Greetings!
This has to take the cake as the most implausible hypothesis of the new
millenium. We are expected to believe that a bee goes down into a cell and
"notices" that it does not properly correspond with the cell on the opposite
comb. That would presuppose that the bee knew the orientation of the cell on
the opposite comb.

Suppose she doesn't. She goes down into to cell, lets say to nurse a larva.
Checks the orientation, goes to the cell opposite, checks it, memorizes its
orientation, goes back to the other, compares the two, and decides if it's
right or not. If not, the whole hive breaks down. It's a wonder the poor
things can function at all!

Get serious. I doubt that our poor bee could ever get back to the same exact
cell if she wanted to! They're not marked, you know -- and it's pitch black
in there!! But there is no reason to suppose that this bee even cares about
the angle of the vertices in the bottom of the cell! There is no evidence
that she has the ability to sense such a distinction.

If you have a hypothesis you have to spend a little time backing it up! Von
Frisch spent years determining which colors bees can see and which they can
not. He determined their sensitivity to sugar concentration. An experiment
could be designed to test whether a bee could differentiate the orientation
of comb.

The honey bee is one of the most adaptable creatures on the planet. They
will put honey into little plastic rings, if you want! They will work
normally behind glass, with bright lights shining on them. None of this
seems to stop them from doing what they have done for eons. And we are to
believe that if the angles in the bottom of the cell are wrong, it's some
sort of catastrophe?

pb