The Honey bee.

In the spring time they are easily found and can make great subjects for our digital cameras. Today we will learn a ton of information about honey bees from a local bee keeper, that will give a much better understanding of this valuable cog in our ecosystem.

This is Terry VanderHeiden, professional photographer and you host of The Nature Photography Podcast.

I traveled a few towns away from where I live to meet with Ronni Brega from Oaktown Bees and she was kind enough to spend an afternoon with me, enlightening me to the world of honey bees.

Bees are indeed a keystone species. We as humans need honey bees to keep our plants thriving.

By that definition, a keystone species is one species that plays a major role in the ecosystem. With the removal of a keystone species, it could create a ripple effect across the ecosystem where the whole system could collapse.

The term Keystone Species comes from field of architecture and the building of an arch. The keystone is the center stone at the top center of the arch, that if were to be removed, it would cause the entire arch to fall down.

Recording unclose sounds of bees in the hive. (See the microphone under the hive.)

The bees take on this role by pollinating our plants that we enjoy and consume every day. With out plant life flourishing, we as humans would have a very difficult time surviving.

It goes like this: The bees land on a flower of a plant to gather nectar. By doing this, they gather the pollen as it sticks to the hairs on their bodies. Then they fly over to the next plant and bring some of that pollen with them, there by pollinating THAT plant. The honey bees also bring pollen back to their hive to use in feeding the young and supplementing their diet.

The bees, while wearing this pollen sweater, run into other bees in the hive and crisscross the pollen from one bee to another. Those bees then go out and land on different plants there-by creating cross-pollination that will maintain the genetic diversity of the plant community.

Bees communicating and exchanging nectar.

At some point, the bees go out to specifically gather pollen for the hive. In this case, the bees brush the pollen from their bodies down to their hind legs into what is called pollen baskets. These will collect and hold the pollen until the bee gets back to the hive. When the baskets are full, the bee makes her way back to the hive to dump off the pollen and then back out for another haul of pollen.

The bees consume the nectar as their carbohydrate and they consume the pollen as their protein for a balanced diet. In fact, honey is mixed with pollen to form a sort of “bee bread”, that is fed as the first meal to a new emerging bee.

There is a danger of Honey bee colonies collapsing so I asked Ronni, her take on keeping honey bee colonies safe:

What is the life cycle of the honey bee? I asked Ronni how does this all work?

The life span of a queen can be about five years, where the life span of a worker bee is only 6 weeks.

During the last three weeks of their lives, they become the foragers, the bees that we see most often visiting the plants in our gardens. One of their jobs is to swallow up nectar and they start processing that, in their bellies. When they get back to the hive, they regurgitate that processed nectar to yet another bee, who processes it even more, then that bee, regurgitates it once more into a cell, a honeycomb, and seals the top of it with wax. That is where honey comes from and Storage like this can last a very long time.

That is the food that the hive survives on during the winter when they can’t forage for fresh nectar and pollen.

An interesting fact is that those forager bees don’t keep track of “How Much” honey the hive has created, they only knows to keep going out and brining home nectar and pollen. Over time, the hive has an abundance of honey because they usually make much more than they can consume as a hive.

This gives an interesting look inside a birthing cell. The capped cells are sometimes removed during the pupae stage if mites or something else is suspected. Sometimes the cells are re-capped and other times if the infestation is too much, that signals the end of the road for that young bee. The health of the colony always comes first.

That is where beekeepers come in. They can harvest a portion of that honey, without damaging the interworking of the colony of honey bees. The honey can be kept for a long time as it has a tremendous shelf life.

Honey is also linked to helping people with allergies. For instance, if you were allergic to acacia blossoms, by eating honey from an area where the bees collect from the acacia trees, you would essentially be micro dosing on acacia to start to gain an immunity toward defeating your allergy.

When I got to the hives that Ronni keeps a watchful eye on in Oakland, California, there was a daily ritual that occurs called the orientation flight.

Along with honey bees that are many times being kept and supported by bee keepers like Ronni, there are native bees that are also out doing all the same good things honeybees are doing.

