Enneahive One

Enneagram Ones are sometimes called “The Perfectionist” and they have inner rules that many times run their world. They tend to be well organized, orderly and usually pretty tidy. A beehive resembles an Enneagram One personality type in how they keep and design their home.

Honeybees keep the hive extremely clean and sterile. All cells are cleaned out thoroughly before being used again for honey, pollen or newly laid eggs. The “undertaker” bees have the job of removing debris and dead bees from the hive. It’s amazing to watch a bee stay so focused on the task and you can’t help but cheer her on once she finally gets the object out and carries it off and away from the hive. Bees also collect plant resins and use them to make propolis which has antimicrobial properties that are used to sterilize and protect the hive from bacteria and disease. And, one of my favorite facts is that bees will not use the restroom in the hive. Even in the winter they will wait until there is a warm enough day where they can break free from the cluster and go outside to relieve themselves.

Another example is the honeybee’s ingenuity in designing their home. They build comb in an efficient way using a hexagon shape to create cells to store resources and raise new bees. They build perfect hexagons with each of the 6 sides being equal in length. People have asked over the years, why a hexagon? A mathematician, Thomas Hales, proved that the hexagon is the most compact shape. Meaning, bees use the least amount of wax to create this shape conserving this precious resource that they make using a special gland. Isn’t that amazing! They could make random shapes, or even use circles, but instead they engineer the most mathematically efficient shape for their purposes, each one perfectly aligned with the next.