Shooting bumblebees

The rhododendron, iris, azalea, lavender, clematis and roses are out in my garden right now (and the trillium, tulips, daffodils, cherry blossoms and such have pretty much ended). The green dogwood tree is coming on strong. Place kinda looks like a Monet painting, except in focus.

What this basically means is that the bees are staging mass riots and flash mobs in my backyard and the bumblebees, especially, are out in force and feeling territorial. They kept buzzing the camera while I was taking pictures of the iris until I finally paid attention to them.

I used to have this thing about bees. My mother insists it started when, as a toddler, I saw my not inconsiderably sized grandma encounter a honeybee in the front yard clover and sprint a quarter-mile in about 10 seconds, screaming like an air-raid siren. I logically concluded that anything capable of moving that much that fast and loud had to be pretty vicious and should be avoided at all costs. In fact, in a glass class I was once asked to depict someone who’d had a significant influence on my youth, and this is what I drew:

Long story about how I got over my bee phobia, but the upshot is that while I find bees’ whole hive mentality thing fascinating (sorta like extreme right-wingers, heh-heh), I haven’t really looked at them.

But last week in the yard I did, and what struck me were all the furry, furry colors. Did you know that bee fur is, variously, black, brown, gold, orange, yellow and red? (Or that bees even have fur?) Wow.

Anyway, decided to take some pictures of my colorful guests, dragged the tripod over to the biggest rhodie and hunted out a bee. Pointed the camera, focused…

…and the bee left. Followed him (or her, I guess) to another blossom, refocused, got ready to shoot…

…and she dove into the next flower. Wised up, focused on a single flower and waited for the bee to come to me…

…and she moved. Patiently I set up, focused and waited. THERE SHE IS! SHOOT! SHOOT! SHOOT!

…all I got was the blurry tail-end of a bee. Dammit.

After a couple of hours of bee-chasing, I finally stopped flitting from flower to flower like…a bee…and really did focus on one small rhododendron cluster. And whaddaya know, I got my shot:

Sure, it’s the pointy end of the bee when I’d much rather get the critter looking straight into the camera. But I captured the rich tones–and the FUR–and I’m happy that I finally got this shot and now know how to get more.

Still, I draw the line at yellowjackets.

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