This bee might argue that it’s just the camera angle, but my initial impression of this bee was that he looked chubby—I don’t think that I have ever encountered a bee with such a round face. He reminds me of a sumo wrestler at the start of a match.
The bee pretty much ignored me, though, and seemed to really get into his work, literally, gathering pollen from some kind of milkweed plant, perhaps swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata).
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Wow! She really got covered in pollen.That does look like the right color for swamp milkweed-it’s a beautiful, intense pink.
haha!
What you said reminds me of MadTV’s Oprah fat cam sketch.
Great detail in this shot- even the little spots of pollen on his chubby legs. Greedy little guy.
I love my new 180mm macro, which lets me get shots like this from a standoff distance. Of course, I probably should have used a tripod for greater depth of field, but I still got some decent sharpness.
Super cool shot!!!
LOL! Its amazing all the varieties of bees out this year. Excellent macro..:-)
Thanks, Ed. It’s often fun to think of animals, insects, and birds in human terms.
LOL 😀 You know the camera adds 20 mg’s…
That’s funny!
Great photo, Mike. I love that new lens of yours (lens envy!). The bee is carrying pollen from some other plant, not milkweed. Milkweed pollen is carried in two little saddlebags attached to a y-shaped arm. I just happen to have a photo of them on the leg of the great black wasp in today’s blog post: http://bybio.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/great-black-wasp-and-yellow-jacket-on-milkweed.jpg