Here Comes Summer

 After a mammoth load of pictures yesterday I have settled on just one photo for today; a beautiful bee hard at work gathering pollen from a buttercup. There are so many different varieties of bee that I cannot say which variety this is however as you can see it is living up to the reputation of being busy. As summer approaches and more flowers come into bloom this is the perfect time of year to spot some of our spectacular and incredibly important pollinators.

Foraging

 

I may have gone a little overboard today posting 6 pictures of 5 different bees but hopefully they will bring a little sunshine into your day.

As I mentioned yesterday the early spring blooms combined with the sunshine certainly brought out the bees so I had some fun trying to capture some sharp images. I shot these at 1/1250s using my 100mm macro lens. A fast shutter speed was necessary to freeze the motion of the bee in flight (pic 4) where its wing almost looks like it is crafted from glass. In that image and the last one too you can see the pollen sacs beginning to fill up.

Although the bees in the other pictures appear settled on flowers they were actually constantly on the move so again the fast shutter speed was essential.

Using a macro lens also allowed me to capture lots of detail, in particular I wanted o look at the difference in their eyes. If you look at the bumble bee in the first shot his eyes are smooth, as if they have a hard black shell, I wonder how it is actually formed and what the bee can see.

In contrast the black bee in picture 5 and the honey bees in the other images all have compound eyes, if you look closely you can see they are made up of a concave array of hexagonal cells. I wonder whether this has advantages over the smooth eye of the bumble bee?

What I only spotted when I started to process these images was that the right eye of the first honey bee on the bright yellow flowers is actually damaged, it has been pushed inwards, leaving a shield shaped indentation. Perhaps he has flown into some obstacle, I am sure it must have an impact on his vision, after all, imagine what it would be like if you got hit in the eye with a big stick!!!

Fur Bee

 This is such a fluffy bee with a a great big walrus moustache.

It was a little bit damp and bedraggled but I am sure that after feasting on nectar from this thistle it would soon be ready to fly. 

The Great Pretender

I love bees and I get a buzz when I get to photograph them because they're not at all easy subjects.

But this is not a bee, or a wasp it is a hoverfly, one of the 300 species that are native to our country. They don't sting like bees or wasps but they mimic them as a means of defence against predators. They are important pollinators just like bees and just like bees their numbers are declining as a result of the increased use of  pesticides.

Just like bees they are interesting subjects for photography and luckily for me this one sat around long enough to get a few decent shots.

Whats the Buzz

There is so much that I love about summer and I really feel for anybody who suffers with hay fever because there is so much they can miss out on. Last weekend my daughter and I went walking in the Peak District (pictures to follow soon) and she really struggled with streaming eyes and runny nose for much of the time. Luckily I don't usually suffer like that but yesterday I did and I felt rough. I cheered myself up by listening to the song The Pop Singer's Fear of the Pollen Count 

But there is a safe and sneeze free way to enjoy a little bit of the outdoors and summer colour and that is to look at my blog...

Grass pollen is a killer for some people but the first picture is pollen free, guaranteed.

I love the colours of the next three pictures and the humble bumble bee is making the most of the abundance of pollen so you don't have to.