I love bees and spent quite a while on Monday in the garden of my friend and neighbor Cindy Dyer observing them and trying to photograph them. I had no idea that lamb’s ear plants produce flowers, but the bee in the first photo certainly was aware of that fact when I spotted it busily at work. The bee in the second shot decided to try an acrobatic move to gain access to the nectar in the lavender plant that swung wildly each time the bee landed on it. In the final shot, I captured the bee as it was crawling all over a flower of a cool-looking globe thistle plant.
I am not very good at identifying bees, but I think these bees are all Eastern Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa virginica). Unlike bumblebees that have fuzzy abdomens, carpenter bees have shiny, relatively hairless abdomens.
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Mike Powell 
Nice Mike! It is fun to photograph bees! Well done!
Those are great captures, Mike. I love watching bees. These are the bees I am trying to lure away from my house. I don’t want to kill them, I just want them to not literally eat me out of house and home.
I recall seeing your bee platform, Dan, in a recent posting and hope you are successful in attracting them.
Me too!
Mike, are you on Instagram?
Theoretically I am on Instagram as michael_q_powell, but post very rarely.
Theoretically…😂 Love it!
I am bylauradenise and post my photography with micropoetry regularly. (Only recently. I used to be theoretically as well. 🙂)
Very nice photography, Mike! Love bees.
Thanks, Wally. Bees play such an important role too.
These are bee-utiful photos, even more so when they are enlarged! The Eastern Carpenter Bees though destructive little bees are still considered beneficial pollinators. I suppose the latter outweighs the former depending on one’s experience and perspective! You may be aware that National Pollinator Week is June 22-28 this year. Pollinators include butterflies, beetles, bats, birds, some small mammals and most importantly bees. Benjamin and I discovered the Pollinator Partnership @ pollinator.org a few years ago, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization which is the largest in the world dedicated exclusively to the protection and promotion of pollinators and their ecosystems. Their 2020 poster “Our Future Flies with Pollinators” and the 2019 “Endangered Pollinators and Their Habitats” are learning tools as well as beautiful. Thank-you, Mr. Mike!!
Thanks so much for sharing your experiences, Ellen. I know that a lot of reactions to the things I post are individually-based and, for example, that the perspective of a farmer or gardener may well be different than mine as a photographer. I love the fact that so many creatures are partners in pollination–I was thinking of that yesterday when I spotted several clusters of trumpet vines when I was hiking and hoped I might see a hummingbird.
Great close ups!
Thanks. Bees basically ignore me, so I am able to get pretty close to them as they buzz about doing their thing.
Nice images ,
Oops hit reply too early. I meant to say that I especially like the first image. Those lamb ears look so soft, you feel like touching them!
Thanks, Chris. Your reaction is just the same as the one that I always have to those fuzzy leaves.
Lovely photos, Mike. Bees that are busy have to be one of the most challenging of the insects to photograph, as you have to constantly follow them and time your shots, and often you have no way of bracing yourself to help with focus and stillness. Magnificent, Mike!
Thanks, Pete. You have described wonderfully the challenges of photographing bees. Unlike many other insects, bees tend to ignore me, but they are so frenetic and unpredictable that it is not easy to get good shots of them.
This is the first June in many years that we have not spent at our cabin. You are helping me to stay as comfortable as possible with this highly unusual and desperate situation. Bumblebees are an integral part of a normal summer!
I can tell from your various comments, Gary, how much your cabin means to you and how tough it is for you not to be there. From a personal safety perspective, it is unquestionably safer for you where you are now–things are still really crazy in so many parts of the US right now and I read an article today that noted that much of the world thinks that the US has given up on fighting coronavirus and is willing to accept the increasing number of deaths and hospitalizations. Ugh. I am glad that I can help to some minor degree with the psychological aspect of your separation from Minnesota by highlighting some of the critters that you might be seeing now if you were there.
It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of this amazing community!
Amen!
Beautiful photos, Mike.
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Your camera and your art permit us to observe at close range that which we would hardly notice in the course of our day. Thanks!
Thanks, Nina. You’ve summed up wonderfully the reason why I do what I do in this blog. One of my main goals is to open the eyes of my readers to the beauty that surrounds them all of the time. My macro plays a special role in facilitating the accomplishment of that goal.