BEES follow a simple rule when building a honeycomb, says Stephen Pratt, a
biologist at Cornell University in New York. Biologists had thought that the
insects used gravity to orient their honeycombs, because rows of cells are
arranged either horizontally or vertically.
Bees start by building the first row of cells on a supporting structure, such
as the wall of a hive. Pratt found that in this row, they always start each cell
by erecting two walls that are perpendicular to the original surface (
Naturwissenschaften, vol 87, p 33). “The first row of cells are not
hexagonal, but pentagonal,”…
