Honeybees Adaptability to Square Comb Foundation

In beekeeping, hexagonal comb foundation sheets made of beeswax are provided to bees beforehand to encourage them to build regular honeycomb cells. The practice exploits the bee instinct to construct cells of a specific size -- a regular hexagon roughly the size of a bee head -- when building their nests. However, the nest-building behaviour exhibited by honeybees when presented with foundation sheets that differ from their instinctively preferred shapes and sizes remains unclear. Here, we aimed to investigate the ability of bees to adapt to extremely strong honeycomb cell geometry disturbance. To this end, foundation sheets composed of square indentations were provided to honeybees and their subsequent nest-building activities were observed periodically. Notably, honeybees keenly perceived the size and arrangement of the squares carved into the comb foundation and constructed different types of combs depending on the differences. The findings of the present study enhance our understanding of the mechanisms via which high-order hexagon honeycombs are constructed.