The Sting

I had so many options for posting today: garden flowers on our first properly sunny day for weeks, a photo I really liked of today's Stirling Farmers' Market, to name just a couple. But this is the I couldn't not post. It is the sting of a Garden Bumblebee, Bombus hortorum. I took it by lining up my phone's camera lens with eyepiece of a zoological microscope, hence the circular outline. I was attending an iSpot 'citizen science' event at the Stirling offices of The Conservation Volunteers (formerly called BTCV). Insect bodies up close can be startling or alarming (as well as beautiful). You can surely see here why it hurts to be stung by a bee.