Tuesday 19 February 2019

February bees

My bees have been making the most of the recent mild sunny weather.  Although we are still officially in winter they think it is spring.  The first warm sunny day of the year with bees foraging on the snowdrops in the wood is cheering and usually sees my first bee photos of the year.

 Snowdrops produce a lot of pollen and the bees get plastered in it.  As a result they have to spend a lot of time cleaning up.  The photos and videos provide an opportunity to see how they do it, typically hanging from a flower by one front foot and using the other five legs to move the pollen back and stow it in the corbiculae.










Here are a couple of videos.

When all is done they fly back to the hives to unload - only a few metres away.


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5 comments:

  1. Archie McLellan20 February 2019 at 09:25

    Wonderful pictures, as always. I'm fairly new to your blog and haven't gone through all the archive. Have you done a post on the business of how to photograph bees?

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    1. Archie McLellan20 February 2019 at 09:26

      I don't mean to be anonymous! Archie McLellan

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    2. trogtrogblog7 March 2019 at 09:05

      I haven't Archie but it is a good idea for a future post. I have given comments and hints in previous posts and have also given a couple of talks on bee photography to local beekeeping associations. I have also written about technical aspects of other wildlife photography on my main blog, www.trogtrogblog.blogspot.co.uk. Posts on this blog tend to be a bit more sporadic, depending on what is going on with the bees (solitary bees and bumblebees are on the main blog). Rusty Burlew wrote a very helpful article on her blog at https://honeybeesuite.com/how-to-photograph-bees/ which is worth a look.

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    3. trogtrogblog12 March 2019 at 18:27

      I forgot to mention as well that David Evans wrote a great post on photography on his blog "The Apiarist" at https://theapiarist.org/say-cheese/ but then I see you already know that!

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  2. Out To Pasture20 February 2019 at 21:21

    Aren't bees marvellous acrobats?! I'm a bit jealous in that I have to wait a couple more months here for available bee forage. Not for the first time, I wonder why the dickens my ancestors immigrated to this colder country.

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