Supporting data for: Honeybees adapt to a range of comb cell size by merging, tilting and layering their construction

Honeybees are renowned for their skills in building intricate and adaptive hives that display notable variation in cell size. However, the extent of their adaptability in constructing honeycombs with varied cell sizes has not been investigated thoroughly. We use 3D-printing and X-ray Microscopy to quantify honeybees' capacity in adjusting the comb to different initial conditions. Using the average area of natural worker cells as a reference, our findings suggest three distinct construction modes when faced with foundations of varying cell sizes. For smaller cell size, bees occasionally merge cells to compensate for the reduced space. However, for larger cell sizes, the hive uses adaptive strategies like tilting for cells up to twice the reference size, and layering for cells that are three times larger than the reference cell. Our findings shed light on honeybees’ adaptive comb construction strategies with potential to find applications in additive manufacturing, bio-inspired materials,..., Experimental data Collection
 
All of our experiments are performed using colonies of European honeybees Apis melifera L. at the Peleg lab apiary in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
 
Fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology was used for 3D-printing of experimental frames using Polylactic Acid (PLA) material, and the designs are made in SolidWorks 2019 CAD design software. Each frame consists of a pair of 3D-printed plates that are placed opposite to each other. For our control set with S=1, each hexagonal element on the 3D-printed plates has a side-length of 2.7 mm. All the other configurations are designed relative to the area of our control set.
 
All photographs of honeycomb are captured using a Nikon DSLR camera and controlled lighting and a black background.
 
XRM data collection was performed at MIMIC facility, at CU Boulder (RRID:SCR_019307). 
 
All tomography scans are performed using Micro CT ZEISS Xradia 520 Versa (Carl Zeiss X-ray Microscopy Inc, Pleas..., , # Supporting data for: Adaptive cell size, merging, tilting, and layering in Honeybee comb construction

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.z8w9ghxmw](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.z8w9ghxmw)

We are sharing the data used to explore the adaptability of the honeycomb structure built on the 3D-printed experimental frames with various cell size foundations. 

## Description of the data and file structure

All of the files are categorized based on the value of the 3D-printed cell sizes *S*. The file names in each dataset follow the naming convention `s_<cell size>`, where `<cell size>` is the relative 3D-printed cell size of the sample, with a *'o'* used to represent a decimal point *'.'*. For example, for data regarding *S=1* or *S=1.5*, all file names would start with `s_1` or `s_1o5` respectively. Refer to the paper for more details about *S*.

### ***s_1_raw_xrm_data.zip***

A sample of the raw X-ray microscopy data for our control dataset (S = 1) is provided as a stack of TIFF images. Raw ...,