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A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal prismatic wax cells built by
honey bee A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus ''Apis'' of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosm ...
s in their nests to contain their
larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. ...
e and stores of
honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...
and
pollen Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametop ...
.
Beekeepers A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees. Beekeepers are also called honey farmers, apiarists, or less commonly, apiculturists (both from the Latin '' apis'', bee; cf. apiary). The term beekeeper refers to a person who keeps honey bees i ...
may remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey. Honey bees consume about of honey to secrete of wax, and so beekeepers may return the wax to the hive after harvesting the honey to improve honey outputs. The structure of the comb may be left basically intact when honey is extracted from it by uncapping and spinning in a centrifugal machine, more specifically a
honey extractor A honey extractor is a mechanical device used in the extraction of honey from honeycombs. A honey extractor extracts the honey from the honey comb without destroying the comb. Extractors work by centrifugal force. A drum or container holds a ...
. 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 Drone most commonly refers to: * Drone (bee), a male bee, from an unfertilized egg * Unmanned aerial vehicle * Unmanned surface vehicle, watercraft * Unmanned underwater vehicle or underwater drone Drone, drones or The Drones may also refer to: ...
cells. Fresh, new comb is sometimes sold and used intact as
comb honey Comb honey is honey intended for consumption by humans, which is still contained within its original hexagonal-shaped beeswax cells, called honeycomb. It has received no processing, filtering, or manipulation, and is in the state that honey bees ha ...
, especially if the honey is being spread on bread rather than used in cooking or as a sweetener. Broodcomb becomes dark over time, due to empty cocoons and shed larval skins embedded in the cells, alongside being walked over constantly by other bees, resulting in what is referred to as a 'travel stain' by beekeepers when seen on frames of comb honey. Honeycomb in the " supers" that are not used for brood (e.g. by the placement of a
queen excluder In beekeeping, a queen excluder is a selective barrier inside the beehive that allows worker bees but not the larger queens and drones to traverse the barrier. Queen excluders are also used with some queen breeding methods. Some beekeepers believ ...
) stays light-colored. Numerous
wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder ...
s, especially Polistinae and Vespinae, construct hexagonal prism-packed combs made of paper instead of wax; in some species (such as '' Brachygastra mellifica''), honey is stored in the nest, thus technically forming a paper honeycomb. However, the term "honeycomb" is not often used for such structures.


Geometry

The axes of honeycomb cells are always nearly horizontal, with the open end higher than the back end. The open end of a cell is typically referred to as the top of the cell, while the opposite end is called the bottom. The cells
slope In mathematics, the slope or gradient of a line is a number that describes both the ''direction'' and the ''steepness'' of the line. Slope is often denoted by the letter ''m''; there is no clear answer to the question why the letter ''m'' is use ...
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 Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...
as the honeycomb conjecture, this was given by Jan Brożek and mathematically proven much later by Thomas Hales. Thus, a hexagonal structure uses the least material to create a lattice of cells within a given
volume Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). ...
. 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 bubble A soap bubble is an extremely thin film of soap or detergent and water enclosing air that forms a hollow sphere with an iridescent surface. Soap bubbles usually last for only a few seconds before bursting, either on their own or on contact wi ...
s. 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, though three-
dimension In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coord ...
al. The ends are trihedral (i.e., composed of three planes) sections of
rhombic dodecahedra Rhombic may refer to: *Rhombus, a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length (often called a diamond) *Rhombic antenna, a broadband directional antenna most commonly used on shortwave frequencies * polyhedra formed from rhombuses, such ...
, with the
dihedral angle A dihedral angle is the angle between two intersecting planes or half-planes. In chemistry, it is the clockwise angle between half-planes through two sets of three atoms, having two atoms in common. In solid geometry, it is defined as the un ...
s of all adjacent surfaces measuring 120°, the angle that minimizes
surface area The surface area of a solid object is a measure of the total area that the surface of the object occupies. The mathematical definition of surface area in the presence of curved surfaces is considerably more involved than the definition of ...
for a given volume. (The angle formed by the edges at the pyramidal apex, known as the
tetrahedral angle In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all th ...
, is approximately 109° 28' 16" ()
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 In mathematics, a percentage (from la, per centum, "by a hundred") is a number or ratio expressed as a fraction (mathematics), fraction of 100. It is often Denotation, denoted using the percent sign, "%", although the abbreviations "pct.", "p ...
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 László Fejes Tóth ( hu, Fejes Tóth László, 12 March 1915 – 17 March 2005) was a Hungarian mathematician who specialized in geometry. He proved that a lattice pattern is the most efficient way to pack centrally symmetric convex sets on ...
discovered that the trihedral pyramidal shape (which is composed of three
rhombi In plane Euclidean geometry, a rhombus (plural rhombi or rhombuses) is a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. Another name is equilateral quadrilateral, since equilateral means that all of its sides are equal in length. The ...
) used by the honeybee is not the theoretically optimal three-dimensional geometry. A cell end composed of two hexagons and two smaller rhombi would actually be .035% (or about one part per 2850) 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.


Role of wax temperature

Bees use their antennae, mandibles and legs to manipulate the wax during comb construction, while actively warming the wax. During the construction of hexagonal cells, wax temperature is between , well below the temperature at which wax is assumed to be liquid for initiating new comb construction. The body temperature of bees is a factor for regulating an ideal wax temperature for building the comb.


Gallery

File:Western honey bee on a honeycomb.jpg, A Western honey bee on a honeycomb File:Honeycomb-Process.png, The bees begin to build the comb from the top of each section. When a cell is filled with honey, the bees seal it with wax. File:BDHoneycomb.JPG, Natural honeycombs on a building File:Bienenwabe mit Eiern und Brut 5.jpg, Honeycomb with eggs and
larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. ...
e File:Apis florea nest closeup2.jpg, Closeup of an abandoned ''
Apis florea The dwarf honey bee (or red dwarf honey bee), ''Apis florea'', is one of two species of small, wild honey bees of southern and southeastern Asia. It has a much wider distribution than its sister species, '' Apis andreniformis''. First identified ...
'' nest in
Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
. The hexagonal grid of wax cells on either side of the nest are slightly offset from each other. This increases the strength of the comb and reduces the amount of wax required to produce a robust structure. File:Honey comb.jpg, Honeycomb File:Natural Beehive and Honeycombs.jpg, The lower part of the natural comb of '' Apis dorsata'' has a number of unoccupied cells File:Bienenwabe Ausbau der Mittelwand 79a.jpg, "Artificial honeycomb" foundation plate in which bees have already completed some cells File:TransitionalHoney.jpg, Honeycomb section containing transition from worker to drone (larger) cells – here bees make irregular and five-cornered cells (marked with red dots) File:Western Honey Bees and Honeycomb.JPG, Western honeybees and honeycomb File:Machine-made honeycombs.jpg, Honeycombs made by machine with beeswax and with the whole structure of the hexagonal cell already built


See also

* Honeycomb structure *
Wax foundation Wax foundation or honeycomb base is a plate made of wax forming the base of one honeycomb. It is used in beekeeping to give the bees a foundation on which they can build the honeycomb. Wax foundation is considered one of the most important inventi ...
*
Hive frame A hive frame or honey frame is a structural element in a beehive that holds the honeycomb or brood comb within the hive enclosure or box. The hive frame is a key part of the modern movable-comb hive. It can be removed in order to inspect the bees ...
* Jan Dzierzon


References


External links

{{Commons category, Honeycombs Beekeeping Bees Bee products