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If you’ve ever wondered what you get if you treat a bee with formaldehyde, acetone and liquid CO2 before gold-coating it and firing particles at it at the speed of light, then … why? But also, here’s your answer.

This is an extreme closeup image of a bee head, showing the eyes, mouthparts, antennae and microscopic hairs, taken with a scanning electron microscope (SEM).

With the ability to achieve resolution better than 1 nanometre with the most powerful instruments (for a little bit of perspective, there are exactly 1 000 000 nanometres in 1 millimetre and a human hair is about 100 000 nm wide), SEMS make use of a focused beam of electrons to scan the surface of the subject, recording how they scatter, eventually producing detailed information on the physical features and the composition of the sample.

Aside from taking images that are of great value to researchers (I mean, did you know bees had hairy eyes?), it’s also pretty cool to be able to stare at creepycrawlies this close up. More about them on page 32.