The same Crown of Thorns, the same drop of honey, a little later after the wasp. Ant is a bit bigger than the wasp. Honey is a real treat to the little creatures.

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Nature's Place Macro Illustrated

Fantastic pics- what'd you use to get them?

Thanks Mark! The images and info on your site inspired me to give macro a try in the first place.

Question - am I understanding correctly that you "bait" the flower with a drop of honey? I will have to give that a try.

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E-P3 | 14 | 25 | 45 | 40-150 | various legacy

Bait would be the wrong word here. More like 'pacify', or 'calm' or 'distract'. The honey was for the wasp In the Red - 1 which was very skittish, these usually are to the extent I rarely see one stopped. It fled to the red flower and expended its 'flying' energy as it was cold and in early morning shadow but was still moving about the flower at any approach by me. So I put a little honey down and approached from a direction that would have the wasp move towards the honey, which it found fairly quick. Later the ant came along and it was an opportunity.

Ants will often stop for a feed of nectar or pollen but when honey is involved a timely session is almost guaranteed. :)

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Nature's Place Macro Illustrated

While I often feel the same inspiration when seeing other macro images posted on this site, these shots have sort of the opposite effect on me: I feel like there is just NO WAY that I will ever approach this level of quality, so I'll just leave you to it and enjoy your results. Thanks for setting the bar way too high for the rest of us.

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Sarcasm is my default tone, so please consider that before taking offense to the preceding message.

Criticism (no matter how harsh) is welcomed of ANY and ALL images I post.

Not at all. It's a matter of practise once you know what to do, and that's at the second link in my sig - the principles are universal, it's the details that vary.

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Nature's Place Macro Illustrated