Biology Fun Facts

Natchya Tiwari

Why do bees make hexagons in their hives?

It is a very interesting and strange question. None of the bee-hives has any other geometrical shapes except Hexagons. Hexagon is a geometrical shape that has six sides. If it is a regular hexagon, it will have all the sides equal.

Making of honeycomb is a very tedious work. It is made by the wax. The wax comes from the glands’ of the bees. It has been observed that about 30gms wax is produced by a bee after eating about two tablespoons of honey. This wax is added to the comb when hive is made.

The hexagons fit together perfectly. They can hold the queen bee’s eggs and store the pollen and honeys. If bees think to use shape of Circles, they will leave gaps in the honeycomb, and thus lot of space will be wasted. If Triangles or Squares are used, no doubt they will fit perfectly but they take a lot of space and bees wax.

Geometrically, the hexagon is the shape that uses least amount of material (i.e. wax) to hold and can carry the most weight.

Certainly Bees would have used all the shapes and finally reached the conclusion to use hexagon as the perfect shape to store their things. Now we can imagine the grand level of bees’ creative knowledge of geometrical shapes and engineering to build their headquarters.