"Beautiful, Intimate Portrait of Bees" by National Geographic

First let me say I'm not a fan of creepy, crawly, stinging things, but when this link showed up in my FB news feed, I couldn't resist the urge to take a peek. The US Army got involved using some of their technology to take macro shots of bees.

Here are a couple of quotes from the article:

Enter the U.S. Army.
Tony Gutierrez, a molecular biologist with the U.S. Army’s Public Health Command in Maryland, had devised a camera system in 2008 that enabled soldiers in far-flung places to take detailed pictures of biting insects.

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Four years ago, Gutierrez came up with a system that consisted of a camera fitted with a macro lens, a mount with a slider, and digital software suitable for stitching pictures together.
Taking images at the level of magnification needed for bees or mosquitoes meant that there was absolutely no depth of field, says Droege. Only portions of an insect would be in focus at any one time.
So if researchers or Army personnel wanted a picture of an insect that was completely in focus, they would have to take several pictures—each one focused at different points—of the specimen and combine the photographs for one in-focus image.
Mounting a camera with a macro lens on a slider programmed to step through those various focal increments enabled anyone to take the photographs.

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And you won't want to miss seeing the photos. [MENTION=9753]Scott Murray[/MENTION], this one's especially for you!

Beautiful, Intimate Portraits of Bees -- National Geographic

Yeah, but these pics are heavily post-processed (long time ago, during the "analog photography era" it's been widely know as "the american retouch"). But, OK, impressive they are...

The only issue I have are that they are all dead bee's. I like my bugs to be alive.

Great shots, thanks for sharing

Very cool imagery

A couple of the bees had a very stealth or black ops kind's look.

Thanks for posting.

Awesome shots, however they did it!