Page 150 - The Miracle of the Honeybee

148 THE MIRACLE OF THE HONEYBEE

The drawing below
shows the back-to- Moreover, the shapes we
back structure of draw on paper are two-di-
the combs and the mensional. Yet bees pro-
angles in them.
Every single one of duce three-dimensional
the bees making a hexagonal prisms. They per-
comb constructs
cells by calculating form very delicate calcula-
these angles. tions during the construction

of these three-dimensional
prisms, as regards the walls’ thick-
ness and elasticity. In addition, since
the comb has two faces, there is a prob-
lem of joining the cells on both sides at
the bottom. Furthermore, all the cells are
built at an incline of 13 degrees in order to
keep the honey from flowing out. 133
Beyond all this—as we have shown—the
comb’s structure forms through the
bringing together of separate components. In
other words, the comb does not start with a single part and grow as that
part expands. Parts produced separately by the bees are added on to the
extremities. Yet at the same time, no trace remains of the joins between the
comb sections produced in different areas. The hexagons at the intersec-
tions are not half-formed or of different dimensions, so no problem
emerges of cells being of a different height or mutually incompatible. Bees
join the cells together so perfectly that it is impossible to identify where
they have been joined together.
Why don’t bees start comb construction from a single side only? Were
they to do so, construction would take much longer. Since the area under
construction would be limited, new bees could join in the work only as
new cells were added. Yet when work begins with all the bees starting
from several sides, the comb is completed much more quickly, since more
bees can engage in the work.
As we have seen, there is an enormous amount of detail in the making of