I love bees. All bees. I don’t know exactly why. But I do. And since I can’t keep them in hives yet (I live in an apartment), I keep them in photos, smile.

When I first started up my notecard business 15 years ago, I did so dba Apicentric Photography. Which was cute, to those in the know. But a mouthful to everyone else. Plus, it is, well… apicentric! Meaning, focused on just western European honey bees (apis mellifera). It also didn’t last long, as my life was rudely interrupted by a massive onset cascade of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome symptoms in 2012 that upended my work. So I had to fold the business in 2013, and turned to medical education and blogging next.

But I was missing the bees, and my photography. So I decided to try to spin things back up in 2025. And when I thought of “Photograbee”, and scored the domain name in early 2025, it felt perfect – as I’m seeing and featuring other bees now too.

Most folks aren’t aware that there are over 24,000 species of bees found throughout the world. Of these, about 4000 are found in the US.

Oregon, the state where I live, is said to have about 630 species. Every once in a while that number ticks up as someone finds yet a new species of bee.

And the vast majority of them are solitary ground nesting bees. Meaning, they do not make hives for storing honey. But instead, they dig tunnels in the ground, or sometimes in old wood, lay eggs in each one, pack food in over the egg, and repeat, either in a new tunnel, or until the tunnel is full (see mason bees).

The bees in my beloved sleepy bee photos are a type of solitary ground-nesting Melissodes longhorn bee (unsure exactly which kind). Most honey bees get back to their hives even on hot days, so as to offload their pollen and nectar for food stores, and help keep the hive temperature regulated. The male longhorn bees will often sleep in flowers, as was probably the case that lucky evening last July when I found them. (It was 97 degrees F!)

You can and will find several kinds of bees sleeping away in your flowers or garden foliage at the end of a hot summer day. Including bumblebees. They are very peaceful. But try to leave them bee – they are tuckered out!

Here are a couple of great films and videos on wild/native bees and honey bees you might enjoy:

• My Garden of A Thousand Bees (free on YouTube)
• Secrets of the Bees (2026) – National Geographic (available on Hulu and Disney+)

Feel free to share any other great videos or films you know about featuring bees. Let’s keep the bee-love going! See you around.

Jan April 2026