Stunning Macro Photos of Bees Courtesy of the US Geological Survey

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Once in a while we stumble across a great archive of public domain or creative commons imagery that just blows us away. Sometimes it’s historical photos, other times beautiful photos from space, but this time around it’s neither.

Thanks to the US Geological Survey’s Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab Flickr, we now have access to over 1,200 gorgeous macro photos of bees and other insects.

Given the name, you would think you’d only be looking at photos of bees, but that’s not the case. In addition to the hundreds of species of bee pictured, there are also photos of butterflies, ants, flowers and beetles in the archive.

The Flickr is curated by USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center Biologist Sam Droege, who seems to be on his game, given that the most recent photos were uploaded 21 hours ago.

Below we grabbed some of our favorites. Twenty photos that depict ten total bee species mug shot-style … meaning one photo from the front, and another from the side:

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You can find a ton more photos where these came from, all in glorious high-resolution and available to download and use free of charge just as long as you properly credit the USGS as we have bellow.

To download a few for yourself (or spend a few hours browsing the collection) head over to Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab Flickr stream by clicking here.

(via Boing Boing)


Image credits: Photographs by the US Geological Survey

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