This is it: the best honeybee picture I’m going to get. By chance, this bee was right at the closest point my camera is able to focus on. The background is clean and uncluttered. And the autofocus did its job perfectly. A different camera might be able to do better, but this is as good as it gets for mine.

Of course, when I say “by chance,” what I really mean is “I took a huge number of pictures.” According to my painstaking recordkeeping, the burst mode on my camera allowed me to take 6,070 pictures of bees between March 9 and April 26 even though the total elapsed time spent on this was probably no more than an hour or two. I think I can now stop taking pictures of bees on my morning walk.

April 23, 2018 â€” Irvine, California

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate