A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by honey bees in their nests to contain
their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. Beekeepers may remove the entire honeycomb
to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about 8.4 lbs of honey to secrete 1 lb of wax,
so it makes economic sense to return the wax to the hive after harvesting the honey, commonly
called "pulling honey" or "robbing the bees" by beekeepers. The structure of the comb may
be left basically intact when honey is extracted from it by uncapping and spinning in a centrifugal
machine—the honey extractor. If the honeycomb is too worn out, the wax can be reused in
a number of ways, including making sheets of comb foundation with hexagonal pattern.
Such foundation sheets allow the bees to build the comb with less effort, and the hexagonal
pattern of worker-sized cell bases discourages the bees from building the larger drone cells.
Fresh, new comb is sometimes sold and used intact as comb honey, especially if the honey
is being spread on bread rather than used in cooking or as a sweetener.
Broodcomb becomes dark over time, because of the cocoons embedded in the cells and the
tracking of many feet, called travel stain by beekeepers when seen on frames of comb
honey. Honeycomb in the "supers" that are not allowed to be used for brood stays light-coloured.
Numerous wasps, especially Polistinae and Vespinae, construct hexagonal prism-packed
combs made of paper instead of wax; in some species, honey is stored in the nest, thus
technically forming a paper honeycomb. However, the term "honeycomb" is not often used for
such structures.
Honeycomb geometry
The axes of honeycomb cells are always quasihorizontal, and the nonangled rows of honeycomb cells
are always horizontally aligned. Thus, each cell has two vertical walls, with "floors"
and "ceilings" composed of two angled walls(disparity with image "Honeycomb-Process"). The cells
slope slightly upwards, between 9 and 14°, towards the open ends.
Two possible explanations exist as to why honeycomb is composed of hexagons, rather
than any other shape. First, the hexagonal tiling creates a partition with equal-sized
cells, while minimizing the total perimeter of the cells. Known in geometry as the honeycomb
conjecture, this was given by Jan Brożek and proved much later by Thomas Hales. Thus,
a hexagonal structure uses the least material to create a lattice of cells within a given
volume. A second reason, given by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, is that the shape simply results
from the process of individual bees putting cells together: somewhat analogous to the
boundary shapes created in a field of soap bubbles. In support of this, he notes that
queen cells, which are constructed singly, are irregular and lumpy with no apparent attempt
at efficiency. The closed ends of the honeycomb cells are
also an example of geometric efficiency, albeit three-dimensional and little-noticed. The
ends are trihedral sections of rhombic dodecahedra, with the dihedral angles of all adjacent surfaces
measuring 120°, the angle that minimizes surface area for a given volume.).)
The shape of the cells is such that two opposing honeycomb layers nest into each other, with
each facet of the closed ends being shared by opposing cells.
Individual cells do not show this geometric perfection: in a regular comb, deviations
of a few percent from the "perfect" hexagonal shape occur. In transition zones between the
larger cells of drone comb and the smaller cells of worker comb, or when the bees encounter
obstacles, the shapes are often distorted. Cells are also angled up about 13° from horizontal
to prevent honey from dripping out.
In 1965, László Fejes Tóth discovered the trihedral pyramidal shape used by the honeybee
is not the theoretically optimal three-dimensional geometry. A cell end composed of two hexagons
and two smaller rhombuses would actually be .035% more efficient. This difference is too
minute to measure on an actual honeycomb, and irrelevant to the hive economy in terms
of efficient use of wax, considering wild comb varies considerably from any mathematical
notion of "ideal" geometry. See also
Beehive Honeycomb structure
References
External links