I'm not sure I could do a fair job of defending beehives as designed, so I'll leave that to someone else. ;)
But you lead me to an interesting, if off-topic, question of my own: does anyone know if a proof of Kepler's sphere packing conjecture has yet been provided?
Supposedly Thomas Hales has proved it. PH's link in post 535 discusses the matter. A Google search also has a bunch.