Getting bees in flight, and sharp is very difficult. Heck, they move from flower to flower so quickly getting them on a flower can be a challenge.
Oh, I couldn’t agree more!

Doing any better requires specialized equipment. We have a guy like that who’s become quite famous in France, his name is Ghislain Simard. He comes from an engineering background and designs his own custom-made laser-triggered flash barriers and gets amazing results. If you’re interested, his website is
here, and he also has an extremely interesting Youtube channel (
here) where he explains how he does it.
Of course he uses the most expensive gear Nikon has to offer. That said, he is a genuine DIY genius (at least he looks that way to me, but I can’t hammer a nail without ending up with two finger bandages) and I learned a ton from him that I will probably never put to practice. Of course his videos are in French but I’m sure you can get them close-captioned in English. I hope you will find him interesting. That also said, I never really understood how he gets the insects to fly through his barriers (which are not big, you will see in the videos) —lure them in some way?
Here is yet another bee from 2020, I show it because the attitude amused me: it is standing on a flower on its middle and hind legs, the front ones are just hanging there while it sucks on nectar from another flower...
Nikon Z7, Micro-Nikkor 105mm, ƒ/2.8 G VR macro lens, FTZ adapter. Flash lighting, handheld.