In this week’s Photo of the Week, the world feels suddenly small in the best way possible.
At first glance, you might read the image as a rough-edged tunnel carved into earth. Look closer and a whole society appears. Tiny stingless bees cluster at the mouth of their home, their bodies forming a living gate. The entrance itself looks hand-built, shaped from wax, resin, and mud into a neat, tube-like passage. The scene carries the tension of a threshold: inside is warmth, brood, food stores, a kingdom; outside is weather, predators, and chance.
The photograph is titled ‘Guardians of the Hive’, and it has just won Young Close-up Photographer of the Year at Close-up Photographer of the Year 7 (CUPOTY 7). The photographer is Rithved Girish, a 14-year-old of Indian origin who photographed the nest during a visit to Mezhathur, Kerala.
A patient eye, a close-up world
Close-up photography rewards people who stay. In Rithved’s frame, the bees hold their positions like watchkeepers, each one angled towards the opening, antennae alert, legs braced. You can almost feel the stillness behind the action: the waiting, the careful focus, the decision to let the moment unfold on its own.
He shot the image using a Nikon D850 paired with a macro lens, showing how craft and observation shape a photograph as much as equipment does.
Why this photo lands harder than it looks
Stingless bees rarely get the spotlight. Yet pollinators sit under everyday life: farms, fruit, vegetables, seeds, and the wild plants that keep ecosystems stitched together. The UN-backed IPBES assessment and the FAO both underline the scale of this relationship, with more than 75% of the world’s food crops depending on animal pollination to some extent.
So the image carries two stories at once. One is about a teenager noticing something most people walk past. The other is about the kind of life that keeps our plates full, our landscapes flowering, and our seasons steady.
A winning photograph often gives you a new way to look at the familiar. Here, it offers something simpler: a reason to slow down, lean in, and respect the tiny guardians doing their work at the edge of a hive.
Sources
‘14-year-old photographer scoops top prize in world’s biggest close-up competition with DSLR camera kit’: by Digital Camera World, Published on 13 February 2026
‘Winners of the 2025 Close-Up Photographer of the Year’: by The Atlantic, Published on 5 February 2026
‘The winning images of CUPOTY 7‘: by Close-Up Photographer of the Year, Published on 6 February 2026
‘On Guard’: by Natural History Museum (Wildlife Photographer of the Year)
‘Press Release: Pollinators Vital to Our Food Supply Under Threat’: by IPBES, Published on 26 February 2016
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thebetterindia.com
