Profs and Pints Online presents: “Portraits of Bees,” with Sam Droege, biologist at the U.S.G.S. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, developer of online identification guides to native bees, and guest lecturer at colleges and universities.

Prepare for an evening of aesthetics, beauty, and the stories of bees you have never seen.

Sam Droege, a nationally recognized bee expert, is a great source of information about bee taxonomy, morphology, conservation and life history. But his biggest impact comes from the intensely detailed portraits he takes of our winged friends.

They’re studio shots, really. He cleans and primps bees, puts them on a movable sled, and slides them into a bee-sized photo studio with a velvet backdrop. Often, he’ll then take more than 100 detailed photographs of a bee to construct the final composite portrait showing every detail. The end results are amazing shots of all kinds of bees, both exotic ones from around the world and surprisingly common ones from your own backyard. Many come in fantastical colors—metallic blue or red, or impossibly bright yellow.

Come see these visually stunning images flashed on your screen as Droege discusses the bees and their stories, describing their habits, where they live, and the adventures that went with finding them. He’ll talk about the many bees around you that hide in plain sight—you can step on or pass thousands of their nests every year without even knowing it. He’ll tell you about creatures such as the miner bee, which builds tubular nests, and the squash bee, a visitor of pumpkin patches.

He’ll also suggest steps you can take to help save bees and keep the honey flowing. He’ll be donating his proceeds from the talk to the Polistes Foundation, which provides support to scientific labs such as his own.

Profs & Pints Online: Portraits of Bees