October — Apis mellifera and Melissodes sp.
Two species on the same aster, and they could hardly live more differently. The honeybee on the left has a hive, a colony, tens of thousands of sisters and in all likelihood a beekeeper. Her pollen basket is loaded and she is taking it home to a shared store.
The bee flying in on the right is a male long-horned, and you can tell by the antennae — nearly as long as he is. He has no nest, no colony, and no stores. He sleeps out on the flowers, gripping a stem with his jaws through the night, and he will not see November.
She is also a darker bee than most people picture. The honeybee in every photograph and on every honey jar is usually an Italian, with broad amber bands; this one is mostly black, with only thin pale bands between the segments. That points to Carniolan or European dark bee ancestry. Feral colonies around Portland are a mix of all of them.
The black background is not a backdrop. It is flash: the light fires bright enough to expose the bees at close range, and everything behind them is too far away to register at that exposure, so it falls to black. Physics, not retouching.
One of these bees is the one everybody can name. The other has been here far longer.
Photographed at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge by Jonathan Swanson, with flash.
A high-resolution download of this photograph is coming to the shop shortly.
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