Tag:bees
The season of spring is a time of renewal and rejuvenation. As nature finally awakens from its winter slumber, it presents a breathtaking canvas for photographers. Spring is the best time for capturing the vibrant colours and delicate blossoms. In this post, we will explore the art of Spring photography, sharing techniques, tips, and ideas to help you photograph the enchanting beauty of this season.
Seek out Blossoms:
Spring is often associated with the beautiful blooming flowers that add colours to the world. You can find these stunning blossoms in local gardens, parks, or even your own backyard. Capturing their beauty uniquely and captivatingly involves experimenting with different angles, compositions, and depths of the field. From cherry blossoms to tulips, these iconic symbols of spring are a sight to behold.

Play with Light
As the season changes to spring, you can enhance your photography with the subtle and gentle light it brings. Take advantage of the soft light during the morning and evening to create a warm and dreamy atmosphere in your images. Experiment with shooting against the sunlight to capture a magical backlit effect. Alternatively, use diffused light on cloudy days to highlight the colours and textures of the scenery. Additionally, incorporating sidelight can add depth, texture, and drama to flower photography, emphasising the beauty of the blooms.

Before taking photos, it is essential to consider the direction of the light source. Sidelight, which comes from the subject’s side, can cast shadows and create highlights. To effectively use sidelight in your composition, determine the angle from which the light hits the flowers. This type of lighting is also great for highlighting the textures and details of flowers, as it creates shadows that accentuate the contours, creases, and intricate patterns of petals and leaves.

To capture this effect, position yourself so that the light is coming from the left or right, creating a play of light and shadow that enhances the three-dimensional quality of the subject.
Bees
If you want to include bees on your flowers, early morning is also the best time, as they are less active when it’s cooler. You will need a shutter speed of around 1/500 sec early morning (1/1000 if later in the day and they have warmed up). A telephoto lens will also enable you to get the bees without getting too close.

Embrace Nature’s Palette
Spring is also a season that showcases a beautiful range of vibrant hues and pastel shades. Incorporating contrasting colours in your compositions is a great way to create visually striking images. For instance, pairing yellow daffodils against a blue sky or purple flowers against a green backdrop can create a harmonious contrast. Don’t be afraid to experiment with colour grading during post-processing to enhance the mood and bring out the essence of spring.

Capture the Essence of Growth
Spring is a time of transformation and rejuvenation. To truly capture the essence of this season, focus on photographing emerging leaves, sprouting buds, and newborn animals. Use the backdrop of fresh green foliage or leading lines to direct the viewer’s gaze towards signs of growth. Additionally, zoom in and capture the intricate details.

Macro Photography
During the spring season, there are countless little marvels to discover, such as dewdrops resting on petals or complex insect designs. By delving into the realm of macro photography, you can experience the miniature universes that exist within nature. With the help of a macro lens or extension tubes, you can capture the intricate details that often go unseen, uncovering the hidden world around us.

Get Creative
- Include a sun flare in your images by shooting into the sun at F16 or above.
- Get super close and concentrate on one subject.
- Get down low and shoot up.
- Carry a little squirt bottle of 50/50 water and glycerin to replicate dew drops.

Spring is a beautiful time to capture the beauty of nature through photography. Whether you are an experienced photographer or a beginner, the season’s vibrant colours, gentle light, and abundance of life provide endless opportunities to create captivating images. Venture outdoors, immerse yourself in the beauty of your surroundings and let your camera transport you to the enchanting world of spring.

The rainbow bee-eater is an impressively beautiful bird. Their plumage is green, blue, chestnut and yellow; they have slim bodies with slender curved bills and distinctive streamers extending from their tail.
Appearance
Rainbow bee-eaters are medium-sized birds measuring 9-24 cm in length to the tail tip and weighing around 27 grams. They have a long curved bill, a long tail and streamers. They have a golden crown on their head, and their red eye is set in a wide black stripe running from their ears to the base of the bill, which is edged in a narrow blue line. Their yellow-orange throat has a broad black band separating it from their green breast.

