This graceful honeycomb structure spreads like a carpet of wax and color from top to bottom. But the honeycombs in this picture are not ordinary: they are layered, tilted, merged – a lesson in flexible construction. The master builder? Honeybees.
In order to find out how the social insects react to unusual building conditions, researchers around Golnar Gharooni-Fard from the University of Colorado in Boulder presented 3D printed plastic plates with six-sockets of different sizes. The highlight: these clearly deviated from the natural preferences of the animals. But instead of being irritated, the bees reacted with amazing creativity.
If the specified cells were too small, the animals merged several of them into larger, overlapping units. If patterns are too large, they built sloping cell edges to reduce the openings without losing the depth. And with particularly large foundations, they simply placed a new layer of normal large honeycombs over it – based on the existing structure. The bees finally created functional honeycombs that met their requirements.
“These tiny builders seem to have an intuitive understanding of the physics of collective construction,” emphasizes co-author Orit Peleg. “We are just starting to understand the diverse strategies that you apply – tip, merging, merged – to form structures that meet your needs in a remarkably adaptable way.”
