It was a tough task choosing a photo for Rebecca Tolin’s story today about the UCSD researchers studying the unprecedented dissapearance of honey bees.
This photo didn’t make the cut — partly because of the cheap tilted angle and party because it didn’t include the researchers face.
But something about this bee, navigating itself down a long tunnel toward the food at the center, reminded me of the scene from Star Wars where Luke Skywalker flies to the core of the Death Star and blows the whole thing up.
To be sure, I was less concerned with explosions and much, much more concerned with the swarm of bees buzzing all around me as I stuck my wide-angle lens into the tunnel.
I thought I would be wearing a bee suit — that is until I arrived on the assignment and was told that I could put one on if I really wanted to. Sounded to me like a challenge of either my courage or my intelligence, but I sucked it up and got into the mix with all the bees without a suit.
Here’s a (admittedly shaky) video from my iPhone camera that shows what it was like to be surrounded by bees with no protective gear on.