Once the wax starts flowing, the cell walls naturally fall flat and take on the shape of a hexagon, like adjoining bubbles in a bath. They then observed honeybees heating the wax after the initial cell formation - a phenomenon identified in previous studies, but never analyzed in close detail - and found this to be the key step in hexagon-formation.īy heating the cells, the bees cause the wax to become molten and flow like lava. Using a honeycomb grown at a research facility in Beijing, the researchers were able to carefully ward off the bees and photograph the bare honeycomb seconds after formation, providing the first clear evidence that cells naturally start as circles. ![]() "There have been some incredible, esoteric, even bizarre explanations believed the bees had an uncanny ability to measure angles. and co-author of the study, citing Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler as two of the luminaries mystified by the problem. ![]() "People have always speculated how bees have formed these honeycombs," said Bhushan Karihaloo, an engineer at Cardiff University in the U.K.
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