BEES & HEXAGONS

If you’ve ever been told that bees make hexagonal shapes for reasons of either tensile strength or instinctive maths, well sorry, best think again. In reality all of the holes in a honeycomb were originally made smooth and very round. It’s physics, specifically good old surface tension, that pulls the warm wax into the space efficient and amazingly strong six sided shapes that we expect.

Somehow, when I point this out, people feel miffed, like it robs the bees of mystique somehow. But, there’s a certain magic in knowing that wise and ever opportunistic, bees spotted an opportunity in the science and built a entire lifestyle around it?