1. Jan 11, The Chocolate Factory, Hershey, PA. The ABRC (American Bee Research Conference) was hold there, I organized the talks for this conference as a VP of AAPA (American Association of Professional Apiculturists).

2. March 8, ANR Week Beekeeping Program at MSU campus. More than 500 beekeepers attended.

3. March 28, Apis cerana foraging on a Japanese red maple. My first shot of a honey bee on maple trees.

April 7. Apis cerana foraging on a Chinese milkvetch, my hometown, Shaoshan, Hunan.

April 14, Apis cerana foraging on logan, FAFU (Fujian Agric and Forestry Univ) campus.

April 14, A. mellifera foraging on Bombax ceiba. FAFU campus. Very far away and I had to climb to a roof top to shoot them.

April 24. My first bee pic of bees foraging on Meihua (Prunus mume, Japanese plum flowers).

April 26. A trip to the Jiankou Greatwall (old, most unmaintained part of the Greatwall). Wild apricots were blooming everywhere.

July 13, HAS (Heartland Apicultural Society) conference was at Tennessee Tech Univ.

July 13.A bumble bee foraging on Clethra alnifolia at the Cheekwood Botanic Gardens, Nashville, TN.

My first good pic of bees foraging on corn was shot there (Tamron 180mm Macro). My first batch of them shot in China, using a telephoto (not a macro) were not as good.

July 18. Attending and giving a talk at the ICIRD (International Conf of Invertebrate Reproduction and Development). There was a cruise that evening, the same evening that Detroit filed for bankruptcy.

July 20. MBA summer picnic at the Best Farm. On the way back I shot this.

July 21, SEMBA picnic at the MSU Tollgate Facility in Novi, MI. I shot a few flowers and bees before the meeting.

July 28, A trip to Xinjiang to give a keynote speech on a national bee conference in China.
A bee foraging on an unknown flower. They do not look like a type of geranium.

A bee foraging on a type of thistle.

Aug. 5. I got up at 5 to shoot some bees on lotus flowers. FAFU campus.

Aug. 6, visiting a center for GMO biosafty near Beijing (Langfang).

Aug. 10. A honey bee foraging on the female flowers of a beebee tree. Before I left for China, the flowers were all males.  The male flowers will wither and drop, and females then bloom, for another good 2-3 weeks.

Sept 1. I was lucky enough to find a bee foraging on ragweed (apparent for pollen), again my first such shot.  Many people (including yours truly) are highly allergic to ragweed pollen.

Sept 5, on that trip I captured a velvet ant and kept her alive for 2-3 weeks (nice Christmas colors!).

Sept 7. A bee on stonecrop (Sedum sp), Duke Garden, NC.

Sept 27. Attended Apimondia meeting in Kiev, Ukraine with 6,500 other beekeepers.  It was too cold to find any bees on flowers there and it started snowing on our last day there. St Andrew’s Church, Kiev. It sits right across to the more famous St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery.

Nov 11, A bee foraging on a type of aster (Eupatorium), Zilke Botanic Gardens, Austin, TX. The ESA conference was held there.