AHHHHHH!!! BEES!!!!

LoganCAdams · Jul 1, 2012

I took my Sinar F1 deep into the field today driving into the hills of North Dakota to work on a few projects. I discovered some incredible spots in places I'd never been before, but discovered a new challenge with large format:

When you have to stand still and fidget with the controls for so long, insects take advantage of me.

In the first spot, I found a blooming Canola field and set up my gear. I took about six frames over the course of an hour. While I was there, the biting flies took notice, and I have a few welts on my legs from where they found pay dirt.

In the second location, I found a bunch of big rock formations jutting out of some hilltops, and again set up my Sinar. This was all well and good at the first formation, and I took three frames. At the second spot, though, I was upwind of some beehives, and the little buggers got curious. First they started inspected my equipment (one sat on the tip of my hanging cable release for a bit, which caused a problem) and then they started inspecting me.

It went mostly OK, and then one of the bees flew into my ear, got scared and stung me. That's when I lost it for a bit.

I calmed down and took a frame. Then I noticed the clouds in the background were about to be replaced by some much better-looking ones.

This is how I found myself waiting for five minutes for a cloud to move into the right spot for my background, all the while keeping very still as four very curious bees crawled all over my limbs. The seemed to think my hairy legs would hold pollen somewhere, or maybe I got dusted with it walking to that Canola field.

How about you? You ever have trouble dealing with nature while patiently working to capture her beauty?

lacavol · Jul 1, 2012

I have been buzzed by a Pepsis formosa while in Death Valley. But I was eating a sandwich in the heat and the smell probably attracted it. In general when hiking and photographing in the wilderness, I don't bathe with smelly soaps or wear anything with a smell. Also, certain colors attract certain insects, I especially notice blue and orange, so I generally wear brown and green. A backpacking headnet would also help, I always carry one, and it only weighs about 2 ounces and fits into a pocket. The biting flies are really annoying as they are attracted to sweat and the salts in it. The bees generally go after color or sweet smells like deodorants. Mosquitos are crepuscular and you need to either cover exposed skin or get a DEET type repellant. Clothing that covers the legs and arms and a headnet are the best.

MDR · Jul 1, 2012

Shot in a stone quarry and put up my tripod, without realizing it, next to a nest of earth wasps, I didn't have to wait very long before I got stung by six of these beasties. Wasps seem to go after dark colors and shapes. The more pronounced the contrast between the foreground me in dark blue and black and the background pure white stone the more likely they are to attack you.

Dominik

Worker 11811 · Jul 1, 2012

Two weeks ago on the morning of the solstice, I got up to take pictures of the sunrise at 4:00 a.m. As I was driving to my location by the water's edge, I noticed what looked like rain falling in my headlights. It wasn't rain. It was a swarm of bugs so thick it looked like rain.

I didn't think much of it until I got out of the car and set up. By the time I was ready, my arms and legs were covered with bugs so thick you could literally scrape them off with a spatula.
Luckily, they were mostly gnats and caddis flies. Only a few mosquitoes and, very luckily, no deer flies or black flies.

There's always one thing you forget to bring with you on an outing and you never remember it until AFTER you need it. This time, it was bug repellant!

By the time the sun came up 95% of these bugs went away. Many of them are most active just before sunset and just after sunrise.

There are now TWO bottles of insect repellant under the seat in my car.

Pasto · Jul 1, 2012

I wear a full body mosquito net that is very light, and includs a cap with netting for the face. Underneath, I just wear my running shoes, short pants, and a t-shirt. The net lets through plenty of air for cooling and I rarely get bit. It does get hotter than without the netting, though. The hands and ankles are the only vulnerable places. I've spend hours in the Laurentian forest just north of Montreal in mid-May (the peak of bug activity in those woods). Looks funny but it works great. I bought the netting at a camping supply store. I was there just yesterday and the bug activity has dropped so much at this point in the summer than no net was needed. I'm not sure how the netting would deal with bees, as the major culprits here are mosquitos.

M.A.Longmore · Jul 1, 2012

.
Was that a field of Genetically Modified Canola ???
That could possibly be extremely hazardous to your health ...

Enjoy The Weekend, And Patriotic Pageantry !

Ron
.

Larry H-L · Jul 1, 2012

I was shooting at dusk once with the 8x10, developed the film and had the silhouettes of 4 mosquitos resting on the film. I guess they got in there during a lens change.

