Bees, Bees, and More Bees

Yesterday I finally made another trip over to visit Michele's garden. There is still a lot going on this time of year. Just like last year, the remaining bees and butterflies are visiting the sedum blossoms and other flowers in her garden to get the last bits of nectar for the season. I got a relatively early start and it was fairly cool overnight. I think that made the bees a little lethargic and that helped me get set up for photos.

There were several different species roaming over the plants. I focussed on the larger bees as they were moving more slowly. This bee (maybe a carpenter bee?) was the same species I saw last year. The green pattern in the eyes and the yellow mark on the front of the head is pretty distinctive.



Here is a close-up of the head. I was using a bare flash for fill so you can see some glare on the eyes. Reflected light next time.



Below is another type of bee I saw. In this photo you can see the additional 3 eyes on the forehead. I used a fill flash on this macro as the plant was in partial shade. Click here to see a larger version of the photo below. I think this is my favorite of the bee macros.



Here is a side view of the same bee.



You can see a bunch of bee photos in the Flickr set here.