Nomioides,bee tiny pretty wing, f, kyrgystan, face

Size of bee makes a difference, even in terms of what bees get studied. Large bees attract even the non-biologists attention and thus Carpenter Bees and Bumblebees are well known around the world. Small bees, that don't bother or sting us can remain unstudied despite their abundance. Our eyes can 't resolve the differences in bees as small as these 2-5mm Old World Minibees, thus their identification become microscrope work for the specialist, and because many of their populations are in remote areas there is much to learn about what can locally be a very common bee. Small bees can effectively use (and therefore pollinate) small flowers and it doesn 't take that much pollen to raise a Minibee 's young. Thus across the world, the density of small bees often greatly exceeds that of that large bees we more often study. Certainly there are more species in this group to discover for the dedicated bee taxonomist. So small is the unidentified Kyrgyzstani specimen seen here that it had to be glued to the side of an insect pin that is normally placed through the body of a bee to hold it in place. The lovely wing patterns seen here are called "Wing Interference Patterns" and created by the varying thicknesses of this insects thin wing membranes. Photography Information: Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200. USGSBIML Photoshopping Technique: Note that we now have added using the burn tool at 50% opacity set to shadows to clean up the halos that bleed into the black background from "hot" color sections of the picture.