Diapositivo · Jul 1, 2012

Generally speaking it is best to avoid any kind of perfume (your soap or your sun lotion can contain some, and obviously deodorants or God forbid perfumes, sorry if I treat you like a sissy ).

Generally speaking it is best to avoid any non-mimetic colour because in the wild you don't want to disturb any form of life and you want to see wildlife. Colours like red can have specific meaning especially for birds and normally birds are guaranteed to become "nervous" when something red approaches, so when wearing brilliant colours you are going to see much less birds than when wearing mimetic clothes, and you might even disturb/prejudice some nesting more easily.

Bees fly to their pastures in straight-line routes. When an animal (including a photographer) stands in one of those straight lines they begin bothering him so that he moves away from the route. If some bees disturb you (they seem to be interested in interacting with you, not necessarily in a friendly way) sometimes it's enough to move a few meters to have them cease the disturbance, or so I'm told. I actually think I experienced to truth of this many years ago.

Generally speaking it is best to avoid short pants especially when laying down in the grass in regions with domestic animals such as sheeps, cows, horses, you get the farm. Those meadows are infested with lice which do not limit themselves to sheep but do maintain a prejudice-free opinion regarding acceptable food.

Sirius Glass · Jul 1, 2012

Diapositivo said:
Generally speaking it is best to avoid any non-mimetic colour because in the wild you don't want to disturb any form of life and you want to see wildlife.

Bees are drawn to white, especially bright white. That is why bee keepers paint the bee hives with bright white paint.

Vaughn · Jul 1, 2012

Sirius Glass said:
Bees are drawn to white, especially bright white. That is why bee keepers paint the bee hives with bright white paint.

So funny! I always wondered why this particular bee kept bugging me. It was the size of a large flying black grape, I was in the middle of nowhere in Zion Nat Park trying to take a 5x7 image. Every time I went under the darkcloth the bee would zoom over and around me until I backed off away from the camera...the bee would then fly off towards some trees 30 feet away. Happened four times before I realized that I did not really need that image and packed up. And yep -- the darkcloth was bright white on the outside!

lxdude · Jul 1, 2012

Sirius Glass said:
Bees are drawn to white, especially bright white. That is why bee keepers paint the bee hives with bright white paint.

Ya lern sump'n ever day. I thot it wuz justa keep 'em cool.

walbergb · Jul 2, 2012

Pasto said:
I wear a full body mosquito net that is very light, and includs a cap with netting for the face. Underneath, I just wear my running shoes, short pants, and a t-shirt. The net lets through plenty of air for cooling and I rarely get bit. It does get hotter than without the netting, though. The hands and ankles are the only vulnerable places. I've spend hours in the Laurentian forest just north of Montreal in mid-May (the peak of bug activity in those woods). Looks funny but it works great. I bought the netting at a camping supply store. I was there just yesterday and the bug activity has dropped so much at this point in the summer than no net was needed. I'm not sure how the netting would deal with bees, as the major culprits here are mosquitos.

Maybe there is a market for integrating a dark cloth with bug netting

bsdunek · Jul 2, 2012

Most of the advice above is good. You might try eating a lot of garlic the day before you go out. There are also garlic pills if you want. Some people I know have success with Skin so Soft body lotion too.
As an aside, the proper name for those plants is Rape. Canada changed the oil name to Canola because rape didn't sound so good for marketing. I remember when it was called Rape Oil.

removed-user-1 · Jul 2, 2012

I've had some experience with mosquitoes, especially in the Everglades in Florida and Costa Rica. In spite of the heat, I wore long pants, hiking boots, and thick socks. And carried a couple bottles of DEET. In Cano Negro, Costa Rica, we sprayed repellant around all the outside door and window seams in our lodge, and every morning there was a collection of dead insects at each location. The blood suckers there were nuclear-powered! Fortunately it was not a malarial area but we did have mosquito nets just in case.

In the rain forest, closed-toe shoes were a very good idea. Even on the side of the road, taking photos of a river, I got bitten on the foot by a small black ant. We were riding in an air-conditioned van, so I just had on sandals and didn't think too hard about the insects. It was very painful but fortunately for me it was not a bullet ant (AKA veinte cuatro or the 24-hour ant; if you get bitten you'll be sick for a whole day! It's supposedly named the bullet ant because being bitten is somewhat like getting shot.). One piece of advice our rainforest guides gave us was *never* reach out and touch a railing or a branch without looking, and always watch where you put your feet!

GuyS. · Jul 2, 2012

Cow's. They are all b*****d's. Never trust them, or lend them tools.

