p. 11 | Wonders of a Beehive

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 1, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 40.

Wonders of a Beehive.

The most diligent of all the scientists who have devoted their lives to the bee—and this wonderful insect has been more written about and studied than any other member of the animal kingdom, with the single exception of the egoist, man—have not been able to fathom the mystery of the production of the wax of which the symmetrical walls are composed, nor to understand the mental process by which the little workers are able to perform the mathematical wonder of the cells, every advantage that could possibly be desired with regard to the stability of the structure and the strength of each cell being procured by its own formation and its position with reference to the others.

Reamur, who was particularly interested in this aspect of the extraordinary intelligence of the bee, gave a problem to Koenig, the celebrated German mathematician: Of all the possible hexagonal cells with pyramidal base composed of three equal rhombs, to find the one whose construction would need the least material. Koenig calculated that the cell that had for its base three rhombs whose large angle was 109 degrees and 26 minutes, and the small 70 degrees and 34 minutes, met the requirements proposed.

Then at Reamur’s request Maraldi, another eminent savant, who was unaware what were Koenig’s figures, measured as exactly as possible the angle of the rhombs constructed by the bees, and found the larger to be 109 degrees and 28 minutes, and the other 70 degrees and 32 minutes. Maeterlinck says that the error, if there is one, should be attributed to Maraldi rather than the bees, since it is impossible to measure the angles of the cells with absolute precision.—Pearson’s Magazine.