European Wool Carder Bee

European Wool Carder Bee (Anthidium manicatum)

This was a great back garden find. I’d seen one of these bees, presumably this one, flying around the garden in early spring but its visits were pretty fleeting so no photo opportunities. A few weeks later I saw one on the patio in the early evening. It was looking a little lethargic as the temperature was cooling down so to save it from getting stepped on I moved it to the safety of a nearby plant.

It ended up perched on the plant in quite a photogenic position so I said to myself, if it’s still there after I’ve washed my car I’ll take some photos. I figured that if it hadn’t moved by then, it may well decide to spend the night there, making it easier to photograph.

Low and behold, once the car was clean and the sponges had been wrung out, the bee was still there.

This ended up being perhaps the deepest focus stack I’ve taken of any invertebrate and consequently, one of the longest it has taken to edit. It is made up of 80 images, consisting of one main stack and then two smaller ones taken from a back-up stack, to fill in sections that the main one missed out. On top of that I clocked up a further 30 layers in photoshop to clean everything up, if only I had a more steady hand when taking the shots in the first place! I dread to think how many hours went into this image and I’m certainly in no hurry to repeat that process any time soon.

Prints are available here.

Phone shot of the bee on the plant