Sleeping on the Job - Bumblebee Close Ups

Yesterday, I caught sight of this bumblebee passed out on a flower in our garden, presenting a perfect opportunity to take some close up shots of it :)

Soo fuzzy!


Since my macro lens is a relatively short 60mm, it meant that I needed to get quite close for these shots. How much is too close? Well, considering that this was a sleeping bee, I dared get a bit closer than I would otherwise!

Only now, when looking at a bumblebee in such detail for the first time that I realise just how much of a resemblance they bear to the "Bumblebee Ice Cream Sundaes" they used to serve on the Cobb & Co kids menu. They had two scoops of a golden hokey-pokey ice cream (with round chocolate balls - about the size of Maltese's, but harder and crunchier) topped with running chocolate sauce stripes,  4 balls of whipped cream (one for the head - topped with 2 smarties/pebbles, one for the tail, and one on either side of the abdomen when they had those pink triangular wafers for wings). Yum! Just describing it makes me want to have one again now (despite the fact that the restaurant chain closed down close to 10 years ago now)

Looking at these shots, you can really appreciate just how fuzzy and furry these critters are. From these photos, it certainly looks rather comfy to be a bee lying there ;)

Getting a good exposure of bumblebees always turns out to be a challenge. They usually end up turning out far too dark (maybe due to those black furry areas, which occupy more of the body than you'd expect). Here, I tried using flash for some additional fill lighting, though I may have also unfortunately disturbed the poor thing - it started inching around the flower a bit after that...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......... Awwww.....!