Honeycomb
Before bees make honey, they must make the honeycomb to store it. Some studies state that for bees to produce an ounce of wax, they must consume about eight ounces of honey. That is ½ pound of honey. One honeybee only makes 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its entire life. It stands to reason that it takes a whole lot of honeybees to make an ounce of wax.
This is why beekeepers reuse honeycomb, because it saves bee labor. We reuse them so the bees won’t have to remake the comb and can get straight to work on making more honey. We also date our honeycomb frames and replace them every three to five years, as they are known to hold on to the chemicals we use to treat our bees.
Have you ever wondered how bees make a perfect hexagonal chamber?
According to AI, bees build circular cells, but as they push multiple cells close together, the wax walls between them naturally melt and flow due to heat from the bees and surface tension, resulting in the formation of hexagonal shapes. This hexagonal shape is the most efficient way to pack cells together, maximizing storage space and minimizing wax usage.
A closer look.
The first image is at Birth, and the second image was taken when the baby bee was 2 Days Old.
Source image from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3730681/
There is also what is known as “The Honeybee Conjecture”. We know through past studies that the hexagon saves space, requires less wax, makes everything connected to each other, and is large enough to raise bees. But why not square or triangular shape?
There is an equation that scientists have come up with that proves the hexagonal honeycomb has the smallest perimeter and therefore the most space-saving shape of the three. But we cannot deny that it is also naturally organic for them to create the roundish shape for their babies and their honey, and they get pressed together, making them hexagonally shaped.
resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb_theorem
Darwin himself said “the honeycomb is a masterpiece of engineering; it is absolutely perfect in economizing labor and wax.
♥Bee Happy♥
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