I use a polarizing filter to help reduce the glare so that I hopefully can see the wing venation better.
flash is a life saver for this at least for me. without it i usually feel forced to shoot nearly wide open, with it i can comfortably go up to f13, its so much easier to capture detail on insects with it that i never even consider macro without it anymore
Those are fantastic for no flash. You will be amazed at the difference. And then amazed again when you diffuse your flash. https://www.inaturalist.org/people/tshahan and https://www.inaturalist.org/people/xx7trey have some good tutorials on their YouTube channels.
Thank you! I’m pretty happy with them. :)
And thank you again for the tutorials! I’m a little skeptical, because I tend to find natural lighting quite pretty and I haven’t had much success getting flash to look good in non-macro photography. But I guess even if the effect is different the point is clarity, not necessarily artistry.
Okay, I’m convinced. I’ve been converted to the ways of flash macro.
A couple hours of photographing very busy moving subjects, on a very windy day, with the built-in flash and no diffuser, achieving shutter speeds at 1/60 to 1/200, and I’m getting shots like this?! (Excuse the fact that they’re phone photos of a camera preview screen, I’ll be making observations of these later)
It’s a shame winter is coming, I want to get my hands on a better flash and a diffuser and do so much more bee/wasp photography.
Welcome to the macro-flash rabbit hole 
Maybe we should start a new thread so we don’t dilute the great hymenoptra ID tips.
I may be an outlier, but I don’t normally use flash when photographing bees in the field because I find that in the sort of sunny habitat where I usually look for bees I am more likely to have issues with too much light than too little (except on overcast days or in shady locations where there tend to be fewer bees). With my set-up (completely manual lens), I find I get better photos with a moderate aperture (5.6/8) and a high shutter speed than with flash. There may be user error involved and your mileage may vary.
I wonder whether I should invest in a camera with flash (I hear the Olympus TG7 is good, but it’s a bit pricey and I’m already planning to get a moth trap (also quite pricey) for Christmas), since right now all I’ve got is an iPad with an Apexel clip-on macro lens, and it doesn’t even have a flash! (well, technically it does, but only on the selfie camera for some bizarre reason)
I find photographing live bees and wasps much more enjoyable with a proper camera (with or without flash) than with a mobile device. In general, clip-on macro lenses have a very short working distance of just a few cm, which is often not practical for insects that move quickly and are likely to startle when approached. A camera with good macro capacity will generally provide more flexibility.
I haven’t used any of the TG series cameras (I considered it when camera shopping, but I decided that long-term I would want something with a wider variety of uses, in particular tele), but they seem to be a popular choice among iNatters for pocketable and relatively inexpensive macro. You should be able to find numerous discussions in the forum on the topic.
I don’t have any specific recommendation for a model of camera and/or lens, but if you can get a proper camera to do macro with it’ll probably give better results than a clip-on lens, so I do recommend it if you have the budget for it! If for no other reason than it gives you the ability to get decent quality pictures from farther away; and because there’s no worry about the camera app on a tablet/phone trying to “enhance” the image and smoothing out details. And in my few test sessions, even the built-in flash on my camera has worked pretty great for flash-macro, so a separate flash isn’t a requirement to try out the technique.
Also, it’s a bit silly, but I just feel more “official” when I’m walking around with a DSLR instead of just a phone camera, lol. Gets me in the mood for documenting things. :)
I remeber being absolutely blown away when I made my first diffuser. It felt like cheating.
I went from perfectly serviceable natural light shots like this
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/26022928
To this
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/36053318
I’ve been a diffused flash evangelist ever since.
Same. Even the pringles can + white paper was a big step up.