>Yes, this is the elegance of natural systems - they apply to multiple cases,
as they are universal phenomena.

Sure...but multiple cases doesn't mean all cases, and universal phenomena doesn't mean that there is only one way to skin a cat.  
Lots of things in nature cause spheres to form.  On a smaller scale (than planetary), surface tension is the one we encounter most often.  We see it in physical manifestations (liquid mercury, bubbles, etc.).  Animals often make spheres, and use surface tension to make the job easier (the bubble nests of some fish come to mind, I expect amphibian eggs are spheres because of high surface tension, etc).  When humans make spheres we sometimes also use surface tension (the manufacture of ball bearings, blown glass), and sometimes we use physical force (snowballs).

The dung beetle also creates spheres, but no surface tension, no gravity...just rolling it along.  This is not to say that there aren't universal physical laws helping the dung beetle make a sphere, of course there are.  The point is that despite there being an elegant and simple way to make a sphere, the dung beetle uses a crude and labor intensive method and comes up with the same shape....because what it can do with the shape (roll it) is more important than using the least possible energy/effort in producing it.

>...and a Toth-like structure is "the truth of beauty", regardless of builder or specific material used. 

And, I would add, regardless of the method used to build the structure.  Let's remember that the difference in position is this:
Do the bees use physical means to shape the soft warmed wax
   or
Do the bees melt the wax and it 'pops' into shape

My guess is (as I suggested in my first post on the subject) that they are making the hexagonal cells hexagons by "machining" them that way, and the 3 plates at the bottom may or may not be formed by liquifying the wax (E.O. Wilson, in 'Superorganism' seems to indicate that the facets are more illusion than real).  We are not debating whether or not the structure is elegant.

>This purely physical phenomenon does not require the bees to do anything other than to
create closely-packed cylinders, the starting point for the process.
Honeycomb is a "gift of physics", bestowed not just on bees, but on anyone
(or anything) building similar close-packed structures.

This I agree with 100%...but probably not quite in the way you meant it.  No matter how you slice it, if you pack cylinders together closely enough, you end up with hexagons.  The bees are (I think) merely building really tightly spaced cylinders, and putting flat edges where required to do so successfully.

>If you want bee-specific work to reinforce the point, Peter Borst pointed to
the very recent work of Bauer and Bienefeld (2013) ...they found
that, even without foundation, the crystalline shapes form with a small
cell-wall height, well before the cell is fully drawn-out.  If the bees were
witnessed deliberately building any complex shapes, they did not mention it
in their abstract.

You are talking about the study titled: "Hexagonal comb cells of honeybees are not produced via a liquid equilibrium process"?  Did you read the abstract carefully?

" Direct construction of hexagons by bees was suggested previously, while a recent hypothesis postulated the self-organised construction of hexagonal comb cell arrays; however, infrared and thermographic video observations of comb building in the present study failed to support the self-organisation hypothesis because bees were shown to be engaged in direct construction."

If a hexagon is a complex shape, they sure seem to say, in their abstract, that they witnessed the direct construction of a complex shape.

..and from another study Peter posted:
"Others, such as wasps, build hexagonal cells. Studies of wasp nests show that comb is started with a single hexagonal cell, and more hexagons are added to the periphery, which disproves the idea that there is an interaction between the cells, as in soap bubbles. Honey bees also begin building hexagonal cells, the cells do not become hexagonal as they aggregate."

>But Larry Garrett pointed to yet another paper I have not yet read,...

I haven't read it yet either....again, if someone would shoot me a copy, I'd appreciate it.  The article (with the two photos) doesn't provide enough detail to determine anything.

>But where's that "deep respect for good science" espoused recently?  I think one should read the papers cited before ridiculing them.

I didn't 'ridicule' any papers in this thread.  You referred to Weaire & Phelan, and stated plainly that they (the review pannel, and therefore you) were "convinced" that bees produce hexagons, not by forming them, but by forming cylinders and melting them into hexagons.  http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=BEE-L;41c70947.1307  

I did my best to find the paper, and gave a link to what I think you were referring to (I can't really do any more than that, you could have posted the name of the paper or a real citation to make it easier).  What I read was about  making foam, and made no mention of how bees make comb, no observations on bees or bees making comb.  

Weaire & Phelan and their review panel were setup as 'straw men' to support a position that they may or may not hold (and certainly didn't express in the paper referred to)....on a subject they claim no expertise.  I did not ridicule the paper, but the claims made by others about what the authors of the paper said (and the review panel agreed with) are "not supported" by the paper itself.  I can make that critique without critiquing the science, the paper, the authors, or the review panel.

>I am perplexed at how anyone can feign ignorance of or flatly deny something
that has been in common discussion of topology and structures since at least
the days of Bucky Fuller and Ram Dass lectures...

I dunno.  The Bauer and Bienefeld (2013) study that you referred to earlier is a new study, and clearly doesn't agree.  At the very least, I think I'm on pretty reasonable ground in what we wrote in 2009 in a beginning beekeeping book...especially given the video Peter posted earlier.  Clearly the bees aren't _not_ forming hexagons with their mandibles.

>but I can understand the motivation.If one admits that the shapes of cells are a "gift of physics" to the bees, then one would be forced to concede that the entire scheme of "Housel Positioning" becomes an effort to re-randomize the randomly-formed.

These shapes are a gift of physics, regardless of how they are constructed (if that were not the case, we wouldn't use so much honeycomb structure produced by molding, machining, assembling, etc).  Even if your position on how comb is built is correct, these structures are not 'randomly formed' if the bees are not 'randomly clustered'...I expect that there is more order in how the bees are clustering and building comb than we understand.

WRT Housel positioning (since you bring it up), I'm far from convinced that everything said about it is true (my wife is much more fastidious about it than I am)...but a couple of things worth considering:

1.  There is some value in adding an extra level of thought/consideration before moving a frame from one position (or orientation) to another.  Housel positioning does make one think about what side of the frame is facing the center, and where the frame is in the box.  This isn't a great reason to apply arbitrary restrictions to how you place frames (for instance, if there is a patch of brood that I have the choice of placing with proper Housel position, or have that patch directly opposite more brood, I will probably go with the latter), but may be helpful for some kinds of new beekeepers to have something in place that makes it hard to shuffle frames like playing cards.

2.  I think anyone who has had some naturally drawn comb in their operation will agree how interesting the interplay of cells (their sizes and irregularities) on either side of the midrib is, and how they directly relate to one another.  Clearly this is a functional (structural) relationship.  We tend to see a 'Y' with some orientation or another in the center of almost every cell.  This is not a random relationship.

We would never notice this the way we keep bees and work with comb, but have you considered that there is probably a relationship between adjacent comb faces?  The relationship here is likely related to airflow rather than structure, but we don't have a good way to observe this most of the time...and even TBH folks don't keep comb in perfect alignment (and not even the Ware' beekeepers that are keeping their comb inspectable).

We do sometimes see a patch of drone brood facing another patch of drone brood.  We do see an overall "shape" to an unmanipulated broodnest.  These are clues.  
The observation that really makes me think of this comes from having used HSC.  HSC is 4.9mm cells, but the center to center density is the same as 5.4mm foundation.  We've had some really weird foundationless comb built adjacent to the HSC...really really thick cell walls.  I've never heard this discussed anywhere, does anyone know of any literature on the subject?  Dee does talk about putting foundation next to your best brood comb (brood present or not) in order to get it drawn the best.

I guess that is all for now...looking forward to looking at some of these studies more closely.
deknow

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