The mechanism by which honeybees or social hornets achieve such precision has
eluded entomologists for many years. 

A proposal has been made
that, in the case of a beeswax honeycomb, the structure "self-organizes" into its
precise shape, after first being constructed in a more rough fashion by the worker
bees (Thompson, 1942; Pirk et al., 2004). 

This self-organization is supposed to occur
when the wax is heated by the bees up to about 40 C and starts to melt. At
that point, the structure changes by flowing "to a more probable state," wording
copied from a popular 1905 book by the founder of Statistical Mechanics, Ludwig
Boltzmann. No quantitative arguments are provided to back up this idea. 

In any case, it could never explain the precision achieved in the construction of a hornet
comb: These combs are made of mineral gravel and cellulose fibers gathered by the
worker hornets and mixed with their saliva to form a paste or cement, which hardens
after being molded into cell walls and partitions. The solid material so formed
does not soften or become fluid even when subsequently heated to temperatures
above 100 C.

Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (2007) 69: 1777–1790

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