MattKing · Jul 2, 2012

bsdunek said:
As an aside, the proper name for those plants is Rape. Canada changed the oil name to Canola because rape didn't sound so good for marketing. I remember when it was called Rape Oil.

Actually I believe the proper name is Rapeseed,

DREW WILEY · Jul 2, 2012

How about having wild bees try and take over your darkroom fan and build a hive there? I have a huge external-mounted squirrel-cage ventiator, and had to leave it on continuously for three days
at high speed before they gave up. Meanwhile, chopped up pieces of the bees kept landing in the
darkroom sink.

LoganCAdams · Jul 3, 2012

90 percent of U.S. Canola is genetically modified. How would it be hazardous to my health?

Diapositivo · Jul 3, 2012

LoganCAdams said:
90 percent of U.S. Canola is genetically modified. How would it be hazardous to my health?

Nobody knows. We have to wait for a damage to your health to emerge (this might take decades) to understand the matter. It's also possible that a damage to your wealth emerges but the scientific community fails to associate it to genetically modified food, so it will take longer.

In case you don't want to act as a Guinea pig you might consider buying food which is certified, or declared, to contain no OGM. That means, as far as I know but I could be wrong, excluding most of produce coming from the US unless certified no OGM-derived products inside, because the US allow the confusion of OGM food with non-OGM food (the distributive chain mixes OGM and non-OGM raw matters if you buy "rapeseed oil" you have no idea how much of it is derived from GM rapeseed).

The general rule in Europe is that OGM-derived European produce cannot be used for human consumption, BUT there is no prohibition regarding OGM-derived produce (typically US import) which is not traceable.

If you want to avoid food from OGM you better avoid US-made food containing corn, rapeseed oil, and other common GM produce. That's true in Europe as well, you have to avoid products containing US produced raw material.

To state it better, as far as I know GM corn is not allowed in European produced food but if you buy that Bonduelle can of corn (which contains US corn) you are buying an unknown percentage of GM corn. The fact that Bonduelle is a French brand doesn't help because it can use US corn and trade treaties between Europe and US don't allow exclusion from imports for goods for which there is no OGM traceability, which - is argued - is precisely the reason why there is no traceability in the US. (If it was traced the import of OGM-derived produce for human consumption could be forbidden).

There is probably something wrong in what above but you get the general meaning. Europe is forbidding OGM-derived products for human consumptions only if the OGM-product is European.

The underlying bet is possibly that, in the long run, people will see US products as "junk" and European products as "quality" products as the US will have compromised their reputation as a provider of food products.

For the moment if you buy a rapeseed oil bottle you might want to check the country of origin.

John Koehrer · Jul 3, 2012

Diapositivo said:
Nobody knows. We have to wait for a damage to your health to emerge (this might take decades) to understand the matter. It's also possible that a damage to your wealth emerges but the scientific community fails to associate it to genetically modified food, so it will take longer.

The growers/developers would NEVER sell something that has less than beneficial side effects. Would they?

Asbestos, Agent orange, GSK has just been fined 3,000,000,000.00(billion) for deceptive advertising and providing false test results for some of their meds.

M.A.Longmore · Jul 5, 2012

LoganCAdams said:
90 percent of U.S. Canola is genetically modified. How would it be hazardous to my health?

.
If you have to ask, I won't waste my time telling you ...
.

M.A.Longmore · Jul 5, 2012

Diapositivo said:
Nobody knows.
For the moment if you buy a rapeseed oil bottle you might want to check the country of origin.

.
Thank You, My Good Man !

Enjoy The Weekend !

Ron
.

mopar_guy · Jul 7, 2012

Diapositivo said:
For the moment if you buy a rapeseed oil bottle you might want to check the country of origin.

Rapeseed and Canola are two different crops. Rapeseed has a different mix of fatty acids and is not approved for human consumption, but it is used as a coating in the production of certain plastics. Canola is an edible crop.

fotch · Jul 7, 2012

Avoid wearing brightly colored clothing, especially floral prints.
This goes along with #1 don't look like a flower, either. There's a reason beekeepers wear white. If you're wearing bright colors, you are just asking bees to land on you. Keep your outdoor wear limited to khaki, white, beige, or other light colors if you don't want to attract bees.

lxdude · Jul 7, 2012

What about UV?
IIRC, bees can see in the UV range. Possibly some nasties like yellowjackets could too.
Some detergents have brighteners which fluoresce to make clothes look brighter. Do they fluoresce in the UV range as well as our visible range?

AHHHHHH!!! BEES!!!!

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