Arnie Battaglene Photography

Apis (Bees): 

What wonderful creatures! I am fascinated by bees, they are the animal I have most photographed ...well maybe next to spiders, which are so very cool! 

I could have placed these photos in my animals gallery, but bees are so important to our society (and I love photographing so much!), that I decided to give them their own gallery.

I love watching bees go from flower to flower gathering up pollen and seeing the many different species that inhabit the area where we live. I do admit to having a strong fondness for bumblebees and the way they bumble around :) One of my favorite bee photos is of a bumblebee bumbling towards a succulent that is right at the edge of a cliff on the coast at The Sea Ranch in Sonoma, California.

Bees inspire deep passions: talk to any beekeeper and you will find an almost spiritual reverence for these beautiful little critters, a reverence tinged with the fact they are wild insects that will sting and sadly die in the process, and no beekeeper wants a bee to die.

It is with much sadness and real concern that I keep up to date with the growing epidemic of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder.) Scientific studies done in the U.S. and Europe, have shown that CCD is very complex issue with many factors adding up to its likely cause, but a growing consensus that the use of Neonicotinoids and other insecticides as a core components is being reached.

If this is true, then what does it say about us as a species that we allow a creature that gives us so much, is one of our greatest natural allies, to be in such danger from a few people just because of money made from the production and use of insecticides?! 

Bees are so important in the pollination of our food crops and it seems that through pure needless greed we are selling the very rope that will be used to hang us with!