> This reminds me of Ruth Rosin's arguments 

I am abjectly humbled to be mentioned in the same breath as Ruth Rosin.

> that insects couldn't possibly be intending 
> to communicate information with the dance, 
> insects are not intelligent enough... 

No, I'll submit that EVEN WE are not "intelligent enough".  Go ahead a draw
a perspective or isometric drawing of a cell of honeycomb freehand, I dare
you.  Now go draw 20 more, no tracing.  You have zero chance of being able
to draw such shapes with the consistency with which bees less than a week
old make them.

> But if you have a problem with intent, 
> leave that out. The bees instinctually 
> build comb the way they do

Yes, and I have shown a clear and compelling mechanism that takes what they
instinctually build (bowls or very shallow cylinders), and forms it into
what they end up with (Toth-like structures).  I have also explained at
length how one can model these forces to create the same EXACT shapes with
no skill and no bees at all, and cited several peer-reviewed papers where
the mechanisms were not just discussed any analyzed, but actually put to the
test in practical experimentation.

So, I have presented a pretty decent stack of tangible evidence in support
of my contention, but in rebuttal all we have is a few quotes, mostly from
people who cannot be questioned, as they are conveniently dead. None the
less, the statements made are fairly easy to pick apart as being a
collection of misinterpretations of exactly the same forces that I have
detailed as being the ones at work here.

> The question is whether bees 
> build planes or curves.

No, it is far simpler than that - does ANY creature build "planes" or
"straight lines" aside from the very special case of man assisted by
technology? 

The answer is no.

In the case of hexagonal honeycomb as constructed by bees and wasps, I have
done my best several times to illustrate that these structure types have an
early stage where the materials are pliable, and thus subject to the forces
that take close-packed cylinders and turn them into Toth-like structures.

If one can duplicate the comb of bees and wasps with close-packed soap
bubbles, what are the odds that the bees would do more than make a "soap
bubble" out of whatever materials they have at hand?

But if that won't convince, how about some quotes from Charles Darwin's
Origin of the Species?  Even he experimented on this issue:

"Following the example of Mr. Tegetmeier, I separated two combs, and put
between them a long, thick, square strip of wax: the bees instantly began to
excavate minute circular pits in it; and as they deepened these little pits,
they made them wider and wider until they were converted into shallow
basins, appearing to the eye perfectly true or parts of a sphere, and of
about the diameter of a cell."

"In one well-marked instance, I put the comb back into the hive and allowed
the bees to go on working for a short time and again examined the cell, and
I found that the rhombic plate had been completed, and had become perfectly
flat: it was absolutely impossible, from the extreme thinness of the little
rhombic plate, that they could have affected this by gnawing away the convex
side; and I suspect that the bees in such cases stand in the opposed cells
and push and bend the ductile and warm wax (which as I have tried is easily
done) into its proper intermediate plane, and thus flatten it."

So, which makes more rational sense - that the bees worked at a tiny section
of wax, pushing and pulling until it was absolutely flat?  Or that the bees
merely chewed away at a roughly-assembled wall, and created a minimal
(spherical) wall at the base of the cell, the thinnest that they could, and
then natural forces took over and deformed that thin, but spherical base
into the 3-rhomboid base of a honeycomb cell?

Continuing with Darwin, we even have the case of an "intermediate form", the
evolutionary version of a "dose-response curve", the Melipona being a
builder of less closely-packed cylinders:

"Reflecting on this case, it occurred to me that if the Melipona had made
its spheres at some given distance from each other, and had made them of
equal sizes and had arranged them symmetrically in a double layer, the
resulting structure would probably have been as perfect as the comb of the
hive-bee.

Accordingly I wrote to Professor Miller, of Cambridge, and this geometer has
kindly read over the following statement, drawn up from his information, and
tells me that it is strictly correct..."
 

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