05/05/2026
This is the hardest I've ever worked for a photograph. It all started last spring. I had just watched a video about foraging "fairy potatoes" from Feral Foraging (link in comments.)
Fairy potatoes are the edible tuber of the ephemeral wildflower, Spring Beauty. More specifically here we have Claytonia virginica. I learned about this particular bee from this video. The Springbeauty Miner is a solitary bee that only collects the pollen from this particular flower. I was already familiar with places that this flower blooms so of course I set out to photograph the bee. Sadly last year I thought I got a photo of the bee on the flower, but no showy pink pollen on the legs, because it was the wrong tiny little bee. I'm getting better at IDs.
This year I set out with my camera in the same spot, found the bee, but my camera was still in my backpack. I did get a quick snap from my phone, but I really wanted nice shot from my new Canon EOS R7. Clearly my macro set up wasn't going to cut it. So I set out again with a borrowed zoom lens. Saw more bees. Only got shots of other species. I was having trouble focusing on these tiny guys that were rapidly buzzing from flower to flower.
At this point the flowers are nearing the end of their season but I went out one more time. I sat down in the patch of flowers waiting for any sign of movement amongst the blossoms. I took 250 photos, got sunburn, and some mild heat exhaustion but I got the shot! In retrospect camping out in 90° weather and sun I really should have had twice as much water and wore a sunshirt. Hopefully it was worth it.
