GEOMETRY IN NATURE:

From our beekeeper Cllr. PJ Murphy, we learned that bees build honeycomb cells inside their hives. They use these cells as nurseries to raise their young brood. The queen lays her eggs inside the cells prepared by the worker bees. They also use the cells to store pollen and honey. 

Rather than making square or round cells, bees are building hexagonal units out of beeswax. Bees have special wax glands in their cheek to make beeswax for building honeycomb. Choosing to build hexagonal cells is very economical and clever because it allows bees to create the largest volume cell with the least amount of building material.

With our artist, Veronika Straberger, we looked at geometry in nature and found many other hexagonal shapes in nature, like the basalt columns of the famous Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, or the shells of turtles. 

We also learned that bee's have compound eyes. They are multi-faceted made up of lots of hexagonal facets. Bees most likely therefore have slightly blurry and multiple vision - almost like looking through a Kaleidoscope. When they look at us they most likely see multiple blurry images of us. So if we wave and flail our arms about it is rather alarming for a bee as it sees lots of arms flailing about. If a bee happens to land on you it is best to remain calm and still. She will in all likelihood buzz of again on her own after she had taken a little rest from her exhausting honey gathering flight. 

Bees also don't see colours the way we do. They can see particularly well the colours: purple, yellow, white and ultra-violet (which humans cannot see). They cannot distinguish red from grey and cannot see red flowers very well unless they have veins of ultra-violet also (like poppies). 

Bees can also see polarized light - which humans cannot see. It allows them to figure out were the sun is, even on a cloudy day. They can therefore tell the time of day and they use the polarised light rays for navigation to find their way back to their hive. 

With our artist, Veronika, we learned how to draw the perfect hexagon using a compass.

Some of us had never used a compass before and it was a bit tricky at first....

But with a bit of practise we learned how to draw the perfect circle and construct a hexagon by marking the distance of the radius 6 times on our circle's circumference. 

Veronika also showed us how to make beautiful Mandala flowers with our compass just by drawing intersecting circles. We coloured them in the colours that bees can see...