Imagine a technicolor rainbow dream, a beauty to the eyes but built by…wasps?!

It’s true, most people aren’t huge fans of these flying, stinging insects viewed moreover as a nuisance in the summer months. They haven’t exactly earned the best reputation around town, and we don’t like to see them in our homes, but their nests are actually impressive works of art. Follow on for some amazing proof.

Enter Mattia Menchetti. A passionate biology student at the University of Florence, he conducted a rather brilliant experiment that went viral when he shared it with the internet.

Menchetti’s studies led him to observe the colony habits of captive European paper wasps when all of a sudden an idea struck him. What if the insects were provided a different medium to construct their nests with?

Wasps usually use paper to make their colonies. They construct their nests by chewing wood down into a pulpy substance, held together by their saliva. Additionally, their saliva is resilient and waterproof, and creates such durable nests that the protein has been isolated to use in research for biodegradable drones!

Menchetti mused, what if they were provided a much fancier option? To test his theory, he fed a wasp colony pieces of rainbow paper, and to his amazement, they accepted the challenge!

The wasps happily participated in the experiment, constructing a beautiful rainbow-prism colony. Definitely the prettiest house on the block!

Menchetti carefully provided them a spectrum of colors for them to incorporate into their build. First, he offered them pieces of gold, yellow, and orange paper. He followed up with pieces of blue and silver. Lastly, he gave them green and hot pink paper. And the wasps worked with the material until they had created a vibrant rainbow home of their own!

No sooner had this misunderstood insect demonstrated to Menchetti that they were more than capable of creating something beautiful out of nothing.

The stages of his project are a wonderous testimony to nature itself! It’s brilliant to watch the wasps go to work together, carefully and meticulously constructing their rainbow abode.

This wouldn’t have been possible without his human intervention, but it goes to show that nature is always at work! A similar outcome occurred in 2012, but with unintentional human intervention. One day, french beekeepers noticed that their flying friends were producing blue and green honey. But how? The bees were collecting sugar from discarded M&M shells at a local waste plant!

These feats are amazing, leaving us with a small taste of psychedelic nature.

In recent years (2017) the biology student posted to Twitter, sharing his passion to work with the wasps again. He shared a small time-lapse of his most recent experiment, truly a treat to observe!

A few frames of my new art project with paper wasps… they are back! #entomology #art pic.twitter.com/tEhjehhAfa

— Mattia Menchetti (@mattiamen) June 14, 2017

Menchetti continues to pursue biology and has performed a variety of studies on insects and mammals. You can follow him across social media, and his personal website is home to a fascinating research catalog of his findings.

Still craving insect art? Take a look at this artistic collaboration between human and bee.

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.

Sources: Mattia Menchetti, Animal Planet, Mental Floss