Microscopic Honey Bee Eye Photograph Wins Nikon Small World Contest
Posted on October 15, 2015
A photograph of the eye of a honey bee (Apis mellifera) covered in dandelion pollen won the 2015 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. The photograph was taken by Australian Ralph Grimm. The dandelion pollen looks like yellow microdots in the photo.
The honey bee eye photograph is magnified at 120x. Grimm is a high school teacher, self-taught photomicrographer and former beekeeper.
Grimm says, "In a way I feel as though this gives us a glimpse of the world through the eye of a bee. It's a subject of great sculptural beauty, but also a warning- that we should stay connected to our planet, listen to the little creatures like bees, and find a way to protect the earth that we all call home."
Other photos in the top five include a photograph of a mouse colon colonized with human microdata, the intake of a humped baldderwort, a lap-brown human mammary gland organoid and a live imaging of perfused vasculature in a mouse brain with glioblastom.
The top 20 winning photographs and honorable mentions can be found here on Nikon's Small World site.
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