Insects Close Up

The hot days of July are great for photographing insects. This bumble bee seems to be posing on the aster blossom, doesn't it?

I like to get close enough to imagine being enfolded in the pastel landscape of the flower, to be in the insect's world.  Click to enlarge.

See how the stamens seem to float in the center of this red daylily?

When a green sweat bee lands ...

It can look surreal.

Sometimes a photo reveals a lurking arthropod surprise. I was taking pictures of wild rose pagonia orchids like this one in the New Jersey pine barrens.

I was about to delete this shot because it's not sharply focused when I noticed that yellow blip on the petal.

Zoom surprise! The yellow blip is a crab spider.

And surprise within surprise! The spider is holding a tiny captured insect.

Uncomfortable weather for us out there right now. Good times for the insects.

Green Bees

Metallic green bees are among my favorite insects. I saw these glittering in the autumn sun yesterday as they gathered food from goldenrod flowers. These little native solitary bees nest in the ground, sometimes near each other in aggregations but the females separately supply their brood cells with eggs and provisions of pollen to feed on. There are lots of green bees out there right now getting the last of the year's pollinating done. 
Click to enlarge.

Here's something Ray Bradbury said about bees in his novel, Dandelion Wine:  
"Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers."