It’s still a little too early for dragonflies, but I did find some cool little bees yesterday afternoon at Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginia, a county-run historical garden not far from where I live. Longtime readers of the blog know that I love taking macro photographs and during summer months my trusty Tamron 180mm macro lens is on my camera most of the time.
Yesterday I decided to dust off my macro lens and search for insects. For most of the afternoon I came up empty-handed, but then I spotted a few bees gathering pollen. They kind of look like honey bees, but I don’t remember honey bees being that small. Grape Hyacinths (g. Muscari) are only a couple of inches tall and the first photo gives you an idea of the size of the bees.
Spring is finally here and I look for an explosion of insects soon. During this transitional time of the year I expect to be switching back and forth between my telephoto zoom lens, primarily for birds, and my macro lens, primarily for flowers and insects.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Nice to see them busy. Great macro work, Mike.
Thanks, Dan. it is supposed to get up to 73 today, about 10 degrees warmer than yesterday, and I suspect even more bees will be busy today.
Beautiful Mike. It reminds me I haven’t done macro shots for a while. I too should dust off my lens and get out there!
Thanks, Chris. I get so used to shooting with one lens and similar subjects that I find it useful to radically mix things up by changing lenses and forcing myself to look down and not up, to look near and not far.
mike, what a great captures, love the 3rd one where you can see the bee’s wings move!
Thanks so much. It’s always tricky to try to figure out the right shutter speed when capturing moving subjects. I really like it when there is a little motion blur, which suggest movement more than completely stopping the action.