What are your thoughts and experience do bees love symmetry?
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Holy Sno-comb, Doug!!! Did that wild wax event happen at your place?? I assume there was a cover on the rig that a swarm settled under…wow 
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About 40 miles north of me and yes there was a cloth cover on the snowmobile.
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I think bees like any cozy, hospitable place. Sometimes they make symmetrical shapes, sometimes they don’t. What they do will usually aim at making the most efficient use of the space available.
Great photo @Doug1! Was the colony rescuable?
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Don’t know for sure but it’s very unlikely in this short season area.
Agreed and in doing so may or may not complicate the life of the beekeeper. But I think the Langstroth equipment design and subsequent introduction of wax foundation in frames decades ago was accepted readily by beekeepers for good reason.
But the bees try to work around that design of symmetry…I think primarily for ventilation requirements.
Undulating comb attached to the underside of a standard Langstroth 10 frame suggests a non-symmetrical bias. This wax comb pattern is observed in hives that population-wise could have been wintered in a double brood box scenario. From a human’s perspective, wouldn’t extending the existing Langstroth frames in a downward/same plane be a more efficient use of resources?
What thoughts/observations do beekeepers that use the foundationless option have with the bees chosing symmetrical vs asymetrical comb configurations?
Unless I checkerboard foundationless frames that I’ve also fitted with vertical supports across the inside area, I’ve observed bees to make bends in their ‘walls’ of comb, more often than not. A few times when I’ve left an empty feeding shim on under the roof during a flow I’ve come back to find the space filled with snaking honey combs. Bending lines have more connecting points across long distances as well as create better wind baffling than straight corridors.
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Awesome comment…never thought of that but makes perfect sense…bee whisperer!
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