will form shapes and arrangements that require the least amount of energy.  The bees actually start by making roughly circular cells as these are the most effecient use of their wax.  But as these pack together the walls bend to create a hexagonal arrangement.  You can see how this happens by tossing a handful of marbles in a curved wok -- the spherical marbles naturally settle into a hexagonal pattern. Mathematically hexagonal rooms have many benefits, but they have some practical drawbacks too.  Any of the students who have lived in these rooms will tell you that it can be quite hard to fit normal, predominantly right-angled, furniture into these hexagonal rooms.  Some students apparently even went so far as to take to their beds with a saw to make them fit! Which is why most of us won't be living in a beehive soon. Demonstration We've included questions (in italics in the description above) that you can ask the group to get them involved. You can use a large loop of string (one about 6m long works welll) to explore how the area of a room (enclosed by a fixed length of wall) changes as you alter the shape.  Ask for two volunteers and ask them to pull the loop taut., giving you a room you with just two corners -- it's not a very useful room as it encloses no room at all.  The room becomes much more useful if you add a third corner, creating a triangular