Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: Spacetectonics on 17/12/2012 13:00:38
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Honey-bees construct wax combs inside their nests. The combs are made of hexagonal prisms – cells – built back to back, and are used to store honey, nectar, and pollen, and to provide a nursery for bee larvae. The combs are natural engineering marvels, using the least possible amount of wax to provide the greatest amount of storage space, with the greatest possible structural stability.
Now the question is how they could do it?Any solid idea?what tools they use?!
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not sure how but when a witch want's to fix a spell she uses a hex and when she want to send it out she uses a pentagon. that's probably a good hint as to why the bee's fix a hex in the first place. geometrically it's stabilizing and is the perfect shape for conserving and holding energy/information.
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... what tools they use?
Their limbs could be used as rulers ... http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/latest-questions/question/2718/
Their compound eyes have a hexagonal arrangement (http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/370828/view), (although that could just be a coincidink).
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Bees have built-in glands to produce wax, which they further process by chewing (mastication). Built-in chemical processing tools!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswax#Production
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Honey-bees construct wax combs inside their nests. The combs are made of hexagonal prisms – cells – built back to back, and are used to store honey, nectar, and pollen, and to provide a nursery for bee larvae. The combs are natural engineering marvels, using the least possible amount of wax to provide the greatest amount of storage space, with the greatest possible structural stability.
Now the question is how they could do it?Any solid idea?what tools they use?!
Researchers have argued that bees’ ‘dances’ – which they perform on the hive’s honeycomb in order to provide other bees with directions to flowers – contain more mistakes if they dance while they are horizontal, due to gravity.
http://www.paneuropeannetworks.com/detail/...es-dancing.html
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It is a very cool thing. The idea of bees using their own limbs for measurement sounds kind of silly, but I read another science article (from Science Daily I think) that said ants measure distance to things by the number of foot steps it takes to get there, like we would pace off a lot. They proved it by making ant's legs artificially longer or shorter (ouch) and the ants over shot or under shot their destination. Anyway, counting may not be the higher brain skill we assume it is. Or ants have more complicated brains than we think, depending on how you look at it.
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... I read another science article (from Science Daily I think) ...
or thenakedscientists.com : I linked to it in my post above (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=46443.msg401990#msg401990).
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It is a very cool thing. The idea of bees using their own limbs for measurement sounds kind of silly, but I read another science article (from Science Daily I think) that said ants measure distance to things by the number of foot steps it takes to get there, like we would pace off a lot. They proved it by making ant's legs artificially longer or shorter (ouch) and the ants over shot or under shot their destination. Anyway, counting may not be the higher brain skill we assume it is. Or ants have more complicated brains than we think, depending on how you look at it.
Researchers have argued that bees’ ‘dances’ – which they perform on the hive’s honeycomb in order to provide other bees with directions to flowers – contain more mistakes if they dance while they are horizontal, due to gravity.
http://www.paneuropeannetworks.com/detail/...es-dancing.html
BEE-GPS!!
The team used computer-controlled artificial flowers to test whether bees would follow a route defined by the order in which they discovered the flowers or whether they'd find the shortest route. They found that after exploring the location of the flowers, bees quickly learned to fly the shortest route.
The work has implications beyond enhancing understanding of bees. It could improve the management of networks such as traffic on the roads, information flow on the web and business supply chains, without needing lots of computer time.
"Despite their tiny brains, bees are capable of extraordinary feats of behaviour," says Raine. "We need to understand how they can solve the Traveling Salesman problem without a computer. What short-cuts do they use?"
Read more at http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-fe...ZSgHE6AX8rIK.99
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i read somewhere that if you put a magnet next to bees while they are building the hexagons, they warp them. Anyone else read it? (Can't remember where).