The mathematical exactness of the bee is described by Darwin in terms which make it even more marvellous than it appeared to Basil.  “The most wonderful of all known instincts, that of the hive bee, may be explained by natural selection having taken advantage of numerous slight modifications of simpler instincts; natural selection having by slow degrees more and more perfectly led the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from each other in a double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along the planes of intersection.”  Origin of Species, ii. 255, ed. 1861.  According to this view the beings from whom hive bees, as we know them, are descended were gifted with certain simple instincts capable of a kind of hereditary unconscious education, resulting in a complex instinct which constructs with exact precision the hexagonal chamber best fitted for the purpose it is designed to fulfil, and then packs it.  And it is interesting to note how the great apostle of abstract selection personifies it as a “taker” of “advantage,” and a “leader.”