Bees are Not Bugs

Tuesday Photo Challenge – Bugs by jansenphoto (Dutch goes the Photo!)

This week’s theme is Bugs! Creepy, crawly, beautiful or inspiring, bring them all! Of course, no challenge would be in this list, unless you could take a very different view of it…

The theme for Frank’s weekly photo challenge is “bugs”. The featured photo for this post is of a bee. Bees are not bugs.

As I mentioned in a comment when Frank published the post with the theme, all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs. Well, that’s not entirely true. Computer software bugs are not insects but as everyone knows they are just as annoying.

True bugs are listed within the order called Hemiptera. Insects in this order are different from other insect orders, such as Hymenoptera (ants and bees), Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), or Diptera (flies and mosquitoes). Ask A Biologist

I think the word bug is shorthand for “I think this thing is a nuisance“ or “I am shit-my-pants scared of this thing“. Some people like my wife see a cockroach and immediately fall apart like a four-year-old who just dropped an ice-cream cone to the floor. I think it’s learned behaviour. That same four-year-old is likely to be fearless when confronted with spiders, grasshoppers and daddy-long-legs. The insect is more at risk from unintentional death-by-curiosity in that scenario.

Some people are annoyed enough to swat every insect they encounter even if that insect is in the middle of the forest. I have a general rule. Unless I’m at threat of physical harm I leave the insect alone and I try my best to remove them (or myself) safely away from the area. My kids know that they are not allowed to kill insects that “re-occupy” our home.

I knew that it would be a challenge to find insects to photograph this weekend. It rained yesterday and this morning and I fully expected I would see nothing. But this morning while I was at the farmer’s market looking at the sunflowers I noticed this bee enjoying breakfast. Since this is a bee, not a bug, I technically failed the challenge. But there a few buyers who were bugging out over the buzzing.

Created by photographer Frank Jansen, the Tuesday Photo Challenge is a weekly theme-based challenge for photographers of all kinds to share both new and old photography.