Bees Helped Artist Create an Impressive Honeycomb Nefertiti Statue

Bees are the original nature’s artists. Their honeycombs are an astonishing display of vision, hard work, and meticulous execution.

These little insects recently gave another example of their enormous talent by teaming up with artist Tomas Libertiny to create a honeycomb statue of Ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti. Libertiny did the preparation work, creating a frame for the statue that was specifically designed to guide the bees through the process. He then employed around 60,000 hard-working bees to bring his idea to life in 2018.

The bees worked on the piece for around two years, finally finishing it by the end of 2020 and the statue is now on display at Rademakers Gallery in Amsterdam. It’s on sale for $40,000!

“It is a testament to the strength and timelessness of ‘mother nature’ as well as its ancient character as a powerful female reigning against the odds,” Libertiny told designboom in a recent interview.

This wasn’t the first time Libertiny collaborated with bees—he has several other sculptures in the series that you can check out below.