Honeycomb one part per 2850) more efficient. This difference is too minute to measure on an actual honeycomb, and irrelevant to the hive economy in terms of efficient use of wax, considering wild comb varies considerably from any mathematical notion of "ideal" geometry. Bees used their antennae, mandibles and legs to manipulate the wax during comb construction, while actively warming the wax. During the construction of hexagonal cells, wax temperature is between 33.6 and 37.6°C, well below the 40°C temperature at which wax is assumed to be liquid for initiating new comb construction. The body temperature of bees is a factor
Honeycomb structure as far as we can see, is absolutely perfect in economizing labour and wax”. The first paper honeycomb structures might have been made by the Chinese 2000 years ago for ornaments, but no reference for this has been found. Paper honeycombs and the expansion production process has been invented in Halle/Saale in Germany by Hans Heilbrun in 1901 for decorative applications. First honeycomb structures from corrugated metal sheets had been proposed for bee keeping in 1890. For the same purpose, as foundation sheets to harvest more honey, a honeycomb moulding process using a paper paste glue mixture had been patented