Bees can turn awkward spaces into tidy hives. New research shows how they adapt their comb-building playbook when surfaces become irregular, using clever fixes that keep the hive functional.
The behavior resembles a distributed construction crew. It could even inspire better ways to print objects layer by layer.
A team of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder explored how bees coordinate to build usable honeycomb on imperfect foundations. Their experiments revealed robust, rule-like strategies that emerged from many tiny actions by individual bees.
Beeswax is the hive’s concrete
“Building a hive is a beautiful example of honeybees solving a problem collectively,” said Orit Peleg, an associate professor in CU Boulder’s Department of Computer Science. “Each bee has a little bit of wax, and knows where to deposit it, but we know very little about how they make these decisions.”…