Honey Bee Macro Photography

Honey Bee Macro Photography Inside the hive – Watch on YouTube

Bees are fabulous creatures and often get a bad rap for their nasty stings. However we’re braving the stingers at the University of Nottingham to explore their hives up close and personal. We’re going to try to capture some honey bee macro photography from inside the hive it’s self!

Before we get started, we need a warning. Don’t approach or meddle with beehives unless you know what you are doing and have the proper safety equipment like a smoker and bee suits.

Honey Bee Macro Photography

No matter what you say about bees and their propensity to sting, there’s no denying that they are fascinating. We find one of their most interesting aspects to be the hive it’s self and we’re on a mission to infiltrate the hive and get some photos from the inside!

This is going to come with some challenges of course, bees are small and cameras are big! How do you get inside the hive with a camera and lens? Well, the answer of course is with a very special lens!

Laowa 24mm f/14 2X Macro Probe

The Probe Lens from Laowa gives us the unique opportunity to capture images and video of bees, from the perspective of a bee! We’re able to get the small tube of the lens into the small entrance of the hive, and down between the hive super frames.

The bees largely ignore the probe lens and go about their business, allowing us to take photos and video to our hearts content. The probe lens has the added benefit of a powerful 2x magnification factor. It allows us to get right up next to the bee while still having the wide angle 24mm to see the surroundings of the hive.

For these shots, we’re peaking in through the entrance way of the hive as the bees come and go. They interact with one another and behave naturally as they come back with deliveries of pollen!

Lighting Inside the Hive

Getting a lens inside the tight spaces of the hive is good, but it’s not much help without some light to capture. The inside of the hive is understandably dark. Even the small entrance way is far too dark for photography without adding some light.

So we also have the issue of getting some photography lighting into the hive too!

In the case of the entrance way, we used the flexible Lighting Arms of the Adaptalux Studio to reach into the small slot and provide some light. However, our diffusion was a little too large to fit, so instead, we bounced the light off the wooden roof.

It gives the images a warmer tone, but the light becomes much more diffused and pleasant to look at.

Reaching into the hive it’s self is another matter. Removing one of the frames creates a unique opportunity to move between two “walls” of bees doing their work, but again, light is all but absent from the inside of the hive. We used our Lighting Arms to bend inside the hive between the bees and light from within.

Sliding Slow-Mo

The Probe Lens and lighting setup is ideal for mesmerising shots of passing through the colony of bees as if you were actually inside the hive. We shot most of our footage on 100fps to slow down later, to get a better look at the bees as they move around.

One essential bit of kit is the slider. Hand holding the probe lens can be a little awkward, and movement ends up shaky and unpredictable. Using a slider allows the movement to be smooth and constant as you push into or pull out of the hive. If you haven’t already, check out the video at the top of the page to see our slo-mo footage of the honey bees!

Honey Bee Brood Photography

One of the most interesting parts of the hive for some honey bee macro photography is the brood boxes at the base of the hive. For these shots, we still used the probe lens and Adaptalux lighting, but we pulled a frame out of the box to get a front-on shot. Inside the brood comb, you can see larvae and pupating baby bees!

We also took the opportunity to backlight the frame for an abstract shot looking deep into the comb!

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