Come into my parlour?

This is not at all what I was planning for today but we were sitting at the table this morning and spotted this bee spinning madly just outside the window. I rushed out with the camera set to macro to discover that it was dangling on a thread from a spider's web and seemingly unable to use its wings. The spider, 20cm above in the main web, and several sizes smaller, wasn't terribly interested. Waiting for the bee to die, perhaps.

I know I'm anthropomorphising, but I've never seen a bee look so helplessly woebegone.

Once I'd taken all the shots I wanted we broke the thread. I love spiders, but wasn't prepared to sacrifice a bee to one. The bee crawled and rolled through the grass for a while, presumably freeing itself from remnants of spider silk, then flew off to some flowers.

The depth of field was so slight that I combined two pictures in Photoshop to make this - in none of my shots were both the wings and the legs in focus.