Thanks for the kudos on the photo - Howland personally thanks him for making him a very rich man (with the book in its 11th? printing) meanwhile, I just glory of occasionally sharing my 15 minutes of fame :)
I'll never forget that day. I took a full frame of brood and pollen and stacked it onto my open mailbox so that I had good sunlight into the cells - I used an Olympus 3000 digital camera with macro lens. I knew the second I took the photo it was the cover shot.
There is a bit of digital magic-try to the photo (nothing to disappoint your image of it being a sweet photo) but there was a second worker bee in the photo (just her head really) and I covered her head up with a cloned cells from a part of the picture ( the ORANGE CELL at the center left position is the cells I took from the upper right cell nearest the workers right wing tip. If you look close you see this is the same cell (and a small chunk of the green cell next to it) but the colors are 100% real, nothing was doctored other than removing the workers head.
Also, the original image had the bee facing to the right, not the left - here is the original cover layout
www.beemaster.com/bkd.html - this photo here has been seen by very few people - I'm happy to share it with you :)
I'm wondering ( a question on my main Beekeeping Course page, did you find the link for the 2001 beekeeping logbook season?) I'm asking because it was my own BLOG like FULL SEASON of beekeeping mixed with a huge part of my personal life, including mentoring a young boy, going through some very serious health issues and also following as I did these photos for Dummies) I'd like to know if my page is laid out well enough that new visitors are finding all the content. This 2001 logbook was intensively created and I think some of my finest writing, I'd like to know if it is getting read. Who better than a new beekeeper searching out all the info they can on the hobby :) Please let me know.
Here is the beekeeping course main page
http://www.beemaster.com/honeybee/beehome.htm the link to the 2001 season is there somewhere - lol. I hope you have found it, but here is the link if not.
http://www.beemaster.com/honeybee/beelog.html and I hope that if you have NOT read through it, you will find lots of important thoughts about GETTING INTO THE HEADS OF THE BEES and other great newbie stuff - stuff the personal content that I take pride in - I helped raise a young boy from 12 to 18 from a dysfunctional home, we have trips detailed in my TRAVEL SECTION also where he and I went to Washington, DC, actually even went flying a parachute type airplane on his 16th birthday.
Sorry for babbling. I enjoy the chat of an intelligent lady with the passion of a new beekeeper - I have always said "I am not lucky... I'm blessed!" and I do believe that. My wonderful wife Tracey found beekeeping to bee wonderfully interesting and in the install photo tutorial SHE was the camera operator :)
Lastly, 5 acres is unheard of in my part of the country - I live on a 105X55 lot in the center of a small town pop. 3500 and the whole town (Lakehurst, NJ) is 1 square mile. A new home on a 120x80 lot (2 bedroom 1.5 baths) sells in the $350K range - I just don't know how a young couple, making less than $40K a year each, can even afford a mortgage, let known eating.
I can only dream of a few acres upon retirement, somewhere warmer but not hot, hilly or mountainous - I'm 14 miles from the Atlantic Ocean and I haven't been to it more than a dozen times in my life - oceans, beaches and such really don't interest me - give me woods, animals and elbow room from neighbors.