While the upper parts are green, they have copper flight feathers tipped in black and bright orange and underwings with a black edge. The bee-eater’s lower abdomen is blue. Female rainbow bee-eaters are similar to males but have shorter, thicker tail streamers. Juveniles are duller and greener and lack the black chest band and long tail streamers.
Habitat
The Rainbow Bee-eater is widespread throughout Australia, except in desert areas. They can be found in woodlands, open forests and cleared areas, often near water and farms with remnant vegetation, in orchards and vineyards. They will also use quarries, river banks, cuttings and mines to build their nesting tunnels.

Diet
Rainbow Bee-eaters eat all insects, such as dragonflies, beetles, butterflies and moths; however, they mainly eat bees and wasps. They have excellent eyesight and can spot a potential meal up to 150 feet away. Once they have spotted their prey, they swoop down from a high perch, snatching the insect on the wing in its long, slender bill. The bee-eater then carries their meal to a perch, where they beat the insect against the perch before swallowing them.

While immune to bee and wasp stings, they still rub them against the perch to remove the stings and venom glands before eating them. Rainbow bee-eaters can consume 700 bees daily, making them an apiarist’s enemy. Conversely, they also keep locusts, hornets and wasps under control.

Breeding
Rainbow Bee-eaters are migratory birds and move north, forming small flocks over winter. However, in spring, they return to breeding their areas. Rainbow bee-eaters are monogamous and mate for life. Once they have selected a nesting site in a sandy bank, they dig a long tunnel leading to the nesting chamber and line it with grass. The tunnel can be up to 90cm long. The female will lay 3 to 7 glossy white eggs, and both parents share the 24-day incubation period and will feed the young.
Threats
Hatchlings are at risk from cane toads, dogs and foxes.
Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants and are essential to pollination. Worldwide there are over 16,000 known species of bees, with 1,700 species of native bees in Australia. Some bees, such as honey bees, bumblebees and stingless bees, live socially in colonies. However, 90% of bee species such as mason, carpenter, leafcutter, and sweat bees are solitary.
Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica and every habitat with insect-pollinated flowering plants. While bees feed on nectar and pollen, the nectar is primarily an energy source for bees. Pollen is taken back to the hive and used for their larvae.

Characteristics
All bees have large, round, compound eyes covering much of their head. Between these large eyes are three smaller eyes that provide information on light intensity. Their antennae have 13 segments in males and 12 in females with an elbow joint part way along. The bees mouth is adapted for both sucking and chewing.
Their body has three segments, with a pair of robust legs in each segment. The membranous wings are on the two back segments. Bees have four wings that hook together, forming one large pair when flying. When not in flight, the wings unhook back into two wings on each side. The front legs are used to clean their antennae, while the back legs contain pollen baskets.

Bee Populations
The Australian honey bee population decreases each year due to climate change, pesticides and disease. Over 100 thousand commercial beehives were lost in Australia in the ten years between 2006 and 2016. The Green Carpenter Bee is listed as endangered by the South Australian State Government. An estimated 95% of its last remaining habitat of the Green Carpenter Bee on Kangaroo Island was lost in the recent bushfires. The Green Carpenter Bee is extinct in Victoria.
Studies have found at least nine species of Australian bees meet the criteria for the IUCN Red List for vulnerable, and two meet the category for endangered. Most bees on the list lost between 55 to 59% of their habitat in the recent bushfires. Bee pollination is vital, both economically and commercially. 90% of plants and 75% of crops depend on pollination. Crops such as almonds are 100% reliant on bees for pollination.
Honey Bee Life Cycle
The life cycle of a honey bee starts as an egg, then development through several moults, followed by the pupae stage. Finally, the bee undergoes complete metamorphosis during the pupae stage before emerging as a winged adult. There are three castes of bees, queens, drones and workers.

– Queens
Each colony contains typically a single queen who lays around 2,000 eggs per day at a rate of one per minute, day and night. The average lifespan is two to four years though some live as long as eight years. As the queen’s age, their productivity declines. So the hive replaces her whereby the nurse bees feed royal jelly to 10-20 young larvae to create a new queen. If one new queen emerges first, she stings her unhatched rivals, killing them in their cells. However, if more than one new queen emerges simultaneously, they take flight, fight with the other queens to the death, and then mate in the air with the male bees (drones). Sometimes the hive kills the old queen when the new queen is ready to take over. At other times they allow her to live and die naturally.

