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#BeeFly

3 posts3 participants0 posts today
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LionelB

Another Dark-edged Bee Fly (Bombylius major).

Several of these were hovering but at around 20cm off the ground, in open sunshine over dried mud.

The Eristalis were also hovering but at around 1.7m and kept close to the hedge.

These were also hanging around their mining bee hosts.

A round fly covered in tan hairs resting on a dry leaf on the ground. The long and uniformly thin probosis is very long and the front edge of the very narrow wings has a wavy dark blotch along the full length
#BeeFly#insects
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Albert Cardona

@biodiversitypix

ONE OF THE BEE FLIES (Sparnopolius fulvus, Wied.)
"No butterfly or any other creature of the air could be more beautiful than this dream of early summer. The black velvet body, into which the sunlight sank and disappeared, the fringe of golden hairs along its sides, the steel gray, myriad-facet eyes of which its head was made, and the delicately formed wings, so thin that the light in passing through them was refracted into rainbow tints, made it seem to me more beautiful than almost any of those gorgeous forms of insect life which sometimes fill the clearings in Brazilian forests. It does seem strange that such a thing as this should live its other life a parasite grub within the larva of some caterpillar, or in the egg-case of some grasshoppers but so it seems to do. It spends its childhood as a disease, and its mating days as a dainty fly among the nectar-hearing flowers."

biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4

ONE OF THE BEE FLIES (Sparnopolius fulvus, Wied.) "No butterfly or any other creature of the air could be more beautiful than this dream of early summer. The black velvet body, into which the sunlight sank and disappeared, the fringe of golden hairs along its sides, the steel gray, myriad-facet eyes of which its head was made, and the delicately formed wings, so thin that the light in passing through them was refracted into rainbow tints, made it seem to me more beautiful than almost any of those gorgeous forms of insect life which sometimes fill the clearings in Brazilian forests. It does seem strange that such a thing as this should live its other life a parasite grub within the larva of some caterpillar, or in the egg-case of some grasshoppers but so it seems to do. It spends its childhood as a disease, and its mating days as a dainty fly among the nectar-hearing flowers." #entomology #BeeFly #bombyliidae
#entomology#BeeFly#bombyliidae
Public
Eyes on Nature

My first #BeeFly this year!

Although they might look intimidating with their long proboscis, they are absolutely harmless (as long as you are not a target for their larvae that is, but if you're not an insect, you need not worry).

They usually just sit or buzz around, looking for some sweet nectar to feed on. And pollinate plants this way! Some even hover while sucking nectar like tiny hummingbirds, which just makes them even more awesome. :blobaww:

Bee fly macro portrait on a cherry twig. You can see parts of the twig and the insect on the left part of the image.
#photography#EyesOnNature#macro
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