Honeybees are fascinating creatures for a
number of reasons:
their incredible work ethic, the sugary sweet syrup they produce and their intricate social structure. But another reason is that honeybees are, in fact, excellent mathematicians Scientists claim the
tiny insects can calculate angles, and can even comprehend the roundness of the
Earth But there's particular mathematical bee genius behind the most important aspect of honeybee life: the hive Just like humans, bees need food and shelter to stay alive The hive is not only the bees' home, but doubles as a place to store their honey Since
it's so central to survival, honeybees have
to perfect the hive's architectural design If
you examine any piece of honeycomb, you'll see that
it's constructed from tightly packed hexagonal, or
six-sided, cells Of all the possible designs, why do honeybees choose this one?
To understand, you need to think like a bee. Bees need a
secure place for their entire colony to live. Similarly, there needs to be a place where their nectar can be stored and
ripened suitably until it turns into honey That means there's a need for some serious space efficiency
A good solution is to build little storage
units, or cells, just big enough for a bee to fit
into,
which can also double as the containers in
which nectar is stored:
The bees' very own honey jars The next thing,
is to decide what the little cells should be made out of.
Bees don't have beaks or arms to pick up things, but they are
capable of producing wax The thing is, producing it is a lot of hard work Bees have to consume ounces of honey to produce
just ounce of wax So they don't want to
waste it. So, they need a design that allows them to store the largest possible amount of honey using the
least amount of wax.
What shape does that? Imagining for a minute that
all bees had to attend architecture academy and go
to math class. Let's say they asked their geometry teacher, "What shape would give us the most space to store our honey, but require the least amount of wax?"
And then geometry teacher replied,
"The shape that you're seeking is the
circle"
Leaving the bees to return to their trial constrution site and begin building their honeycomb
using circular cells.
After a while some of them might have noticed a problem with their design:
small gaps between the cells
"We can't even fit in there!
That's wasted space!" they might have thought So, ignoring the
geometry lesson, and taking matters into their own hands, the bees went back to
the drawing board to rethink their beehive design One suggested triangles, "We
can use triangles Look! They fit together perfectly". Another bee
suggested squares Finally, a third bee piped up and said, "Pentagons don't
seem to work, but hexagons do!
We want the one that will use the least amount
of wax and be able to store the most amount of honey. Yes, I think that's the hexagon"
Why?
"It looks more like the circle than the
others". But how do we know for sure?
To find out, the industrious insect architects calculated the areas of the triangle, the
square and the hexagon and found that the hexagon was, in
fact, the shape that gave them the most
storage space.
They agreed on an ideal size and returned to
work The space efficient comb that is a bee's trademark today, is probably the result of this trial and error, but over long periods of evolutionary history.
However, it paid off. Peek into any hive -- with
your protective goggles and netting on, of course -- and you'll see the end
result:
a beautiful compact honeycomb that any
architect would have be proud to design.
