Honey bee

Yes, John, not as easy as it looks. Just think how tough this was back in the days of film. You'd go through a lot of film trying to get a keeper. I like the comp here with the position of the flower and the bee. The bee looks sharp in the eye where it counts. I do wish the vertical stem in the bg did not run between the bee and the flower. I see by your techs in that you were shooting at f8, 1/1600, and iso 200. The light must have been very bright, so kudos to you for controlling it well in the image. I have been trying to catch bees in flight myself recently, and will post several I got. What I tried to do was to look for a flower which the bees frequented that had good separation from the bg. That let me shoot at a little higher iso (around f8 or a little higher, like you did here) while keeping the bg clean. I tried shooting in bright but not direct sunny/contrasty conditions. I boosted my iso to 800 or even higher (on my D700) to make up for the higher fstop and lower light. You could try giving yourself a little more room so the bee is a little smaller. It's difficult to get a flying profile shot this close perfectly sharp without a very fast ss, unless you catch the bee "hovering" in place as perhaps you did here. One thing that I have not tried, but thought might help, is to try to increase the activity on the flower I've targeted by placing honey or sugar water on the flower. I'll be interested to hear the techniques employed by others. I agree with you that it's fun and challenging trying to catch bees in flight.