Bees on Pongamia – 2016

Well, I had to add the year as I already did one last year. This year, again I shot some of them. I did one run last week, but that was a total dud. There were 85 shots taken, barely half a dozen were decent. The camera aperture number was higher which meant I lost a lot to focusing. Today, there were a lot more flowers, and the lighting was good as I tried before 9 AM. And the aperture was at the lowest possible on the lens, at 5.6. I used macro on the lens which helped get focus this close. I shot 15-20, almost all of them were good.

I also shot 2 videos on the phone. They were that close.

The photos:
On this the bee leans on a leaf as it injects its syringe-like proboscis into the stem of the flower.

Pongaemia blooms in summer

It’s summer! Or at least the start of summer. The Pongaemia(ಹೊಂಗೆ) flowers are in bloom. Though not in full bloom, there are enough to attract the bees(Apis Dorsata). This time, I grabbed my Sigma 70-300mm lens, with Macro for the latter part of 200mm, and shot a few pics of the bees feeding on the flowers. Was pretty surprised at what I got.

All photos are shot with my Rebel Xsi, with a lens setting of 300mm, Macro on, and a constant Aperture of 13.0.
https://www.flickr.com//photos/vaidyar/sets/72157651263435465/show/

(Sadly Flickr seems to have deprecated support for WordPress, Blogger etc. Suckers!)
Here’s a sample pic: