Tag Archives: bee

Bloody Great Bee!

The plants in our backyard attract a lot of insects and we get plenty of bees hanging out on sunny days. One of our hanging baskets gets a reasonable amount of attention but not a lot. However, one bee showed up on a Sunday afternoon and got our attention. First, it stayed on the basket for ages climbing over the same flowers repeatedly unlike the usual bee behavior or constantly moving from flower to flower. The other reason for our attention was the size of the thing. It was huge compared to our average bees. I wonder if it got so large by removing every morsel of nutrient from each flower!

Bees On The Lavender

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Nancy has been busy planting in our back yard at home and one of the plants she has gone with is a lavender plant. Some of the plants take a while to get established and even longer to attract the wildlife but the lavender seems to be an instant hit. It has had a steady stream of bees visiting it as well as other creatures. Bees are the focus today.

I spent a little time lying on the ground by the plant with the macro lens fitted. This is not necessarily an ideal choice as my macro is not a high end lens and it has pretty slow focusing motors. The camera tries to drive it but often it can’t keep up. However, stick with it and you can get some shots that work out. One of the things I had not anticipated was the proboscis that the bees have. Maybe they tuck it away when not on plants but, as they move between parts of the plant, it stays out and it is rather an intimidating looking item!

Bees at Work

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The Puget Sound area is currently abloom. Everywhere you look there are flowers. It is quite beautiful. We haven’t seen too many hummingbirds on our feeder recently and it’s not hard to see why when they have so many places to feed right now. We have some blooms in our front yard too and this means the bees are visiting. I decided to try and use the macro lens to get some shots of them. My lens is a Tokina unit. I bought it for the negative scanning process for which it worked well. However, the focusing drive is not fantastic and it hunts a bit when I use it for things other than manual mode. However, it is still worth a shot. Here are a couple of bee shots from the yard. I can’t go anywhere so I may as well shoot at home!

Busy Bees

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The rhododendrons at Meerkerk Gardens weren’t only attracting the people to visit. It was awash with bees. The flowers were heaven for these insects and they were on so many of the plants. The sound of buzzing was a constant accompaniment. It was also interesting to see the different types of bee. Some plants had large, fuzzy bees while others had a thinner and shinier species. Clearly, the bees are very specific about which plant is their favorite.

Flowers and Bees

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Taking a hike through the hills, sometimes the opportunity to stop and look at stuff is rather welcome. I was looking at a flower when I saw a bee busily doing what bees do. I figured a quick shot was in order. Some of the other flowers looked pretty cool too. I have no idea what these flowers are. I thought they looked like bluebells but, since they aren’t blue, maybe they are purplebells?