I’m really happy/humbled to hear the positive feedback, I’m just starting out over these past few months so it’s super encouraging / motivating to keep trying for something interesting. I’ve been taking a toooon of photos after I got the camera a few months ago and I’m usually trying to balance interesting/sharp macros while not going above f8ish and the extremely narrow DOF there, while having enough going for it that composition is interesting. lots of learning and deleting, but I think I have another shot of this on the camera in which the bee eyes were a tiny bit more in focus rather than the curly flower petals, so I’m improving at sometimes getting fun results 
Awesome advice all around, I’m taking notes and planning to look up the specific suggestions. It’s really helpful to hear that filmic can bleach out these colors, because that’s something I would often run into and just feel like I did something very wrong, even after some slider adjustments. I’m not positive I understand the difference between the filmic / sigmoid or workflow suggestions yet, but I will look it up too. I’ve heard the terms featured, etc, but it seems like there are a lot of approaches over the years and I don’t understand what’s what or how to orient myself yet.
@dqpcoxeas lovely, artistically I’m always still working through when it is nice to rotate the macro shot, or when it looks funky due to gravity and the insect “hanging” being now rotated. This handles the focal point being slightly more on the flower petals than the bee eye really beautifully!
@Roger.Wilco I’m in north america. It snowed and froze briefly last week, but then it’s been sunny and warm again this week (before more cold tomorrow). I’m going to try to take the opportunity to visit this garden again today and continue to this week, until the bees absolutely disappear. As for the capture, I’m inexperienced at macro but I’ve managed like 20k shutter actuations in the past 2.5mo, lol, damn focus stack attempts and thousands upon thouuuusands of blurry photos in hi speed continuous shooting. The biggest help was making a diy diffuser in the style of the hood type commercial ones (photo attached). I just got the laowa 65mm 2x apo, which this was taken with and it’s a lovely light apsc lens so far. I had been using the Sony 90mm macro before, so I’m learning with this one now. I’m still trying to learn yo balance composition with being a bit (too?) obsessive about wanting to get really sharp details close up, but it’s been fun and frustrating to learn what I like.
I hope to play around with some of the files in darktable tomorrow or soon while re-reading some of the advice because everyone’s contributions have been very informative. My eyes are a bit exhausted for editing today since my job is on the computer too. I like both the darker exposure ones, as well as the brighter exposure versions that still feel balanced (something I struggle with). I’ve been taking macros in a vacuum the past 2mo without sharing too much yet, so seeing what different people stylistically see in an image is very educational and cool, thanks again!