Bee Vision and Ultra Violet Photography

Today, I experimented with ultra violet light and learned about how bees see differently than humans.  When humans see, the objects we're looking at absorb and reflect different colors of light from our rainbow.  What we see is the reflected color.  Our vision is limited to seeing red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet light.  When we see white, it's all the colors being reflected by the object.  When we see black, all the colors are being absorbed.

There are types of light that go beyond what we can see with our eyes as humans.  One is called ultraviolet light and it is just past violet on the light spectrum.  Bees can see ultraviolet light.  Here's an interesting video about how bees see:

I decided to try to photograph what a bee might see.  I followed the instructions from the Instructables website on how to build your own UV light filter for a digital camera.  You take a blacklight bulb and break it.  Tape a piece of the blacklight glass it to a bottlecap or ring that fits around the camera lens.  I used the lid to a sea salt grinder and black duct tape.  Here are the instructions:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Photography-in-the-Ultraviolet-spectrum/

Here are some of the results of my photography in the community garden across the street from my house.  I found that the filter on the camera makes it necessary for a very long exposure.  To help solve that issue, I used a tripod, but the wind was blowing the plants and the sun wasn't that bright, so it hard to take the UV photos.  I'll try it again on a day when the conditions are better. If you want a closer view of the photos, just click on them to make them bigger.