Gordon Scott wrote > Well, I'm a beekeeper and an engineer, so I guess I could > venture an unreferenced opinion ;-) > > Throw a handfull of matching sized ballbearings into a > tray and look at the pattern that naturally results. > > Consider that nature likes efficiency. > > Put your hand on your heart, look me straight in the virtual > eye, and tell me that nature isn't just being efficient here! Hei! I'm also an engineer by profession and my thoughts are the same as Gordon's. I have been using an empty frame in the brood chamber as a "swarm barometer" and so have reasonable quantities of new comb built without foundation, that is the bees were not given any pattern to work too. Upon examination of this comb I saw something interesting---- First, imagine an array of geometrically perfect hexagonal cells where each cell wall has constant thickness. Second, imagine an array of cylindrical cells packed together in the same way as Gordon's ball bearings..... My comb did *not* match either pattern, it was somewhere between the two ie. nearly hexagonal but with the edges of each hexagon weakly curved so that the cell walls were not of constant thickness This to me indicates that Gordon's "theory" is probably right and the "geometric" hexagons are a function of our way of looking at and thinking about comb and actually result from the distortion of tightly packed cylinders caused by economic use of wax for the cell walls! Why the bees obey the law that nature likes efficiency is of course another matter! Cheers Tony. --------------------------------------------------------------- Anthony N. Morgan (Tony) Fax: +47 73 89 62 86 "Stavshagen" E-mail: [log in to unmask] Midtsandan Sor-Trondelag College 7563 MALVIK Elec. Eng. Department Norway 7005 TRONDHEIM, Norway ----------------------------------------------------------------