On 27/07/2013 10:49 AM, Peter L Borst wrote:
> 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).

A biologist friend (fish) told me that he had once been looking down at 
a number of catfish building their gravel nests close together. These 
are normally circular, but on this occasion took on a hexagonal form, 
presumably as a result of their close proximity.

Geoff Manning

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