Bee Fly

There seem to be high numbers of these bee flies this year. They arrived with the warm sunny weather and are hovering all along the edge of our allotment by the hedgerow where there are many wildflowers growing.

Don’t fall for its cute appearance. It’s a naughty parasite. The females flings (literally flings) her eggs towards a nest entrance created by a mining bee. When the fly bee’s larva emerges it goes into the nest and eats all the pollen stored by the mining bee for her larvae and THEN the fly bee’s larva eats the mining bee’s larvae! Fully fed and ready to emerge on a sunny Spring day.

The extremely long proboscis is used for supping nectar from spring flowers like primrose, although white flowers are their preferred colour. It doesn’t retract and is a key identifiable feature of this hovering insect. This is the dark-edged bee fly, also known as the giant bee fly. There’s a dotted bee fly, with very nice polka-dot wings, which I’ll look out for. They’re liable to be in the same locations, taking advantage of mining bees.

They don’t sting and are good pollinators so no problem to plotholders.