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My wife spotted what she thought was a colony of bees nesting in a triangular upraised median between two roads. An area about four square meters was riddled with holes, and it's hard to say just how many Beewolf nests there were -had to have been well over fifty. Every ten minutes or so I'd see a large female bring something back to the nest. At the time I didn't know what this critter was, or its hunting habits. But I quickly learned what they were carrying when one of them tried to get its prey into a hole but the honeybee was sideways and wouldn't fit. I spooked it when I got close enough to shoot it, so I camped out at the entrance waiting until I saw its antenna sticking up before framing and focusing where I thought it would be.
Tech Specs: Canon 80D (F16, 1/250, ISO 200 with highlight tone priority) + a Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens (over 1x) + a diffused MT-24EX (both flash heads on the Canon flash mount, E-TTL metering with -1 2/3 FEC). This is a single, uncropped, frame taken hand held.
Bee Wolf with Prey by John Kimbler, on Flickr
I noticed that the males were perched upside down on grass stalks -probably looking to mate. Since males will get territorial I decided to try my luck and bend the grass stalk over so that the wasp was horizontal and it worked. I took this set in the heat of the day and the critter didn't care that I was getting close. I shaded the subject so that I could use the flash to expose it, and freeze any motion, and natural light for the background. After the first frame I picked a grass stalk that a Beewolf was on and held it to the sky.
Tech Specs: Canon 80D (F11, 1/250, ISO 200 with highlight tone priority) + a Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens (over 1x to about 3x) + a diffused MT-24EX (both flash heads on the Canon flash mount, E-TTL metering with -1 2/3 FEC). These are single, uncropped, frames taken hand held.
Beewolf I by John Kimbler, on Flickr
Beewolf II by John Kimbler, on Flickr
Beewolf III by John Kimbler, on Flickr
On a side note: I was published in the July issue of Digital SLR Magazine.
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