Hello from Pennsylvania.
I will be here all week, along with photographer Ellen Harasimowicz, researching and collecting images for THE HIVE DETECTIVES. We set out on Sunday morning and have had an amazing couple days … of near-torrential rain.
For the record, bees do not like the rain. It wets their wings and makes it hard to fly. And so they mostly stay inside the hive.
Also, for the record, bees do not like to have their hives disturbed when they are hunkering down during a rainstorm. It makes them angry.
And so we spent most of yesterday indoors. Luckily there is a lot of interesting stuff going on inside the Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, even on a rainy day. Here is a shot of Ellen at work. The bee scientist is Nathan Rice, who was kind enough to walk us through a day in his lab life. Nathan even stung himself—twice—so that Ellen could photograph the sting process. And then, because I am the sort of gal who is willing to sacrifice for her art, Nathan held a bee to MY arm so that I could live the sting process. Seriously. I let myself be stung by a bee. And we have a picture. And it is pretty cool.
Today we are shooting in another bee lab and, if the weather holds, in a commercial bee yard. This is the day we will break out the bee suits.
Have I ever mentioned here how much I love my job?