What’s the buzz

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What’s the buzz

April 23, 2014 by Mike Powell

While visiting a garden during an event advertised as “A Million Blooms” I looked hard, but didn’t find any bees among the many tulips and other spring flowers. It was a bit ironic that I discovered this honey bee on a bush while waiting for my fellow photographers outside the gift shop of the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia after seeing lots and lots of flowers.

I was hand-holding my 180mm macro lens for these shots, so I couldn’t close down the lens too far. In some of the shots, therefore, you can see that the depth of field was pretty narrow. Still, I am happy that I was able to capture some of the beautiful details of this honey bee, one of the first bees that I have observed this spring.

Posted in Art, Flowers, Gardening, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Portraits, spring | Tagged Apis, Canon 50D, honey bee, honeybee, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Richmond VA, Tamron 180mm macro lens | 7 Comments

7 Responses

on April 23, 2014 at 11:03 am | Reply krikitarts

Great results for hand-held, Mike. Especially like the second one!
- on April 23, 2014 at 7:10 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks, Gary. The bee seemed to be willing to work on the flowers of that bush for a good little while and the light was reasonably good. I’m pretty happy with the shots. Have I mentioned that a 180mm macro lens is awesome. 🙂
on April 23, 2014 at 2:18 pm | Reply dianaed2013

Great as usual – people could learn a lot from your photography
- on April 23, 2014 at 7:07 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks. I feel like an advanced beginner, but have learned a lot over the past two years since I began to shoot regularly. Sometimes I will try to explain what I was thinking or how I set up my camera for a shot so that others can have an idea of what I was trying to achieve. I am glad that you find it helpful (and thanks for your constant encouragement.)
on April 24, 2014 at 6:20 am | Reply New Hampshire Garden Solutions

Nice shots. I haven’t seen a bee yet here but they must be flying by now.
on April 24, 2014 at 10:54 am | Reply Sue

I think there have to be hives within a limited range of the flowers in order to find honeybees there. There are a few wild honeybees I suppose, but most seem to be raised by humans these days.
on April 25, 2014 at 6:43 am | Reply If I were a carpenter… | Mike Powell

[…] minutes of seeing the elegant honey bee that I featured in a recent posting, I encountered this Eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica), which is built more like a sumo […]