General

When I was a child and even in my early adult years, I was one of many afraid of insects that sting such as bees.  However, when I started to do closeup photography with many of them buzzing around me that fear disappeared quickly.  From a distance as most people see them, they just look at a small flying insect around flowers.   With the wonders of photography and a macro lens, there is a lot going on when a bee lands on a flower.   Even when I am focused on a bee I get in a daze as I watch her work, most bees are female.   Bees come in many different types from smaller one than the typical honeybee to the larger bumble bee.  Bees are my favorite of all the insects because there is a lot of color and amazing details. 

Planning My Day

When I am ready to focus on bee photography, the time of day is somewhat important because bees are very common to see out there a couple of hours after sunrise,  From my experience that is the best time of day.  Wind can be a issue when blowing fairly hard because there is too much movement, and I think the bees do not like it because I usually see fewer bees.  

I usually use my Canon 90D and the Canon 180 macro with a soft flash system.  The flash prevents unwanted shadows and provides nice lighting for the photo.  I use a tripod most of the time with a Gimbal to move fast and capture my shot.  I always  leave the camera in the bag and just observe for about 10 minutes or so.  Learning how insects move around and the nature of their activities has help me a lot to know when to press the shutter.

Post Processing

I do most of my post process in Adobe Lightroom Classic and the rest in Adobe Photoshop.  Since the ISO for insect photography tends to be high, I use some plugins to save time with the noise reduction, however the technology on how these plugins work today is amazing.  Cropping is an important consideration because the bee is the subject and with a large area around her you do not want any distractions that take the focus away from the subject.