hive vs honeycomb

hive

noun
  • A structure, whether artificial or natural, for housing a swarm of honeybees. 

  • A place swarming with busy occupants; a crowd. 

  • The bees of one hive; a swarm of bees. 

  • A section of the registry. 

verb
  • To store (something other than bees) in, or as if in, a hive. 

  • To collect (bees) into a hive. 

  • Of insects: to enter or possess a hive. 

  • To form a hive-like entity. 

  • To take lodging or shelter together; to reside in a collective body. 

honeycomb

noun
  • Any structure resembling a honeycomb. 

  • A space-filling packing of polytopes in 3- or higher-dimensional space. 

  • A structure of hexagonal cells made by bees primarily of wax, to hold their larvae and for storing the honey to feed the larvae and to feed themselves during winter. 

  • Voids left in concrete resulting from failure of the mortar to effectively fill the spaces among coarse aggregate particles. 

  • Manufactured material used to manufacture light, stiff structural components using a sandwich design. 

  • The texture of the surface of a solar cell, intended to increase its surface area and capture more sunlight. 

verb
  • To riddle something with holes, especially in such a pattern. 

How often have the words hive and honeycomb occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )