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Home of the Honeybee

Bee Honeycomb

Bees as Architects

Honeybees usually build their nest in a dark, closed place such as a hollow tree. The wax for the comb is made inside each worker bee's body in wax glands. There are four pairs of glands that open on the underside of the worker beeis body. Each gland produces a flat, oval, nearly transparent piece of wax which the worker chews and shapes with its jaws and fits into place on the comb. Architects, engineers and mathematicians have studied honeycomb. They have found that six-sided or hexagon-shaped cells are the strongest possible shape that could have been used. Also, hexagon-shaped cells give more storage space and take less wax to build than other cell shapes.

Each honeycomb is started at the nest top by attaching a small piece of wax to the ceiling. Then pieces of wax are added around the edge of the tiny comb until it hangs down, perhaps several feet. A comb has cells on both sides but the cells on either side are offset, or not exactly opposite each other. In the lower part of the picture the cell walls from the opposite side of the corn can be seen through the bases of the empty on this side. The walls of the opposite cells appoar as a "Y". Several combs are built side by side with just enough space between the combs to allow the bees to move freely. The number of combs constructed and the size of the combs depends on the shape and size of the nest. One of the most amazing things about honeycomb is that many bees are building parts of cells at the same time and in many places. And yet, all the cells fit together in the end in the neat way shown by this photograph. Even bees that have never seen a comb can build one like this.

More About The Bee Colony

The bees in a honeybee nest are called a colony They are not just a group of individuals living in the same place, acting independently. They are a highly organized society. First, no bee does all the tasks necessary to life in the colony. In fact there are three different kinds of bees and each kind does something important, not done by the others. The queen bee lays all the eggs in the colony. There are about one thousand male drone bees. They mate with the queen bee. There are thousands of female worker that feed the queen and the drones, raises young bees and do all the other work in the hive. The female workers normally do not lay eggs. This performance of different tasks is called "Division of Labor". Division of labor makes running the colony more efficient. It also makes the bees dependent on each other for survival. A single honeybee cannot live on its own.

In addition to division of labor, there is also cooperation in the honeybee colony. Many bees cooperate in doing tasks which could never be done by one bee alone. For example, the workers cooperate in building the nest and in keeping the nest at the proper temperature at all times.


Acknowledgements

The Bees section was created with special thanks to Louis Juers (Arizona State Parks & Trails) for providing information used in this section. Additional information and digital materials were obtained from some of the following organizations. We would like to thank them for all their dedication and hard work within their profession.


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