Beehive Cluster – terrestrial version!

[Dennis]

Hello,

We were walking in the local forest today when we spotted what looked like fungal drapes, adorning a branch high up in a tree. Closer inspection revealed it to be an amazing bee hive, approximately 1.5 metres long!

I grabbed a wide shot with the 17mm lens to show the general environment, then grabbed a few shots with the 300mm F4L and 400mm F5.6L to reveal the mass of bees attending the operations of building, repairing, protecting and pollen carrying.

It was an enthralling spectacle, through 12x50 binoculars, with the worker bees returning from their pollen forages, "burrowing" into the folds of the nest, legs replete with large yellow pollen sacks, whilst the remainder of the community performed their chosen tasks.

Quite an astonishing and immensely interesting spectacle.

Cheers

Dennis

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

What an amazing sight, thanks for the view Dennis!

[sheeny (Al)]

Great shots Dennis.

Would've been interesting to watch them working for a while.

Al.

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Top shots Dennis, I like the close up with the long lens.
I wonder what the honey tastes like

[Deeno]

Great shots!

[ourkind (Carlos)]

Originally Posted by Nico13

I wonder what the honey tastes like

Sweet with a lasting after-sting

Great photos Dennis thanks for sharing tell me could you hear it buzzing?

[Liz]

Wow, thats amazing, great pics Dennis!!

[RB (Andrew)]

Fantastic !
It's wonderful to see them in the wild like this.
Quite amazing shapes in the natural structure of the hive too.

Thanks for sharing Dennis.

[Dennis]

Thanks for the comments guys and gals, I’m pleased that you were able to enjoy this spectacle as much as we did.

@ Carlos - the hive was too high up and from where I was shooting, we didn’t hear any buzzing which was a bit of a relief! Otherwise I might have found it intimidating with some 50-80kgs of beehive and maybe 10,000-20,000 bees above my head.

It was my very own David Attenborough moment!

Cheers

Dennis

[Derek Klepp]

Great pic Dennis .As a Beekeeper on a commercial scale I still find it amazing that European bees sometimes do this.Asian bees such as those in Nepal use this open structure most commonly.just goes to show there common ancestry.Will be interesting to see how long they remain.
Thanks for the pic.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Thank you for sharing this amazing moment.
How beautiful it is.

[Dennis]

Thank you Derek and Jeanette, I appreciate your comments.

Channelling David Attenborough, I returned to the aerial bee hive and tried shooting from a different angle to display the hive from a more side-on aspect. Undergrowth, foliage and steep gradients limit the potential shooting sites, but this one provided some nice, early morning illumination.

I’ve included a Canon G11 28mm wide angle shot to show the overall setting, along with a 400mm full-hive shot and a full res crop from using the Canon x2 EF II converter, giving an effective focal length of 800mm at F11 (manual focus only).

If only I had the Canon 1200mm F5.6L – now that would be nice!

Cheers

Dennis

[RickS (Rick)]

Very cool, Dennis! I love the shapes.

We had a swarm land in our garden a year ago but I wasn't game to get too close! They just flew off a day later much to my relief. The weight of the swarm was enough to break a branch off one of our lilly pilly trees.