Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

A Palestinian beekeeper uses smoke to calm bees in the process of collecting honey at a farm in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip April 11, 2016. Rateb Samour sees 250 patients a day, whose complaints range from hair loss to cerebral palsy and cancer. He is not a doctor and has never worked in a hospital. Samour inherited the skill of bee-sting therapy from his father. From 2003 the agricultural engineer dedicated all his time to study and develop the alternative-medicine treatment of apitherapy, which uses bee-related products from honey, propolis – or bee glue used to build hives – to venom. (Photo by Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

People take pictures and Buddhist monk chants as a groom and a bride lay inside a pink coffin during their wedding ceremony at Wat Takien temple in Nonthaburi province, on the outskirts of Bangkok February 14, 2015. Ten Thai couples laid in the pink coffin starting 9:09 AM on Saturday during the wedding ceremony organised by the Buddhist temple on Valentine's Day. Couples believe laying briefly in the coffin will get rid of bad luck and usher happiness into their lives. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

As part of FLAIR Melbourne – a Flinders Lane art festival – Melbourne’s Lisa Minogue presents stylised photographic portraits of Australian women of colour, their faces painted vibrantly to accentuate their individuality and encourage the viewer to study each face more closely. Minogue asked each woman the same question: “What do the words “coloured girl” mean to you?”. (Photo by Lisa Minogue/The Guardian)

Jazmin, 6, sister of Jose Luis, receives Isoniazid Preventive Therapy in Carabayllo in Lima, Peru July 14, 2016. At least 30,000 Peruvians are infected with tuberculosis, an ancient disease that killed 1.8 million globally last year, more than AIDS-related and malaria deaths combined. Partners in Health, a Boston-based non-profit that works with Peru's health ministry, offers a simple solution. It trains community volunteers to tend to tuberculosis sufferers in their homes – ensuring patients take medicine daily and helping them navigate the public health bureaucracy. (Photo by Mariana Bazo/Reuters)

"Temptation", part of an installation from the artist-duo David Burns and Austin Young, appears among the works of 30 artists in the multimedia exhibition "The Value of Food: Sustaining a Green Planet" at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Wednesday, October 7, 2015, in New York. The exhibition, installed in the cathedral's seven chapels and 14 bays, explores food accessibility, sustainability and other food-related issues and runs through April 3, 2016. (Photo by Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo)

Noriaki Iwashima gestures as he lies in a coffin to try it out during an end-of-life seminar held by Japan's largest retailer Aeon Co in Tokyo October 24, 2014. Funeral arrangements are normally left to those who have been left behind but the latest trend in Japan, which literally translates to “End of life” preparations, is for the ageing to prepare their own funerals and graves before they set off on their journey to the great beyond. With a population that is expected to shrink by nearly 30 million people over the next 50 years, the market for funerals, graves and anything related to the afterlife is still very much alive. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)