also courtesy of my son:

I also came across this summary for a journal paper on the thermal conductivity of honey comb and how the bees can change the thermal conductivity by clustering in the space between the comb.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/n764165152r0325h/

The article is not free.  But this is the summary:

"Wax comb was found to have a thermal conductivity of 0.36×10–3 cal/cm sec °C. At low air temperatures, honey bees,Apis mellifera L., form clusters in between the combs in their nests. The combs provide insulation and the bee behavior actually increases the insulating effectiveness of the combs. When they form a compact living layer over the wax comb, the conductivity can be reduced to 0.065×10–3 cal/cm see °C. Some aspects of the role of the wax comb in heat balance are examined in this paper."

So this is also pretty interesting, but the brief summary doesn't say what is in the comb.  I assumed a thickness of 1" and converted the above conductivities to R-value.  They are about R-1 for the comb and R-5 for the comb with a layer of bees.

This also got me thinking about how calculating the R-value for a frame of honey really is very much like calculating the R-value for a wall, and one should consider the overall hear transfer coeficient (U).  So the R-value for a frame of honey may be slghtly higher than R-0.29 per inch when convection is considerered.

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