If you would like to start photographing honey bees, it’s an easy process to find your subjects. Obviously, the weather has a lot to do with finding bees, as they prefer a warmer climate or the warmer part of the day. So, in areas that have a defined winter, look for the bees in spring and summer.

Situate yourself in an area that has lots of flowering plants that will attract bees. I have found it best to sit on the ground and watch what the bees are doing.

After a few minutes of observation, you will see the bee’s kind of develop a pattern. They will fly from one flower to the next, digging in to gather nectar. You can also observe them filling their leg saddlebags full of pollen.

Since you are shooting close up, your depth of field will be shallow. Even if you are shooting at f/16 or f/22 your field of focus will be a challenge.

It’s probably easiest to rack your macro lens out to full magnification and then back it off just a small amount. Then leave your focus alone. That way, you can lean into the flower to capture the bee portrait.

Very likely, your auto focus on your camera will not be fast enough to capture the changing movements of a honey bee.

Native bees doing the work of pollinating our plants. Photo Courtesy of BozsikImagery.com

What can also happen with a macro lens, is if you try to use the auto focus, you might be close to the bee, then the auto focus grabs the stem of a plant two feet behind the bee. And your bee is way out of focus. By the time the auto focus comes back to the bee, your subject is on to another flower.

The strategy is to watch the bees and see which flowers attract them the most. What will attract one bee, will likely attract another. Get into position and focus and frame your camera on that one favorite flower. And wait. It likely won’t be long before a bee lands on your flower and you can tear off a few shots.

Make sure your shutter speed is elevated, as you are dealing with a lot of movement in the camera since you are shooting close up.

Also, the plant itself can move around a bit. One product that I have used and I have talked about it before, is the Plamp. Spelled P-L-A-M-P, this device can be anchored to the ground or a tripod leg and extend out and gingerly clamp the stem of the plant to keep it still during photography. It’s made by Wimblerly and can be found at their web site, tripodhead.com along with their other products.

The next thing to consider is, lighting.

I like to use a ring light when photographing insects. A ring light is a flash that attaches to the front of the lens and projects light right on your subject.

Without causing any shadows from being back on top of the camera, this flash will be much closer to your subject as well, so you don’t have to use it on full power. This will let you balance it better with the ambient light to NOT make the light look like it came from a flash.

You can also take it another step further and use a scrim.

A scrim is usually a translucent fabric that can be stretched across a frame or clipped to some stands or a fence to suspend the scrim over your subject. Since you are shooting close up, you don’t need to scrim off a lot of area. Maybe 2 square feet should cover everything you need.

You can buy a scrim already in a frame. I got mine from Lastolite called a tri-grip diffuser. It pops out to stretch the fabric and create a diffusion panel to shoot under. This is a simple way to create that soft light that will make your images look a lot less contrasty.

You can hold it with one hand or sometimes it’s easier to have a friend hold it over your flowers. Or, you can suspend it by clamping it to some light stands or other tripods.

This will soften the sunlight over your entire subject, the same as if it were an overcast day.

Now, without all those shadows, you can work with the bees in almost perfect light. To make it better, maybe use a bounce card to bring some light into the underside of your subject.

This can be easily done by adding a white card underneath to bounce the light up into the flowers and the bees.

Make a point to try photographing these very important subjects as they forage for their own food and helping all of our plants thrive.

Look to capture them with their leg baskets full of pollen and capture them from all kinds of angles. When you get good at that, then try photographing the honey bees in flight. That’s a whole other set up we will talk about someday.

Join me in celebrating the most valuable of animals, the honey bee.

If you are enjoying these podcasts, please, take a moment to tell another photographer about it. Maybe Make a post on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter as that would be a great way to tell others about this podcast.

It can always be searched on any of the leading podcast players, Apple podcast, Spotify, Overcast and many others. It is important to include THE in the title, THE nature Photography Podcast.

It would be great if you could leave a positive review on any of those platforms, it could really help keep this podcast high in the ratings.

Until next time, this is your host, Terry VanderHeiden with THE Nature Photography Podcast.