Four years ago, when Isaac Bissell got into macrophotography — which uses extreme close-ups to make tiny creatures look larger than life — he found the perfect subjects buzzing around his South Burlington backyard. Thanks to his interest in permaculture and soil biology, the biodiversity hot spot is dense with food-producing and native plants that attract a wide variety of pollinators. The sandy soils of the old Winooski River delta provide an ideal habitat for ground-nesting bees.
Bissell has taken tens of thousands of photographs of bees and wasps — about 32,000 this year alone — and he shares their curated “tiny dramas” on his Instagram page, Vermont Pollinator Photography, where “pollinator nerds” are welcome.
In the latest episode of “Stuck in Vermont,” Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger got a tour of Bissell’s backyard paradise and met some of his glamorous flying subjects.
Music: Zachariah Hickman, “Mourning Dove”
This episode of “Stuck in Vermont” was supported by the Vermont Community Foundation.
This article appears in September 2 • 2026.
Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger has been making her award-winning video series “Stuck in Vermont” since 2007. In 2024, she won first place from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for her video, “Barbie Collector.” She received…
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