Honeybees--Straying Cool

Description: When it is hot and muggy, honeybees resort to collecting on the outside of the hive in order to maintain the hive’s internal temperature from overheating. I wore no protective gear, but setup the tripod on the shady side of the hive. I used 3 flashes (0, -1, and -1ev) to light the scene. I quit after some of the bees were giving me some warning behaviors. These are all worker bees and some are fairly young because they are quite fuzzy.

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Pertinent technical details or techniques:

D850 (1/200 sec at f14, ISO 1000) Levels, Linear profile tweak, Brightness & Contrast. Crtop for comp…Jim
Is this a composite? (focus stacks or exposure blends are not considered composites)

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jameszablotny

Any idea how many layers of them there were, Jim? This is a really cool image. Detail is excellent and I like the way you cropped it. The only thing I might change is to mellow out two or three the partial bees along the lower right and upper left edges that seem to be reflecting a lot of light from their wings. They kind of pull my eye to the edges.

They’ve been hitting our bird baths and pond a lot lately for water. Our neighbor has some hives from a son and I have a feeling he doesn’t put out water for them.

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That a cool mosaic, with wonderful lighting and detail! I guess the different kinds of bees vary in aggressiveness but around here if they’re happily busy they’re pretty tolerant. Around a hive might be a different thing.

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A nestle of bees! How wonderful. Do you keep them? I’ve always had an interest in bee keeping. Fascinates me. Some bumblebees have nested in a hole on the edge of our garage foundation and I heard them the other day fanning like crazy to cool it down in the afternoon sun. I’m sure the residual head keeps them toasty overnight, but around 6pm it’s darn hot to touch the garage foundation.

I don’t have a lot of of useful suggestions for improvement other an maybe policing the edges as Dennis notes. Really a treat to see these girls.

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Really pleasing action and semiabstract impression. Very interesting behavior.

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Great image. Probably make a wonderful puzzle. The honeybees here have been struggling to find pollen because the heat has damaged the plants that the bees regularly visit. Those in our yard are now invading the humming bird feeders.

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I’m not sure why I haven’t seen this image before, but, as a fellow beekeeper, I absolutely love it!

You have captured great detail among the rabble. It’s so interesting to see the bees communicating. The limited palette of browns and yellows make for a very pleasing colour combination.

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Hi Jim
Missed this one the first time since when only seeing it as a thumbnail it did not caught my attention. But when enlarging, and zooming in, this image reveals its very high qualities! It is a great mix of almost an abstract pattern and amazing details of the bees.

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