Students are often too bee-sy to notice the architectural detail in buildings and the natural world around them. One of the most architecturally interesting structures can be found in UTM’s Maanjiwe Nendamowinan (MN), a six-story facility that decorates the Northern portion of the campus and is home to humanities and social science departments.
Interestingly enough, the MN houses the campus’ apiary or beehives. In 2017, UTM had three beehives and over 15,000 bees. In 2024, the campus now houses ten hives and provides various campus services.
The mathematics behind the honeycombs in the beehives creates a strong, aesthetically pleasing structure that is functional, economical, and bee-utiful.
Bee-ing an engineer: The marvel of bee architecture
The honeycomb’s strength relies on its hollow congruent hexagonal cells and the thickness of each hexagon panel. The hexagonal cells distribute the shear stress equally amongst all partitions, as opposed to squares which cannot spread the tension to adjacent partitions and lead to weaker architecture. The thickness of the centre contributes to the honeycomb’s structural integrity: the thicker the core, the stronger the comb.
Additionally, the hexagonal cells — closely-packed clusters that help conserve heat and energy — also allow maximum storage with minimal wax use; especially since the bees eat eight ounces of honey to make one ounce of wax.
This is why bees do not use circles despite having the largest surface area of any shape. Circles are not stackable, meaning wax is wasted by filling in the gaps between the circles. Squares and triangles are not used either, despite being stackable. The more sides a shape has, the larger its surface area. In other words, if a triangle, a square, and a hexagon all had a perimeter of five centimetres, the triangle would contain the least amount of honey and the hexagon would contain the largest amount.
Additionally, bees build cells of different sizes for the three types of bees: the queen, worker bees, and drones. Each bee has a role to play in the beehive. Worker bees maintain the beehive, collect honey, and care for the young. They are considered the smallest bees. Drones are solely responsible for mating with the queen and are typically larger than working bees. Therefore, small cells house worker bees and large cells house the breeding drone bees. To create a seamless transition, intermediate-sized cells for drones are built between small and large cells to ensure cohesion within the hive.
Bee-ing challenged: Can beehives withstand climate change?
Research on the climate crisis’s impact on the beehive’s structure is limited, but some papers explore the climate crisis and beehive health. Climate change is making it challenging for bees to find familiar flowers to pollinate. Increases in global temperatures cause some flowers to secrete defensive odour-like plumes unfamiliar to bees. Air pollution masks the floral fragrance of flowers, which initially attracts bees to certain flowers. Extremely hot temperatures force bees to migrate to unfamiliar colder climates, shrinking the bee’s habitat.
Nectar is the beehive’s main source of food. When collecting nectar, pollen from the male part of the flower — the anther — often attaches to the bee. When the bee moves to another flower, the pollen sticks to the female part of that flower — the stigma — causing the flower to produce seeds and fruit, which fall and grow into flowers. Without bees, flowers cannot reproduce or produce honey.
Due to the bees and flowers’ mutualistic relationship — where both species rely on each other for survival — anything that affects flowers compromises bees, creating a negative feedback loop for both creatures.
The honeycomb is a marvel of mathematics and animal architecture. It is unclear if bees are using the advantages of physics or are indeed energetic engineers of their own homes. Undeniably, the climate crisis contributes to habitat loss, difficulty in finding flowers, and ultimately, a decrease in honey production.
With the climate crisis, the beehive’s mathematical marvel and architectural integrity are threatened. This is extremely problematic to the human race: a decrease in pollinators and pollinations means a decrease in vital sources of nutrients such as apples, coffee, and nuts.
It remains unclear if bees know the geometric marvel of the honeycomb. Knowing that the shape of the hollow cells is not the most mathematically efficient might help some readers draw a conclusion. But, maybe bees are content with whatever gets the job done!
