White light Sun, 31st May

[JamesF]

An unusual imaging session this morning, to say the least. I was just getting myself set up when I had a bit of an interruption. Somewhat later I returned to find that actually I'd not really missed much anyhow. The seeing wasn't great, the sky felt a bit "grubby" and there wasn't much to see in white light today. Hardly worth getting excited about:

120 frames of 1/1000th @ ISO100, 450D & 127Mak, preprocessed with PIPP, 58 stacked in Registax v6.

James

[Montana]

A lonely spot! a lovely image all the same

I don't like bees anymore, I used to love them until we were walking past a hive at a National Trust house. We were about 10-15m away when all of a sudden a nasty buzzing bee started attacking my husband's head and wouldn't get out of his hair, I tried to help and another came after me. They were so aggressive and didn't stop until they stung us. It left us terrified and I am very distrustful of them now, especially when we weren't even going near their hive. I like Bumble bees though.

Alexandra

[JamesF]

Sounds a bit careless of the keeper, to be honest. Even if you're some distance away you can walk through their flight path without realising it and if they get caught in hair (or woolly clothes and suchlike) they will often get distressed and sting. When they sting they release a pheromone that encourages other bees to attack as well. It's a very effective defence and not one you ever want to be on the wrong end of

What they probably should have done is erect a fence in front of the hives to make the bees fly up over head height to start with (they'll fly back along the same path) -- you quite often see that sort of arrangement where people keep bees on allotments or in private urban and suburban gardens. It's always tricky though because whilst beekeepers might "manage" them, they remain wild animals and will behave as suits themselves.

I'm sorry you had a bad time that's put you off them. I have to admit that I accept the occasional sting as an occupational hazard now, unpleasant as it is. They are absolutely fascinating creatures that have developed a very complex social structure basically to allow them to survive through the winter as a colony (unlike any other bee, I believe).

James

[Bizibilder]

Another good image James.

[DrRobin]

Nice image, clean not too many nasty sun spots, to spoil an otherwise perfect disc. Sorry, got it wrong there, aren't there supposed to be sun spots all over, we are coming up to a solar maximum?

Perhaps the solar activity is in league with the British weather, a couple of days of sun (aka lots of nice spots) and two weeks of cloud and rain (aka no or very few spots).

Robin

[Steve Ward]

Lovely crisp image James . .. ...

Good luck with the new swarm.

[David Smith]

Great image James.