From yesterday. Nice look at both the wasp and the flower.
Month: April 2021
Super-tiny Sweat Bee on an Iris
This one is my new favorite. It’s a tiny, tiny, tiny metallic-looking sweat bee on an iris petal (called a fall – those are the ones which, not surprisingly, hang down. The upright ones are called standards.). But here’s the thing – if you look in the lower right part of the photograph, you can actually see the thickness of the iris’ fall. That’s not something I’d considered before. And it gives some scale to the bee – which (by my guess) was about a quarter of the size of a grain of rice. So tiny…yet so neat.
Bonus – Dirty Sweat Bee on a Dandelion
Been a while since a bee bonus. So here’s one. Shot just a bit ago.
Some Nice Beetongue on the Catmint
Not much to say about this one. The catmint has started to bloom and that’s normally a big favorite of the bees. They still seem a little scarce, compared. Got a few shots on the dandelions yesterday, but nothing superb. So here’s one from a couple of days ago. Really good look at “at work”. Hoping to take a little more time with the camera today.
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Special One: Digger Bee
Here’s one I have not shot before – or cannot remember having shot before. This one is a bouncy bee – so at first I thought it was one of those hairy flies that mimic. Digger bees are hard to shoot because they fly really erratically and seldom stay in one place for very long – and they seem to be rare around here. I think this one is a female because they’re supposed to be hairier. And I can’t imagine a bee hairier than this one. Check out the hair on the ends of her middle leg. Really great bee!
Quick! To the Utah Giant Cherry in Bloom
Stopped raining after…36 or so straight hours. Still cloudy, but there were a few bees in the Utah Giant cherry tree. Here’s one:
Finally on the Catmint
Still having an awful time finding bees to shoot. Not sure why. Maybe the wind. All three hives are active, but…it’s a struggle figuring out where they are. Got a couple on dandelions yesterday – and this one on the catmint. Something seems out of balance on the crop today – the weight of the composition’s wrong. Maybe I’ll fix it later, but too much to do today so…you get a great bee with imbalanced composition. That catmint may or may not be called “Little Titch”. For whatever that’s worth.
Rare Shot on a Daffodil
Yesterday was silly frustrating for shooting. Fairly warm (mid sixties), not all that much wind (maybe ten mph from the south – not the brutal north we’ve been having lately). And prettymuch no bees. Anywhere. Three hives in the back yard pretty inactive during the day. Nothing on the fruit trees. A couple on the flowering ornamental cherry.
But… Got a great shot of a native sweat bee on a daffodil. Some flowers I just seldom get bees on – and the daffodils fall into that category. This is almost a full frame shot (maybe ten percent crop) so the detail of the bee isn’t all that apparent at the resolution that you see. But I’m thrilled with it.
Still with the Grape Hyacinths
Strange spring. So very dry. Cold, too. And that wind. Can never remember such a sustained thing. More than two weeks – almost three – with monster gusts and steady wind. And the bees… Seven fruit trees in bloom as well as an ornamental cherry – yet the bees seem disinterested, mostly, in much but the grape hyacinths. And even then just a few. Have to shoot where the bees are. So here’s another. Really, it’s a neat shot. She looks great and the in-flight ones are so much fun for me when I catch one right. And I do love the grapies.
A Real Rarity – Bumble and Iris
Sooooooooo many irises around here. Probably 50+ different varieties of shorties blooming presently in the gardens. And so many more to come. But… Super rare to catch a bee on one – let alone a bumble. I think this is a queen, too. She was kind of rough on the blossoms. Looked like she was wrestling with something inside. This is a pic of her heading in:
