what pattern bees follow in cell construction. The antennae may play a role in maintaining tolerances on cell thickness because milling of the cell wall is controlled by individual workers at single sites, and antennectomy significantly increases wall thickness. The shape of the honeybee cell does not have its celebrated regularity; its economy is a teleological myth. The entire history of the honeybee cell in natural history, geometry and philosophy is the story of centuries-old misconceptions.