beez's in flight

1/1250 sec 320 ISO with the 120mm macro @ F8

Last one is fabulous. What plant is it?

It's a Ceanothus, grows to about 2m high and 1.5m deep, flowers early to mid May and is a bee magnet.

Good work, the last one is my pick

All good - but Yes, that last one takes the prize - Nice Shooting Chris

I think you can count all the hairs on the bees they're that sharp!

Lovely stuff

An impressive set. Ceanothus does not flourish in our garden but when I have been trying to get a decent shot of a bee landing, I have never succeeded. If I see one land on a flower, I have tried setting up camera on tripod focussed on that flower, but dammit the next bee avoids that flower and goes to another one. Can bees sense when a flower has been 'harvested' and not bother going to it?

Really like these . Agree with others - the last one stands out for me. But if the 3rd one were cropped to remove the in-focus flower heads sticking up from the bottom edge (which I find distracting), it would be up there with the last one.

Apparently yes. It's all to do with static electricity. A bee in flight picks up a charge from friction with the air. It can also detect an electric field. During a visit to a flower, the bee's static charge helps pollen stick to it. Some charge also transfers to the flower while the bee is doing its business. The next bee to come along senses the electric field from the charged flower. It recognises this as the signal for "don't bother to drop in because I've just been done" so it looks for another flower. The moral of this tale is if you're trying to photograph a bee, the last thing you should do is focus on a flower that has just been visited. No help in working out which flower you should focus on, though!

Steve

These were all handheld, gives the flexibility to follow the bee's, the ceanothus is covered in flowers at the mo, has been for 7 days and will probably only do another 7 - 10 days before they start to wilt.

Steve - thanks for the mention of the crop, amended version as below

Yes, that crop definitely works better to my eyes.

Steve

Thanks Steve, you were right

Absolutely excellent set of images , the amended version has taken top place for sure.

Super collection. Trouble with this caper is, once you start it's hard to know when to stop! You've got it nailed.