‘Teamwork’ bees: adding the colour
With the gold outline done, I can fill in the bee shapes with colour. I’m using Madeira stranded cotton in black (no. 2400), yellow (0104) and ivory (2402):

Embroidery threads
Black first, for the heads and bodies and some of the stripes, worked in long and short stitch:

Bees with the black sections embroidered
Then the yellow stripes:

The yellow stripes added to the bees
Then finally the ivory, for the bees’ tails:

Bees completely embroidered in long and short stitch
They still look a bit odd without their wings, but they’re going on next.
Very cute! We have a lot of bees in our new garden in Colorado, not just honeybees (which are imported from Europe) but also some native bees as well.