A Swarm of Honey Bees

Yesterday morning I looked out of the window to see clouds of bees at the front of the house. After a while some of them started to settle on a pine tree, by the driveway. Throughout the day they all eventually congregated in the same spot, there were literally thousands of them.

Apparently what was happening was that the queen leaves the hive to create a new colony, she takes with her approximately 60% of the worker bees, these can number tens of thousands. She then settles in a temporary location and all the workers surround her for her protection. They can stay there for several days, while the scout bees find a new hive location, which they then move to.

It was an amazing sight and fortunately they settled low down, this gave me the opportunity to get some close-up shots.

Insect Close Ups

A few more macro images from the last week.

Digger Wasp

Honey Bee

Greenbottle

Hoverfly

Hoverfly

A bit of Macro Photography

At this time of year bird photography becomes a little quiet and so out comes the macro lens.  I don't usually go out with the intention of photographing anything specific, it's more of a case of whatever I come across, I only really dabble as macro photography is an art in itself. Here are a few of my recent attempts.

Hoverfly

Common Blue Butterfly

Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly

Red Admiral Butterfly

Six-spot Burnet Moth

Brown Argus Butterfly

Honey Bee