Saturday 18 May 2013

What Is It About Bees And Hexagons?

image credit: Christopher Severn cc

Solved! A bee-buzzing, honey-licking 2,000-year-old mystery that begins with a beehive. Look at the honeycomb in a beehive and ask yourself: Why is every cell in this honeycomb a hexagon? Bees, after all, could build honeycombs from rectangles or squares or triangles.

But for some reason, bees choose hexagons. Always hexagons. And not just your basic six-sided hexagon. They like 'perfect' hexagons, meaning all six sides are of equal length. Why?

1 comment(s):

berend said...

not correct see wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb