The sad bee

Today it finally stopped raining and actually warmed up a bit. Still not warm enough to take my woolly hat off, which has been permanently stuck to my head, day and night, since I got here. This place is and insect desert. I actually saw a bee a couple of days ago as it flew past overhead. With the sun poking out occasionally, I decided to go for a flower blip as there was a small flower bed in the grounds of the building.

A bee came through half way through the session, so I decided to prepare, wait and have a go at the next bee visitor. Preparation meant sitting on the ground, pre focus and wait. It felt like an hour or more, probably not though. Several people walked by and looked at me very strangely, well, nothing new there. I just tell them that I'm waiting for a bee. The response is usually the same, a slight chuckle and hurry away, incase the mental patient gets violent!


I almost gave up, when I spotted this little chap, the saddest bee on the planet. It's wings were tired and twisted, it could not fly and struggled to climb from one bloom to the next, instinct demanding that it continue to collect the valuable pollen. I must have grabbed about fifty shots. What an opportunity to learn, I messed with the ISO, aperture, flash, no flash, different angles, sun, no sun, it was fun but I did feel a tad sorry for the sad critter.

Dave