On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Bob & Liz wrote:

 Why does the queen cell look like a first grader made it out of modeling
clay?
 Darwin said the cell was so perfect.  The queen cell is out of sync with
the other cells, cappings etc.. The size of queen cells always vary compared
to size differences in worker cells and drone cells.

Hi Bob:

The queen cell looks like a first grader made it out of modeling clay
because it was made by the bee equivalent of a first grader. The worker
cells are so uniform because they are made by thousands of bees jammed
together, the crowding ensuring that the most space efficient cell will be
made.

The queen cell, on the other hand, is made in free space with no
others around it, and the geometry is done on an ad hoc basis by bees
which have never done it before. It is essentially round, and worker cells
drawn one at a time in free space would also be round. It might be
instructive to take a few dozen cylinders of modeling clay about an inch
long and 1/4" diameter and squeeze them together. My bet is that they will
distort into hexagons.

Note: this is all conjecture on my part.

                                                Best regards

                                                Donald Aitken