I had hoped to catch a bee in flight, but alas the only shots I got were too OOF.  I could have probably made my life easier by not trying to get the shot at 1:1, but then it wouldn’t have looked as interesting!  From past experience, I have found it’s better to try to take an amazing shot and fail than to take several mediocre shots.

Of course, I did want to come back with something for my efforts so I did take a number of shots of bees on the flowers.

I photographed in three different locations that day.

1) In my front yard (shortly before mowing) where bees were frequenting a number of flowers in the yard.

2) At Bellevue Botanical Gardens

3) In a bush by my house, where tons of bees were flying.

Interestingly, the third location was where I had the best luck getting shots, though I only had a few minutes to shoot there because we had guests over.

Interestingly, all four bees in this blog are of different species.  I also saw several other species whose photos I was not able to get.  I think I will have to spend some time reading up on bees in the near future, as admittedly I know very little about them.

The following are some tips I made use of.

1) As always, I highly recommend the use of a flash.  For some situations, I did meter for the ambient light but kept the flash for fill.

2) Don’t jump from place to place.  Find a small area that bees seem to frequent and wait for a bee to come to you.

3) While foraging, bees don’t seem to mind me.  I don’t think I would want to get too close to their nest, but while pollinating flowers they could really care less if you get close to photograph.

4) Pick your flowers carefully.  Make sure when a bee does come to you, that it is on a flower that is easy to photograph and that provides a good view.  You can do this by staying near a group of flowers that you know will provide this.

5) Longer focal lengths work better here.

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I photographed what I believe to be three different types of bees that day.  All of them were gathering pollen and generally didn’t mind me.  Sometimes when one got rather close I would winch a bit but in general they didn’t seem very annoyed with me.  There were quite a few at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens and bees could be found on a wide variety of flowers.  Though I spent most of my time taking pictures on purple alliums, I liked the shots of one that I found on a triangular yellow flower a bit more.  Here is a shot of the flower, though I do not know what type it is.

I would generally start at 1x, and then slowly go down to 2x as needed.  I didn’t dare start out at the higher magnification as I was too worried that I would bump the bee.  In general, I find myself becoming a bit less terrified of these every time I take a picture.  Of course, I’m not sure I would try this with a hornet or one of the giant honeybees I saw in Asia.  The next shot is one Nelya liked a lot.

Here you can see the bee gathering pollen with its tongue.  I’m rather proud of these shots and find it interesting how sometimes photographs bring a bit more than a pretty picture.

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I am terrified of bees

Basically I am terrified of anything winged that stings – which includes wasps, hornets, and bees. I strive to be as far away from them as possible and I am terrified of being stung. I have been told for years that they are harmless, but in truth I’d still rather not be near them. My stance has been the following – “thanks for helping the ecosystem and pollinating flowers, but please stay away from me”. With wasps and hornets I am even more afraid than I am of bees, and I remember a number of nervous summers spent in the Adirondacks feeling that a bald faced hornet was just behind me.

Then I got started in macro photography. Obviously bees make interesting and popular subjects and I decided one day it was worth the risk to get a shot. At the time, my macro gear was nowhere near as powerful as it is now, and I had my Sigma 80-400mm lens combined with a Canon 500D diopter. A found a number of bees pollinating flowers but found it very difficult to track them. I quickly realized that the only way I was going to get the shot was to stay still, focus on one flower that I think they will land on, and wait. I quickly took stock of the situation. Did I really want to do this? I would have to be about two feet from the bee and would have to stay still while they fly around me for quite some time. What if one accidentally landed on me? In the interest of getting a good shot, I decided the risk was worth it. Besides, the bees seemed very preoccupied with the flowers.

Amazingly, I lived from the experience and got the following shot. Now I find it very unimpressive but at the time I was very proud of it and showed it off often.

Perhaps the most important result of this experiment was I determined that bees (at least honey bees) are not out to get me. Obviously, I would still prefer they keep their distance and I still get freaked out when a yellow jacket buzzes around my sandwich but I did determine that some bees are OK. I had to sit around for twenty minutes to get this shot. Twenty minutes of being within inches at time from bees, but I managed to persevere enough to get this shot. Granted, I did not persevere long enough to get two shots but it was a good start.

Later on, I sold the diopter and I purchased the Canon MP-E 65 with the Canon MT-24EX flash. This is the combination I currently use for most of my macro shots. While this is great for spiders, woodlice, and other insects I do not fear and can get close to, it doesn’t work so well with bees. Due to the small working distance, I need to get a few centimeters from the bee. First, this is quite difficult to do – most bees move far too fast. Secondly, even though I don’t fear bees as much, I still would prefer not to be that close. What if I accidentally bumped the bee with the camera? So, even though I had the opportunity to take pictures of a number of bees, I avoided photographing them. However, that changed when I met a most interesting bee.

One day, while organizing a Microsoft macro photo shoot at Bellevue Botanical Gardens, I noticed a bee pollinating a group of flowers. I watched the bee for a minute or two before noticing that it was crawling from flower to flower and not taking flight. I’m not sure what was wrong with the bee – it was a bit chilly that day so perhaps it was cold. However, it was simply happy to crawl around a bush of flowers and pollinate them. I debated whether I should try to get a shot. Maybe it would not fly away? Maybe it would let me get close? As it was a honey bee, and did not seem to aggressive, I decided to take my chances.

What I stumbled upon was perhaps the most cooperative bee I have ever met. For the next ten minutes, it let me take as many photos as I desired. I took all of them between 1x and 2x as I still didn’t want to risk bumping it. The following are some of the shots this bee was gracious enough to let me capture.

I found especially interesting the shots of the bee taking pollen from the flowers. I never realized they had such long tongues, but it certainly makes sense.

Perhaps when I get my Canon 180mm lens soon I will take more shots of bees, as a bee that will let me get this close is quite rare. In the meantime, I am very glad that I met the acquaintance of this bee and that it was kind enough to let me get these shots and prove once again that some bees can be very nice.

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