Spacetectonik said:
Honey-bees construct wax combs inside their nests. The combs are made of hexagonal prisms – cells – built back to back, and are used to store honey, nectar, and pollen, and to provide a nursery for bee larvae. The combs are natural engineering marvels, using the least possible amount of wax to provide the greatest amount of storage space, with the greatest possible structural stability.
Now the question is how they do it?Any solid idea?what tools they use?!
The process of making a hexagonal bee hive was determined by Charles Darwin. He wrote about the theory and experiments that he himself conducted using his own bee hives in "Origin of the Species". He also discusses other types of hives made by bees. He showed theoretically how a series of cigar shaped nests could evolve into a hexagonal bee hive.
The description is in "Origin of the Species". I am not sure what exact page numbers it is on. It probably varies in the different editions. However, Darwin was quite thorough. I will summarize what I remember.
There are many types of bees, bee hives, and bee social behavior. Bees drink nectar which is very high in carbohydrates, but low on other nutrients. To get other nutrients, they have to drink a lot of nectar. Eating pollen helps them get a few proteins, although pollen contains carbohydrates too. To get all their nutrients, they absorb far more carbohydrate calories then they can possibly use. Therefore, all bees exude wax as a waste product. Wax probably started out as a compact way of disposing of excess carbohydrates.
The bees live in social groups. Each bee inherits a "comfort radius". They try to keep a certain distance away from other bees, with a fixed average distance. So each bee has a comfort zone within which she is the only bee. However, they try to dispose of the wax outside their comfort zone. Although they probably don't think of it this way, orthink at all, each bee would like their wax to pile up in someone elses zone. However, after defecating their wax, they always retreat to their own comfort zone.
The geometrical pattern of the wax that piles up is mathematically determined by both the radius of their comfort zone and the amount they of wax they have to defecate. If the radius is very large and the amount of wax small, then each bee has his own "cubical" of wax. Some bumble bees have evolved that way. However, the geometric pattern changes as the radius changes. A smaller radius places each bee in its own wax cigar. A very small radius results in a hexagonal honeycomb.
Basically, the bees are defecating in each others territory. They are throwing wax cooties around "randomly". The direction of the tossed wax is completely arbitrary. The distance is arbitrary, other than the restriction that the distance is greater than the comfort radius. The shape of the hive is mathematically determined by the comfort radius.
The motion of defecation is not optimal for building a hive. It is literally a pissing contest. Most of the motion in moving the wax around is waster. Most of the wax just keeps moving back and forth without any form taking shape. The shape slowly develops over time after a lot of aimless tossing back and forth.
The motion is not the most efficient necessary to make a stable hive. In fact, most species of bees do not make a stable hexagonal honeycomb. The shape and stability vary a lot among species, each living under different conditions. Honey bees are special not because they are the most common types of bee. Human beings raise them because the shape of the hive is most conducive to taking their honey. The motion of the wax is NOT energetically efficient even in the case of the honey bee.
The radius of comfort, and the rate that wax is produced, is inherited. The ratio is of course influenced by other behavior patterns of the bee. Natural selection causes a behavior pattern to form, which determines both radius and rate of defecation. However
Darwin did an interesting experiment to show that most of the motion in moving the wax was arbitrary. Darwin kept honey bees on his estate. He took a small dollop of bees wax and dyed it dark red. He went to one of his beehives. He placed the red dollop of bees wax in the middle of the hive. The bees broke it to pieces and "tossed" it at each other. Eventually, the red wax became part of the honeycomb. However, the wax did not stay in one place.
The red wax slowly spread over time. It first concentrated in one part of the hive which was dark red. Then it spread out so it was dark pink. It spread out farther until is was light pink. In never was planted firmly in the wax.The red wax went back and forth in random directions. Pieces of red wax diffused in a random walk until it was all over the hive.
Most of the motion of the wax did not contribute to stability of the hive. From the standpoint of making a stable hive, the motion was wasted. However, the wax still served to shelter the bees. The defecating in each others space was what some would call a "preadaption."
There are still a lot of bees that don't make hexagonal honey combs. Some Mexican bees make separate cigar shaped nests, as Darwin pointed out. There are a whole lot of different hives. Some don't make nests at all, just exuding wax. The main difference between the bees is the size of the "comfort zone".
Changing only one parameter gradually by natural selection is sufficient to change the entire geometry of the hive. There is no complicated series of saltations necessary to make different bee hives. The individual changes in radius can be random. It doesn't make a difference to the shape of the hive. At each step of the phylogeny, some geometrical shape has to form for each radius. In honey bees, the size of the comfort zone is small enough to form the hexagon chambers of the hive.
