Complementary colours

I've been waiting for about three weeks for the chance to give you an Andrena fulva female browsing on euphorbia, because I love the contrast of their vivid red pile against the yellow-green bracts. For the first week they were out though, the A. fulva girls were determined not even to be looked at, let alone photographed; and now that they're nesting (evidenced by the pollen this one is collecting, to leave in her nest cells to feed the larvae when they hatch), they're so busy that it's hard to catch up with them. The first one I managed to snap was in lovely flat light a couple of Saturdays ago, but that was an owl day - probably the last owl day until next winter - and owls trump bees so I didn't get to post her.

This, you'll have noticed, is not lovely flat light. It's the kind of light that has you taking root in your chair in front of the computer, tweaking and re-tweaking until you think I've really banjaxed this now, and find yourself going back to the raw file and starting all over again. But let's not be the kind of bad photographers who blame the light - let's just say that it was a little bright and contrasty, and leave it at that.

This lovely bee, by the way, is the distaff half of this one - not specifically of course - well, not necessarily specifically - but you know what I mean: she's the female of the species, and he's the male. There's a brief species description of Andrena fulva here.