Revealing internal workings of one of nature's brilliant architects, the nest's interior was taken with computer technology that makes paper cells invisible, revealing the queen wasp's brood.

Canberra biologist Dr Philip Spradbery, studying chemical communication in colonies of the social wasp, collected the nest under the eaves of an O'Connor home and froze it until scanned at the Australian National University.

Dr Spradbery has collaborated with a physicist and a computer genius from the ANU to produce the images, which appear in his latest scientific paper published by the Royal Entomological Society of London.

"It is not often that three disparate scientific disciplines can get together informally and produce something that one can appreciate and enjoy," he said.

ANU department of applied mathematics physicist Michael Turner used high-resolution X-ray computerised tomography scanning to scan an image of the nest.

Researcher Ajay Limaye from the ANU's national computational infrastructure generated 3D images and animations from the radiographs.

​The images provide a dramatic demonstration of the power of the computerised tomography scan, with larvae and pupae in their invisible cells and the eggs appearing as satellites in space.

The highlighted queen and her daughters, the adult worker wasps, are clearly visible at the bottom of the nest.