Golden ratio in the elliptical honeycomb

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The honeybee comb, which is highly similar among honeybee species, is a mass of six–sided cells made by honeybees. It contains the brood, the honey and the pollen within horizontally–arranged and parallel structures. The construction processes and the geometry of the hexagonal cells have been extensively studied since centuries. Although studies of the natural, full–sized comb structure have been thoroughly performed in the past, the analysis of their early developmental stage size properties has not been investigated in detail.

Here in particular, I found that the general two–dimensional elliptical form of the newly–constructed honeycombs could be drawn into a rectangle of modules having values approaching either 2.00 or 1.62, where the module of the rectangle is the simple division of it’s long by it’s short side lengths. It is proposed here that the elliptical form of the early stage honeybee comb is not random, but is following mathematical rules reflecting some geometry intimately related to the golden ratio, also called golden mean or divine proportion. This mathematical presence of the golden ratio might reveal the effect of an inherent law of the Cosmos.

(Text in English ; préface en français ; Vorwort auf Deutsch)

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ISBN 9781367208056