When we first started discussing the idea of a film about bees and cities, my knowledge of the area extended to the bumblebee and the honey bee. What I quickly came to learn is that the UK is home to a rich diversity of insects that pollinate our plants. As well as the honey bee, there are 26 species of bumblebee, 250 species of solitary bee, 59 species of butterfly and a remarkable 7,000 or so known species of fly.
The images in the gallery below – just a small selection of the UK’s many species – were all produced by Dr Nadine Mitschunas, who worked at University of Reading as a research technician for the Urban Pollinators Project. Photographing bees and other pollinators isn’t easy and requires lots of patience. But you don’t need special equipment or software: Nadine uses a Sony Cyber-shot RX100 compact camera without a macro lens, and normally crops her images with basic photo software such as Microsoft Office Picture Manager.