The Honeycomb Vase by Tomas Libertiny

Tomas Libertiny
The Honeycomb Vase, 2006

Libertiny invited colonies of bees to contribute to the creation of sculptural forms, resulting in a vase built by 40,000 bees in just one week. The designer constructed a vase-shaped hive, which the swarm of bees thickened with wax on both the inside and outside. The wax sheets used to form the hive were embossed with honeycomb patterns to guide the bees in designing.

This process, which Libertiny refers to as “slow prototyping,” allowed the bees to create the final shape organically. Since bees can become agitated by monitoring, the designer had to carefully estimate the right moment to remove the vase.

In 2008 one of the vases was acquired by MoMA.