Construct 042.15

2 Replies to “Construct 042.15”

1. I might have been working on the beehives in our new painting for too long, but these shapes resemble them. I really like this.

2. Thanks Laura. Yes, it’s the hexagons. One of the coolest of geometries. How is it that the bee understands that the hexagon is the most efficient geometry for storage of their honey? It fascinates me. Bees are also among the most accomplished builders insects or otherwise.

   I copy this from a scientific article about how bees make their honeycombs:

   Not until the advent of close-up film techniques did scientists know for certain how bees build their honey stores. It is a remarkable feat of high precision engineering. Young worker bees excrete slivers of warm wax, each about the size of a pinhead. Other workers take the freshly produced slivers and carefully position them to form vertical, six-sided, cylindrical chambers (or cells). Each wax partition is less than 0.1mm thick, accurate to a tolerance of 0.002mm. Each of the six walls is exactly the same width, and the walls meet at an angle of precisely 120 degrees, producing one of the “perfect figures” of geometry, a regular hexagon.

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