– Worker bees
Sterile females are the worker bees. Therefore, their lifespan depends on when they are born. Spring/summer is the height of hive activity, and bees born at this time live five to six weeks. In contrast, bees born in autumn/winter while the hive is inactive may live for four to six months. The worker bees make the honeycomb nests from wax secreted from their abdominal glands and produce honey. When the worker bee returns to the hive, the collected nectar is passed to the bees inside the hive. They then pass it mouth to mouth until the moisture content is reduced from 70% to 20%. This process changes the nectar into honey. Finally, the honey is placed into cells and capped with beeswax for the next lot of baby bees. Next, they mix pollen with the honey to create “bee bread”. This is then fed to the larvae.

– Drones
Male bees are called drones. They have no stinger and no proboscis for collecting nectar. Their sole purpose is to wait for a new queen to emerge and mate with her. While there are several hundred drones in the hive over spring and summer, they are expelled in winter when the hive goes into survival mode.
Stingers
The stingers are actually a modified organ used to lay and position eggs. Accordingly, only female members of the hive can use their stinger. A queens stinger is smooth and can be used many times. A worker bees stinger is barbed; thus, when they sting their victim, it is becomes lodged in the skin. When the worker bee flies away, the stinger stays behind, leaving a pumping venom sac. Within minutes, the worker bee will die from a massive abdominal rupture received when the stinger was torn from their abdomen. Bees only sting in defence of the hive or when roughly handled.

Hive Behaviour
While pivotal to the hive’s health, the queen bee is its mother, not its ruler. On average, a hive contains 40,000 bees. Bees do not hibernate. However, during winter, after expelling all the male bees from the hive, the female bees remain in the hive and live on the stored honey and pollen. clustering into a ball to conserve warmth. During the winter period, they feed the larvae, and, by spring, the hive is swarming with new workers and drones.

Reproduction
Male bees (drones) are almost entirely focused on reproduction. They leave the hive searching for virgin queens, but only a small percentage succeed in mating. The act of procreation results in catastrophic injuries to the abdomen of the male bee, leading to almost immediate death. Drones that do not mate have a life expectancy of 90 days.
Commercial bee hives
The first recorded European honey bees arrived in Australia in 1822 aboard the Isabella. Since that time, honey bees have become firmly established. There are over 30,000 registered beekeepers in Australia, managing over 668,000 hives. Australia is one of the top ten honey producing countries in the world.

Honey
There are more floral sources for making honey in Australia than any other country. Consequently, Australia has the broadest range of honey tastes and colours.
- Bluegum – light amber in colour, choice forest honey from the south.
- Karri – amber honey from the forests of Western Australia.
- Leatherwood –unique honey from the west coast of Tasmania, quick to candy and extra light in colour.
- Lucerne – mild-tasting honey.
- Yellow box – pale and sweet honey from New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.
- Stringybark – strong flavoured, medium amber honey from the Great Dividing Range.
- Ti-tree is very strong flavoured honey used mainly in manufacturing, from the north and south.
- White clover – extra white honey that candies smoothly.
- Manuka – exclusively from New Zealand, contains methylglyoxal, which is portenitally an antibacterial, antiviral, anti inflammatory, and antioxidant. It has been used to treat inflammatory skin conditions and heal wounds. However, people with diabetes, an allergy to bees or under the age should not eat manuka.

Eight Fun Facts
- The bees wings beat 11,400 times a minute
- Only female bees can sting
- Honey bees communicate through a series of dance moves. This is called a ‘waggle dance.’
- It takes 300 bees around three weeks to make 450g of honey.
- The honey bee is the only insect that produces food fit for human consumption
- The antioxidant in honey improves brain function
- A bee has five eyes
- The inside of a hive is 32.5°C
Recipe
Try the Mocha Honey Cheesecake from the Australian Honey Bee council.
Many thanks to Jason from Hi Ho Honey in Trawool, Vic., for allowing us to photograph him opening the hives.