Well, I actually went out and brought in some pieces of comb that are in 
the process of being built, put on some reading g;asses, and took a good 
look.

At present, what I think I see puts me in the "bees build hexagons" camp 
as I can see the outer row of half-height cells that have two sides with 
no neighbours built yet and the outer sides are flat, not rounded.

The bases are essentially complete and have the usual three surfaces, 
although there is some distortion on the uncompleted side of the cell as 
it appears the bees were in the process of completing it when it was 
removed.

Each cell, regardless of state of completion has a round top (coping), 
even when begun, but as the cell is drawn up, the cell walls below the 
coping are flat surfaces, even if there is no adjoining cell.

I only have two little chunks of new comb, so these are just my initial 
and limited observations, but the conclusions seem quite clear from what 
I see.

Empirical evidence trumps theory IMO, so I suggest that everyone push 
back from the keyboard and open a hive.  What do you observe (whatever 
the etymology of the word)?

Do your observations agree with mine?

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